Vancouver's new housing strategy shapes next election's ballot box question

Municipal governments putting out 10-year housing strategies generally don't get a lot of attention.

But this is Vancouver in 2017. 

It's one reason why so many reporters were packed into a briefing room Thursday to receive the city's new strategy — a culmination of Vancouver's self-professed "reset" on housing issues, after years of skyrocketing prices.

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At the same time, it's the first salvo in what officials with other political parties say will be the main question in next year's municipal election: which party do you trust to make Vancouver more affordable for anyone who isn't a home owner? 

"This is being dropped on the eve of an election campaign. We have a choice next year to decide who has the real clear and credible plan for working families in Vancouver," said Hector Bremner, the recently elected councillor from the NPA, which is Vision Vancouver's chief rival.

"There's a wakening up, that the same way we've been proceeding over the last nine years isn't going to cut it," said Connie Hubbs, co-chair of COPE. 

Little criticism of plan itself

Part of the reason there's been little criticism so far of the strategy — put together over the the last year — is its length and complexity: at 227 pages long, and with plenty of small task forces and pilot projects, it's hard to fully assess after one day. 

"I still think there's more review to be done, and the public needs to have its say. I'm really interested to see what other experts feel," said Bremner, declining to directly attack the strategy. 

And there were parts of Vancouver's plan that drew immediate attention, particularly the city's promise to start looking at certain areas of single-family neighbourhoods to rezone as townhomes and other medium-density units.

But most speculation was focused on whether these initiatives would do anything to reverse — or simply halt — the rise in prices in Vancouver, which the report lays out in grim detail.

Consider that in the city's last housing strategy in 2012, the words "crisis" and "speculation" were never typed. The word "affordability" showed up seven times.

This time? "Crisis and speculation" appear dozens of times. And the word "affordability"?

244 times. 

Getting better all the time

Will the next 10 years be better for Vancouver's housing affordability than the last 10?

Speaking to CBC's Stephen Quinn, Mayor Gregor Robertson made the observation that it probably would — if only because, to quote John Lennon, it can't get no worse. 

"We've seen in the last 10 years, Vancouver's been hit by the most dramatic change in our property values and real estate of any city in the world, in terms of number of years.

"Certainly there are other cities that now we're in the league of: New York and London and San Francisco in terms of affordability. That all happened in the last 10 years, arguably in the last five years the most dramatic impact," he said.

"So it's hard to imagine that that scale of change could continue, now that we're already among the least affordable cities in the world."

It's not the type of sound bite that wins elections — but it's not yet known who will be the chief alternatives to Robertson in 2018, assuming he runs again as promised.  

The NPA is holding an open primary for their mayoral candidate, with Coun. George Affleck's decision not to run leaving the field completely wide open. 

Meanwhile, COPE has just elected an executive that is pledging to find alliances with other Vancouver parties on the left wing of the political spectrum, in an attempt to avoid the vote-splitting of last month's byelection.

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So questions around Robertson's opponents will be resolved in the months ahead.

Whether this housing strategy works better than the last one will take a little while longer to resolve.