[Patrick_Devine]

The concept of a cheap, post-war house that you can finish out yourself is great... for certain places. There isn't really room in Vancouver for them any more, as [Vancouverism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouverism) has taken over much of the city (i.e. low podium of 2-4 floors with a slender 100m tower).

Vancouver's biggest problem right now is housing affordability, and "the missing middle" (i.e. 20-30m high buildings). There isn't really very much housing stock in between single family homes and 30 story buildings, and getting those larger high rises built is expensive, and time consuming.

[ripley12]

> Vancouverism has taken over much of the city

There are plenty of towers downtown but the rest of Vancouver (i.e. most of the city by land area) is still zoned for suburban levels of density: https://twitter.com/Scott_dLB/status/1599177703466610688

[seanmcdirmid]

There are towers outside of downtown. In the 90s, I marveled at Vancouver's density compared to Seattle. But I guess it is a matter of perspective.

[ripley12]

There are a few, but the vast majority of Vancouver’s residential land still bans apartment/condo buildings of any height: https://twitter.com/GRIDSVancouver/status/640544192045826049

[vkou]

The majority of the land is low-density, but there are condo forests that have popped up over the last twenty years at ~every SkyTrain station, both in the city proper, and in its suburbs.

Each of those condo forests house more people than the mile of suburban housing surrounding them.

[ripley12]

> ~every SkyTrain station

I would say maybe half of the stations, but otherwise agreed.

[seanmcdirmid]

Ya, I've been to a few residential areas in Vancouver, the same is true in most cities (definitely Seattle). I get focusing towers in areas where the density can be supported, but at the same time we need to incrementally allocate more area for tower construction.

[clairity]

> "...'the missing middle' (i.e. 20-30m high buildings)..."

the missing middle isn't just what's between two extremes, so here, it's not 20-30m (~65-100ft, or roughly 6-10 stories) as you've stated, though i'd certainly prefer cities to adopt zoning that allows much more density too (along with the mixed-zoning, public transportation and micromobility upgrades needed to support that density).

the missing middle specifically refers to 2-6 story stick-framed buildings that can be built quickly and cheaply while also providing ~4-10× the density of single-family zoning. 6-10 story buildings don't fall in this category since they usually need at least a concrete podium for the first 1-4 stories, which puts it in a different (higher-priced) construction category.

the missing middle is literally the space between single-family homes and the 6+ story buildings that require more expensive construction techniques.

[klyrs]

"Fun" numbers on affordability.

A 3-bedroom rental unit is considered "affordable" if it rents at $4000/mo, or $48k/y[1]. The poverty line is at $60k[2] for a family of four. The city is encouraging developers to supply housing at a full 80% of poverty-level income, and wondering why tent cities keep growing.

[1] https://www.straight.com/news/4094-rent-for-three-bedrooms-n...

[2] https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/national-news/new-study-c...

[rsj_hn]

You're not really taking a Canadian-wide definition of poverty and comparing it to a Vancouver-specific definition of affordability, are you? Because that would be just terrible.

The global poverty line is $785 but in New York City, the cutoff for cash aid is $83,250. Why does NYC keep giving aid to the top 1% !?

[ripley12]

> A 3-bedroom rental unit is considered "affordable" if it rents at $4000/mo

This is an oversimplification that has been repeatedly pushed by Carlo Pablito for clicks. He knows it's not quite right, but the incentives for media these days are what they are...

I would summarize the situation like this:

- Vancouver wants to incentivize some % of new development to be rental instead of condo

- For various reasons (some dumb, some legal) they ended up using the word "affordable" when defining some limits on said rental developments

- Newer-than-average buildings are understandably more expensive than average, so the limits are fairly high

It's a bad choice of words but the program is generally more ambitious than what other municipalities around the Lower Mainland do for rental housing. Please think twice before sharing this misleading information again.