Ross Street, Vancouver
The Urban Development Institute (an industry association) and VanCity (a financial institution) have released a comparison of home affordability in three Metro Vancouver zones: the City of Vancouver, “Inner” Metro and “Outer” Metro.
The authors stipulate that when a household pays more than 32 per cent of gross income for housing, their housing no longer qualifies as “affordable.” Continue reading
1970s-vintage housing, central Maple Ridge
Late in its 2011-2014 term, City Council in the British Columbia suburb of Maple Ridge ratified a housing action plan intended to promote housing choice and affordability.
The issue matters because quality housing is a key determinant of population health. At the dawn of the welfare state, as Canadian troops returned from World War Two, the federal government promoted affordable housing investment from the private and public sectors. By the 1980s, Ottawa and the provinces had turned their backs on this effort. The cost of this rollback has fallen mostly on renters, with an increasingly creaky and leaky stock of dedicated rental housing from sea to sea.
In a recent report on property taxes in Maple Ridge, the District of Maple Ridge municipal government has published a table showing municipal tax charges on the “average house” in cities across the Metro Vancouver region. The table is provided below, minus a few explanatory notes.
There are 21 municipalities in the region, and some of the smaller ones are not shown. Mission, which is adjacent to Maple Ridge, is not part of the Metro Vancouver region. Continue reading
In the fall of 2012 we looked at “speculation and stagnation” in the real estate market in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.
Since then, the outlook has changed. Prices have increased significantly in the detached-home market, and a declining trend in apartment prices has been reversed in many communities. Continue reading
Fraseropolis 