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.
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% !?
> 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.
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% !?