Vancouver is maybe the biggest housing affordability disaster in North America, at least when you consider that incomes are lower than US cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and New York. Buying an average home takes up more than 100% of the median household income, which is less affordable than any Canadian city has ever been, according to one of the major banks. Buying a home is limited to a select few high-income earners or people with generational wealth.  Other cities in British Columbia like Victoria and Kelowna have pretty big housing problems of their own. Last year, 70,000 people left BC, mostly to Alberta. A housing crisis this bad deservescitya serious response. Fortunately, over the past year, the government of BC just decided to become the most ambitious province or state in North America on housing reform.

Single-family zoning? Gone. Municipalities are required to allow multiplexes everywhere, with three-to-six units based on the lot and proximity to a bus stop. Transit hubs? Upzoned, with eight to 20 storey apartments allowed by default near SkyTrain stations, depending on proximity, with density near bus exchanges too. Public hearings on new developments? Eliminated for projects that are consistent with the municipality’s official community plan. Public input is shifted towards big picture plans instead of questioning individual projects. They also added regulations on short-term rentals, implemented a speculation and vacancy tax a few years ago, funded Indigenous housing, and set up a provincial agency to finance and speed up construction of non-profit housing for middle-income families, along the model of Vienna and Singapore. BC’s housing skeptics responded to many of these reforms as you’d expect: an “unprecedented act of provincial overreach” to get rid of rules mandating single-family homes. “Open[ing] the floodgates for more unaffordable market housing development” to allow private developers to build more housing. Housing advocates, on the other hand, were enthusiastic, with lots asking: “how do I get this in my jurisdiction?”. Let’s talk to BC Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon.

What’s the argument for the province stepping in on housing reform, when people are used to housing decisions being made at the local level?

“Well, I would say that it’s not necessarily an argument. It’s just that the way we’ve been doing housing is simply not working.” – Ravi Kahlon

Yeah… we can confirm that.

“You know, often I heard from local governments when I said to them, ‘Hey, why don’t we allow for three or four units or single family lots?’ They say, ‘Hey, well, we’re looking to do this, but every time I do this, the neighbor, my neighbors or the people live by neighbors said, well, why are we doing it? Why are the others not doing it? Why do we have to take growth on and nobody else has to?’” – Ravi Kahlon

That point is important. Even a sympathetic politician or citizen who’s happy to welcome their fair share of housing might be hesitant to go full-YIMBY in their neighbourhood or city if it means taking on an unnatural amount of change due to other places shirking their responsibility. Handling housing at a higher level, like the province, means that we can all sign up for new housing at the same time to both spread the housing around but also reach a scale of new construction that can actually move the needle on the housing shortage.

“It’s a coordination problem. And the reality is I got a lot of respect for people who serve in local government, but all they hear is the voice of people who are already in the community who have homes that perhaps want to protect their home or their investment or don’t want it to change. And who’s speaking for the people who don’t have housing, who don’t have time to come to public hearings, who are busy working.” – Ravi Kahlon

In designing their reforms they learned lessons from other jurisdictions in North America, plus some international housing successes.

“We’re looking carefully at what California has been doing. I met with Scott Weiner, the senator from San Fran, we’re looking at Oregon, looking at Washington state, Minnesota.” – Ravi Kahlon

“But now we’re also investing in middle income housing, learning from Vienna, learning from Singapore, using government lands to build housing for middle income earners.” – Ravi Kahlon

So why exactly has BC been more ambitious than other jurisdictions in North America?

“It helps having a lot of young elected officials. Many of us, the Premier in particular, many of our peers can’t own a home or are renting or are struggling to find places. And when you have live in an environment where you’re surrounded by people who are struggling for housing,I think that actually drives you to make the changes that have been long overdue.” – Ravi Kahlon

One of the biggest challenges with province-level reforms is that municipalities often fight them with extra rules related to parking or yard space or who’s allowed to live in the new housing. These “poison pills” leave the new housing technically legal but in practice difficult to build.

“We are not naive to believe that there will not be some new roadblocks being put in place, but we tried to address that in the legislation’s pieces that we brought forward. For example, when we said we’re going to allow three or four units (or six where there’s frequent transit) on single family lots, we released a site standard document that addressed parking, addressed heights, addressed setbacks. And we did that because local governments have until June 1st to change their community plans to change their zoning to allow this type of housing. And if they don’t, our site standard will be their site standard. So we put those pieces in place to ensure there was a backdrop that anyone that doesn’t make the changes knows that change is coming, and our rules will be their rules.” – Ravi Kahlon

So they’re heavily encouraging municipalities to adopt rules that make new housing actually feasible to build.

“And if they don’t, what they’re going to start seeing is proponents, not for profits or for profit developers or builders are going to start challenging their OCPs and their bylaws in court. And they will have our legislation as a backstop.” – Ravi Kahlon

One thing that comes to mind is Vancouver’s multiplex policy. They legalized small-scale density (up to six units) before the big BC housing reforms, but they didn’t allow the actual buildings to be much bigger than single-family homes in terms of floor space, contrary to new provincial guidelines. That makes them less practical to build, even if technically they’re legal.

“I met with the mayor and shared with him that it is certainly my expectation that Vancouver will align to our site standards and, and maybe even beyond that because there’s real opportunities for us to build housing in Vancouver in particular.Our goal was to raise the floor but not set the ceiling.” – Ravi Kahlon

If there’s one gap in BC’s housing reforms, it’s that the large-scale density is limited to transit stations. Places like Vancouver’s West Side are left out because they don’t have a SkyTrain, but they’re still an easy 30 minute bike or bus ride to downtown. Should those areas get less density than a SkyTrain station in Surrey that’s 45 minutes from downtown? Same thing with other parts of the province where the transit-oriented upzoning applies to bus exchanges, many of which are out by highways, closer to institutional areas like hospitals and universities. Upzoning here is still good but it misses a whole lot of potential closer to downtown.

“Well, we need housing in both those areas. If you look at the island, you’re right. Some of those bus depots are near hospitals and universities, but that’s exactly where you want the housing. You know, we have a challenge of health care workers who can’t afford to live in our communities. And so if you have housing close to their places of work, that’s a positive thing, but I get your point. And I do agree with you. That there are some communities that should be going beyond that and looking at more housing to be allowed, in the West End is a good example. What we were trying to do was bring legislation that would have a provincial reach. It’s very challenging to get into each community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood. But by doing what we’ve done now, we’ve raised the bar, raised  the floor across the province.” – Ravi Kahlon

These reforms are meant to be the first steps, not the whole picture.

“This is not a one and done conversation. We’re starting the conversation in a big way , and we have a lot more work to do.” – Ravi Kahlon

Just on transit-oriented upzoning though, does tying density to transit potentially cause neighbourhood groups to fight against transit for fear of having more housing too?

“This is not a new concept. This is the concept that we’ve been battling with for a long time in many communities. But now those very same communities are like, wouldn’t it be great if we had that conversation about transit again, because people can’t get around and more and more people can’t afford to have a car or multiple cars in their homes. I think now the time is right to think about what sustainable development looks like. If we get to that stage where communities are saying, ‘Hey, we don’t want transit because it means housing.’ Hey, there’s enough communities that want transit for our investments to go to, and we’ll focus there.” – Ravi Kahlon

One of the most interesting reforms BC is looking into is allowing point access blocks: apartment buildings with one central staircase instead of a long corridor, which allow for more flexible and livable layouts, including family-sized apartments. This is something that housing wonks find really exciting — watch Uytae’s video on it if you haven’t. But what’s the timeline on the reform?

“Yeah, we went through an RFP process. We’ve hired a consultant, an engineering firm, that is working right now with our fire officials. I’m hoping within a few months that we’ll have some recommendations that we’ll be able to make public. And by the end of the year, I’m hoping that this will be done, so that people can start building up to possibly eight stories. That’s what we’ve put in within our contract, for the consultants to engage on up to eight stories.” – Ravi Kahlon

So we’re potentially seeing reforms on point access blocks up to 8 storeys by the end of the year, 2024, and they’re hoping that other jurisdictions will learn from BC here.

“I think this is going to be game changing particularly around transit-oriented development areas. Less property assembly, more three-bedroom units. And what we have committed to doing is that when we’re ready to move forward, we’ll make it public and we’ll share any knowledge and research we have so that other provinces can benefit from it as well.” – Ravi Kahlon

Something we wondered though: these designs are common in Europe and Asia but if architects and developers here don’t have experience with them, is there a worry that uptake might be low?

“We’ll get there. I’m not worried about it. I think we just need to unlock the potential first.” – Ravi Kahlon

They’re also hoping to create standardized designs that developers can follow.

“My goal is that if we get to a place where we can have these types of buildings be built, that there is also be set designs for this in the future so that yes, you can have architects innovate and create beautiful designs, which I know they will, or they’ll be able to take things off the shelf.” – Ravi Kahlon

If we’re talking housing and transit, one thing that successful transit cities like Hong Kong do is integrate transit and property development. Is that something BC would consider for TransLink, metro Vancouver’s transit authority?

“It’s happening. I’ve got a law in place in British Columbia for as long as I can remember that said the province cannot buy more land than is necessary for the transit itself. Now, I don’t know who decided that was a good idea, but it, but it’s awful. We changed that law last year. We have half a billion dollar fund right now that’s actively buying parcels of land near transit oriented development areas so we can build housing. So we could build healthcare, schools, childcare facilities. I mean, if we want vibrant, healthy communities, why wouldn’t government be investing in those types of things near the transit itself?” – Ravi Kahlon

To go back to our question at the start: how do housing activists in other jurisdictions encourage their governments to be more bold on housing?

“And so my only advice (and I can’t speak for every jurisdiction) is to know why you’re doing it. What we’re doing in British Columbia is because we’re afraid that there’s going to be way too many young people looking to leave this province. There’ll be a brain drain. We’ll lose that talent. We’ll lose the vibrancy of our communities. And you know, people sometimes in my community, I’ll give you an example. When we launched our housing plan, I was knocking on doors in my community. And I had a gentleman say to me, ‘Hey, I understand why you’re doing it. I’ve lived here for 40 years. I love my community and I don’t want it to change, but I get why you’re doing it. What I said to him at the time was, whether you want your community to change or not, it’s been changing for 40 years. The building structure might not be changing, but who’s been able to live in our communities has been changing that entire time. And so we need to adapt. We need to ensure that when there’s young people in your community, that that is the sign of a vibrant and healthy community. When there’s kids in your elementary school, that is a sign of success. And so my only advice to anyone that’s considering this is don’t make it about left or right. You know, bring everybody to the table. We brought not for profits, housing activists, we brought homelessness activists. We brought folks who are like, you know, free market thinkers, all of them together and said, what are the challenges? How can we move forward? I think our plan reflects the values that different groups bring to the conversation and we have a lot more work to do and we have a lot of learning to do as well from other jurisdictions.” – Ravi Kahlon

Thanks a lot to the Housing Minister for chatting with us. We’re not going to sugarcoat it: BC’s housing problems are really bad, especially in Metro Vancouver, and bringing it all back down to sanity is honestly a gargantuan task that will take many more years. But these reforms are an actual, serious attempt at tackling the housing crisis, and that’s more than you can for what we’ve seen from most states and provinces.