Vancouver looks to ease housing crunch with Rental 100 program

[Sheba]

The Vancouver-based developers behind a new rental-only building in Mount Pleasant say their mixed-use project will take a bite out of the city's notorious shortage of rental housing while providing homes for young families who want to stay in the urban core.

The Duke is a 14-storey project at on East 11th Avenue near Broadway and Kingsway. When completed in August 2017, it will have 201 homes, all of which will be market rental.

Edgar Development Corp. is building the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold building, which will also have 4,925 square feet of retail space on the ground level.

The project taps into the city of Vancouver's Rental 100 program, which encourages buildings made of 100-per-cent rental units. The policy waives the development cost levy, eases parking requirements, relaxes unit size and allows for more density beyond the existing zoning criteria. The city expects the Rental 100 program will help it to create an additional 5,000 units of market rental housing by 2021.

"If Rental 100 didn't exist, the Duke would be a condo building," said Peter Edgar, president of Edgar Development.

He said they designed The Duke with more density given the waivers built into the Rental 100 program.

"It makes it more feasible to build rental in a market where, in order to come to the market land values, you typically have to build a condo building," he said.

...

Edgar knows well that the city is facing a major shortage of market rental.

"As someone who started his family living in a condo in downtown, it's very difficult to find the right unit to start a family in. I think The Duke offers that possibility."

The city of Vancouver says it has the tightest rental market and one of the lowest vacancy rates in the entire country, averaging 0.9 per cent over the last three years.

"We are at record lows of vacancy rates in terms of rental in the city, so we are encouraging programs that can enable more rental to be developed," said Vancouver's chief housing officer, Mukhtar Latif.

"Over the past five years, when we've done the analysis, we saw that five per cent of the new housing starts were rental," Latif said in an interview.

He said since rental incentive programs like Rental 100 came into effect, they have seen a shift by developers toward buildings like The Duke.

"We've been approving roughly 1,000 secured market rental units a year," Latif said, noting that now represents 20 per cent of new housing starts in the city. "In the absence of senior government funding we are limited with resources that we have in the city to encourage and create as much rental supply as we can."

http://www.vancouversun.com/business...tml?__lsa=null

[retro_orange]

That's still nowhere near keeping in line with population increases by 2021. 5000 units is paltry, we need 5-10 times that amount built by then to even move the vacancy rate a couple percentage points. We need to get real and build some big developments if anything is to change in this city, committing to a future second downtown in south or east Vancouver could be the answer. Pearson Dogwood, langara gardens, oakridge mall and little mountain really need to be higher density then planned for. Its a joke how much we want to have our cake and eat it too. (And I hate that metaphor)

[WarrenC12]

I don't think the density of any of those developments you've listed is a problem. The problem is that level of density needs to be opened up in more places around the city.

The vast majority of residential land in the CoV is still zoned for SFH.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by retro_orange

That's still nowhere near keeping in line with population increases by 2021. 5000 units is paltry, we need 5-10 times that amount built by then to even move the vacancy rate a couple percentage points. We need to get real and build some big developments if anything is to change in this city, committing to a future second downtown in south or east Vancouver could be the answer. Pearson Dogwood, langara gardens, oakridge mall and little mountain really need to be higher density then planned for. Its a joke how much we want to have our cake and eat it too. (And I hate that metaphor)

I agree with you that 5000 units is vastly insufficient.
However, creating a second downtown is really a non-starter, as that role has already been assumed by places like Brentwood and Metrotown.
I think that in every large new complex (at a level and in a method yet to be concretized), that in any new housing project, a certain percentage should be designated as social housing.
I don't want to see Vancouver become a 'rich ghetto' and I don't want to see sleek high rise town centres become that either.
I'd tackle it by institionalizing rules that any new, large residential project be obliged to put in a given per centage of social housing.

[whatnext]

Are there covenants that go with these incentives that prevent the units being used for short term rentals like AirBnB?

[quobobo]

Some thoughts on the Rental 100 plan: I’ve browsed the City’s Rental 100 documents and I don’t expect great things.

I can’t speak to the impact of waiving development cost levies (not something I’m especially familiar with), but the density bonuses are pretty minimal. The worst part is that RS (1-family) and RT (2-family) zones are ineligible for the density bonus, so it doesn’t apply to most of Vancouver.

An even bigger issue is that I doubt cities' ability to incentivize meaningful amounts of rental construction (vs condos). The deck is really stacked in favour of homeownership by provincial and federal policies (primary residence exemption, RRSP Home Buyers' plan, non-taxation of imputed rent, BC Homeowner Grant); cities would need to take drastic measures to counteract the cumulative impact of those policies.

tl;dr: I’d be surprised if the program incentivized construction of a meaningful number of units, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by quobobo

Some thoughts on the Rental 100 plan: I’ve browsed the City’s Rental 100 documents and I don’t expect great things.

I can’t speak to the impact of waiving development cost levies (not something I’m especially familiar with), but the density bonuses are pretty minimal. The worst part is that RS (1-family) and RT (2-family) zones are ineligible for the density bonus, so it doesn’t apply to most of Vancouver.

An even bigger issue is that I doubt cities' ability to incentivize meaningful amounts of rental construction (vs condos). The deck is really stacked in favour of homeownership by provincial and federal policies (primary residence exemption, RRSP Home Buyers' plan, non-taxation of imputed rent, BC Homeowner Grant); cities would need to take drastic measures to counteract the cumulative impact of those policies.

tl;dr: I’d be surprised if the program incentivized construction of a meaningful number of units, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

It would be far more meaningful if Trudeau or Mulcair promise to resurrect the MURB program from the 1970's. That would stimulate some serious rental building.