[Pxtl]

> Changing zoning is pretty short sited if you have the goal of having an area that people love to love in.

Well, avoiding changing zoning has created areas that nobody can afford to live in, so they don't really have a choice at this point. Vancouver's affordability crisis is generally considered by economists to be the worst in North America.

[cameron-p-m]

Is it a supply or a demand problem? They do have a choice, zoning is just one tool among many.

[rtlfe]

> zoning is just one tool among many

Not really. If you don't build more homes, you have to limit how many people can live there. The latter is currently accomplished by money, but could be shifted to lotteries and waitlists if there was strict rent control or all housing was public. Both of those are significantly worse than just building more.

[epistasis]

Worse for who, though? The traditional political power base of cities is homeowners, particularly those with enough wealth and free time to get involved with politics.

By owning homes, they don't care about the iniquity caused by wait lists, lotteries, or rising prices. In fact, they benefit greatly from rising prices. And if they can keep people out, they don't have to worry about change causing any discomfort to what they currently enjoy.

[jjav]

> In fact, they benefit greatly from rising prices.

Maybe. If they are able to sell at the peak. A house isn't a share of stock you can sell when the market is up. Typically you hold until the kids move out and you retire and then sell, so the timing is handed to you by life. If housing market is down the year you retire, bad luck.

Meanwhile all those years they are living the house instead of selling, rising prices hurt the homeowner because it means taxes go up.

As a homeowner I sure wish the estimated value never went up. I'd rather be paying the same taxes as when I bought it instead of a lot more.

[epistasis]

Compare your financial setting from massive financial gain versus not having it: you are immeasurably better off than the person that did not own a house during the same time period. You are also immensely better off than anybody who was born later and doesn't have massive family resources for the down payment.

The rise in prices is the predictable (and desired) form of demand-side management thay results in market-based pricing of homes.

In another comment you express the desire that people should live places other than Vancouver. That rise in prices gives you both financial power and the displacement of others that you desire. I think it's wrong.

[jjav]

> Compare your financial setting from massive financial gain versus not having it

Again: maybe. If I'd sold in 2006 I could have made a gain. But if I'd retired in 2008 after the housing crash and had to sell while the mortgage was underwater, there would have been no gain at all.

If I sold today I could make a profit but I can't sell today because I'm not at that stage in life so it's meaningless.

I'm still relatively far from retirement so there may or may not be another large housing crash between now and then (I think there will be but I don't have a crystal ball). So nobody can predict whether the paper gains I have on home value today will exist when I retire and sell. Personally I don't care because I don't keep a house as an investment, it's a home to live in and a stable place for my child to grow up in.

> You are also immensely better off than anybody who was born later

False equivalence. I'm better off than most 25 year olds, yes. I'm also far better off than my own 25 year old self who had a net worth deep in the red. This has nothing to do with year of birth. It's about stage in life. At 25 I'd just finished school and owned nothing but debt. Now a couple decades later I have the benefit of a couple decades of savings from my career.

> In another comment you express the desire that people should live places other than Vancouver.

I have not expressed such desire. I didn't desire to not be able to live in Manhattan. Giving up that dream hurt. But pragmatically it was a wise choice. I'm better off having moved to a cheaper place and built a life here instead of staying tilting at the windmills of the Manhattan real estate market that I could never crack.

Same strategy might work for someone tilting at windmills in Vancouver today. That's not a desire, just pragmatism.

> That rise in prices gives you both financial power and the displacement of others that you desire.

I desire no such thing. You keep putting words in my mouth that I never wrote, so I won't be responding tit for tat.

[rtlfe]

> Maybe

Good luck explaining that nuance to everybody in the neighborhood who thinks their home value is the most important thing.

> rising prices hurt the homeowner because it means taxes go up.

That depends. Idk how other places do it, but where I live there's a fixed amount of total tax for the year and it's distributed to each home based on its value. So if all the homes in the city go up equally you're paying the same tax every year, but if your neighborhood goes up faster than others, then you're paying more.

[epistasis]

What sort of demand side solution are you considering? Housing is a basic necessity of life. Perhaps by reducing demand you mean that instead of one family living in a single family home, demand for living space is reduced so that two families live in the same space?

[jjav]

> Housing is a basic necessity of life.

It certainly is and should be a fundamental human right.

However, living in Vancouver specifically isn't a necessity. There are more affortable places.

In my 20s my dream was to live in Manhattan, I wanted it so bad. Never made it, way too expensive. Had to give up that dream. A couple decades later I still occasionally wish it could've been, but never was. I have a nice house and built a nice life elsewhere.

Not to take away from efforts to build more and affordable housing in the big cities, which is good and necessary. But want to point out that the idea that everyone can get to live in NYC/SF/Vancouver on the cheap isn't quite a realistic position to take either. Often the most pragmatic solution is to find a different city to live in.

[epistasis]

> But want to point out that the idea that everyone can get to live in NYC/SF/Vancouver on the cheap isn't quite a realistic position to take either.

This is a common NIMBY trope: "everyone" wants to live here and that's impossible, so we shouldn't try.

It's false in that not everyone wants to live in Vancouver/NYC/SF, far from it. But, it's easy to allow everyone who wants to to live in these places. In another comment you expressed the desire to keep your place in the city, without the burden of rising property taxes that go with your massive financial gains. Why should you get that, but not somebody else? On what basis do you privilege your own basic needs over others? That's no way to run a society, saying "got mine, forget all the rest of you."

[jjav]

> without the burden of rising property taxes that go with your massive financial gains

I clearly did not say that. I said that as a homeowner, I'd prefer that the value didn't go up at all. I don't want massive paper gains.

> But, it's easy to allow everyone who wants to to live in these places.

History is showing us it isn't very easy, so I'm curious what is the plan to make it easy?

[Schiendelman]

Delete zoning code. It shouldn’t have been legal in the first place - the intent has always been keeping minorities out of neighborhoods.