'We're in a crisis': Vancouver struggles to improve rental vacancy rate
By Matt Robinson, Vancouver Sun
Vancouver’s rental vacancy rate is among the lowest in the world with just six of 1,000 units (0.6 per cent) available at any given time, Mayor Gregor Robertson said Wednesday, commenting on new data from the city.
Things are not much better in the rest of the region either, according to a staff report that will go to council next week, with Metro Vancouver’s rental vacancy rate dropping for the third straight year to just 0.8 per cent in 2015.
The numbers come at the halfway point of the City of Vancouver’s 10-year strategy on housing and homelessness and at a time staff are working to refresh their goals. While a good deal of progress was made over the first five years, the city needs more help, Robertson said.
“We’ve put huge focus on affordable housing and homelessness over the past five years and definitely achieved significant results, but clearly, given the affordable housing crisis unfolding, we need to take it to the next level,” Robertson said in an interview.
The city beat its targets for new suites, laneway homes and secured market rentals, but fell short on its social and supportive housing goals.
“As a city, we’ve used every tool and policy and approach in our power,” Robertson said. “But we’re in a crisis and we need dramatic action from the province and (we need) the federal government to come back to the table after a long hiatus.”
Vancouver’s woefully low vacancy rate is even lower than it was when the city launched its housing strategy in 2011. Since then, the city has pumped more than $600 million into housing and helped get 12,000 rental units — a blend of secured market rental, social and supportive housing, suites and laneway houses — built or approved, according to the report.
If all the new units were completed, they would amount to about eight per cent of the city’s 147,000 units of rental stock. The population increase over the same period was 4.7 per cent,projections from the B.C. government show.
While the 12,000 new rental units helped refresh the city’s aging stock, more than 80 per cent of units are more than 35 years old and 26 per cent are more than 55 years old, according to the city. Just eight per cent of the city’s rental stock is newer than 15 years.
While the city hasn’t moved the needle on vacancy, it has put in more protections for tenants, helped spur developers to build rental units, launched pilot projects and instituted a rent bank, “without which we’d be in a catastrophic predicament,” Robertson said.
“That just goes to show how intense the pressure is. Despite all the action the city’s taken, we’re barely treading water.”
Vancouver families of moderate means may find it particularly hard to find suitable housing given that just one per cent of the city’s rental units have three or more bedrooms. And while those looking to buy a starter home might be interested in a townhouse or row house, those types of homes amount to just three per cent of the city’s stock.
Many of those renters and homeowners who have succeeded in finding a place to live in the city are burdened by high housing costs, according to the city. Nearly 35 per cent of median income households are spending more than 30 per cent of their cash on shelter.
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation put the national average vacancy rate at 3.5 per cent in the fall. That same report, which looked only at privately owned rental apartment structures with three units or more, found Vancouver’s rate to be 0.8 per cent. The CMHC put the vacancy rate in Toronto at 1.6, Calgary at 5.3, Victoria at 0.6, and B.C. at 1.2.
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