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Region: British Columbia

Preserving Older Buildings and Low Rents

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The for-sale listing for a 16-unit 1984 building in Vancouver’s South Asian-dominated Fraser neighborhood is the kind that gives housing advocates nightmares—and it is mobilizing efforts to preserve older buildings to help protect affordable rentals in the region.

According to the broker’s brochure, the area enjoys a “wide range of retail amenities, supermarkets, community services, schools, restaurants, boutiques, trendy cafes and excellent bus transportation [that] characterize this vibrant community.” But the brochure also notes that“rental buildings are rarely available for sale in this area. There is significant upside on rents on suite turnover.”

In other words, the new owner of this building with almost unheard-of low rents––Can$770 for a studio and Can$991 for a two-bedroom––can skirt the province’s rules limiting rent increases; every time a new tenant replaces an old one, the owner can raise the rent to whatever the market will bear.

According to the most recent national rental-market report, the region’s average market-rate rent is Can$1,469, kept aloft by Vancouver’s rental vacancy rate, which has hovered barely above zero for years.

On top of that, if the new owner can convince regulators that the entire building needs an extensive renovation, the owner can evict all the tenants and hike rents once the renovations are complete. Provincial tenant laws do not require landlords to mitigate tenants’ moving costs or to offer tenants their renovated units at their former rate.

In the last decade, this dynamic has contributed to a huge loss of private-market, low-cost housing throughout Canada. Between 2011 and 2016, 322,600 apartments with monthly rents of Can$750 or less have disappeared, either because their rents were raised or because the buildings were demolished to make way for something newer and more expensive. In BC alone, 34,000 apartments have met this fate, according to a report by housing policy consultant and Carleton University researcher Steve Pomeroy and the BC Non-Profit Housing Association.

For veteran observers of the housing scene, it means that even with a relatively housing-forward federal government like Canada’s current Liberals, subsidized affordable housing won’t come close to keeping up with the losses in the private market. Pomeroy’s report emphasized that for every low-cost apartment complex that gets built through federal support (or occasionally, provincial support), the country loses 15 low-cost apartment units.

“These annual losses far outstrip the 150,000 new affordable units planned under the 10-year National Housing Strategy,” Pomeroy warned.

Buying instead of building

Many advocate that the solution lies in reallocating some of the subsidy for new housing to the purchase of older buildings and keep their rents low. It’s a challenging mandate for governments (which typically work very slowly), as they would have to compete with fast moving private investors, including real-estate investment trusts (REITs) and other types of institutional investors, as well as private individuals. But this solution has the potential to save many buildings from being acquired and then either upgraded to more expensive rentals or replaced outright.

Canadian Housing and Renewal Association (CHRA), along with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, recently submitted a brief to the federal government, advocating for the acquisition strategy.

“We’re seeing this increasing financialization of rentals here,” said Jeff Morrison, CHRA’s executive director. “Part of this idea is to beat them to the punch.”

A second key benefit of this solution is the cost savings. Purchasing older buildings costs less than constructing new ones. The asking price for the 16-unit building  in the Fraser neighborhood is only Can$5.25 million (or Can$328,000 per unit). When BC Housing builds something new, it “typically invests an average of Can$465,000 for a modest, concrete-built, one-bedroom unit with land costs, or an average of Can$315,000 for the same unit without the land purchase factored in,” the agency noted in an email detailing costs.

On top of that, building purchases may offer future redevelopment potential that could provide even more apartments. When a housing agency buys the land, rather than just getting a long-term lease from a city, it can also anticipate redeveloping that land at some point in order to get more density and, ultimately, more units. That’s something that BC Housing’s CEO, Shayne Ramsay, said is a factor when the agency makes a purchase.

The coronavirus pandemic is catalyzing a renewed push for the preservation of older, low-cost housing because the recession has lowered prices, and because in a health crisis, it’s not safe to turn people out of their homes.


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Preserving existing homes as an affordability strategy does have one major shortcoming, however: it doesn’t create any new homes. If a city has excess demand for expensive apartments, saving one low-cost existing building will only redirect pressure for renovations to other existing buildings. To help overall affordability across an entire city or region, preservation programs must be coupled with the robust construction of new homes.

A downturn is the time to pick up apartment buildings on the cheap

The coronavirus pandemic is catalyzing a renewed push for the preservation of older, low-cost housing for two reasons: (1) during a recession (which is on the horizon), properties often sell for reduced prices, and (2) policymakers, having scrambled to find temporary housing for homeless people during the height of COVID-19, are realizing that they can’t abruptly turn those people out of the hotels temporarily leased for them and send them back to the streets.

Housing advocates say now is the time to act. Like CHRA, the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC (CHF BC) has submitted a brief to the province, urging politicians to make apartment acquisitions a part of their housing strategy in the next budget.

“What everyone noticed, after the 2008 meltdown, is that the REITs cranked up their purchasing activity,” said Thom Armstrong, executive director CHF BC. “They’re poised to do it again because the prices aren’t going up and there’s cheaper money available than anyone can remember. It’s a prime time to acquire older properties and do wholesale redevelopments or refurbishments.” 

Armstrong and Pomeroy note that another advantage of buying older apartments is that they can carry private mortgages (currently at rock–bottom interest rates) because they are existing investment properties. This reduces the amount of direct capital or loans that governments have to provide.

Preserving older buildings and low rent. The Buchannan Hotel in Vancouver BC, recently purchased by the provincial government to provide affordable housing. Photo by Frances Bula, used with permission.

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Foresters Could Lead on Carbon Drawdown

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The temperate forests of the Pacific Northwest are the Olympic athletes of the carbon world. They can store more carbon, acre for acre, than nearly any ecosystem on earth. A single acre of old growth in the Oregon or Washington Cascades holds the equivalent of a year’s worth of emissions from 250 cars.

But most standard, plantation-style commercial forests in the region perform like once-premier athletes sidelined by injury: they hold less than a third the carbon of old-growth stands. In the face of mounting pressure to reduce emissions, this shortfall offers an opportunity.

Sarah Deumling is one of a handful of foresters in the region harnessing more of the carbon drawdown potential of their land, modeling forestry for a rapidly warming world.


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Sarah Deumling is one of a handful of foresters in the region harnessing more of the carbon drawdown potential of their land, modeling forestry for a rapidly warming world. Though she never attended forestry school, she has owned and managed Zena Forest—the largest remaining forest in Oregon’s Willamette Valley—for nearly three decades. Deumling’s unconventional training may be the reason Zena looks nothing like a typical logging operation, with a mix of tree species and ages, and an absence of clear cuts. 

But the better returns for the climate come with a cost: it takes extra time and labor to manage Zena’s forests, discouraging most other foresters who might follow her lead. Shifting the Northwest’s forest industry to climate-friendly practices will require more than just good will.

The abridged carbon cycle of standard commercial forestry

Foresters in western Cascadia typically manage their stands at a quick clip—allowing about 45-year growth cycles between extractions. At harvest time, loggers usually clear cut, or heavily thin, leaving behind very few trees. Foresters clear cut forty to fifty percent of all commercially harvested acres in Oregon and Washington.

Each harvest cycle in a commercial operation resembles a breath—releasing and recapturing a steady carbon load. Carbon stores in these operations can remain relatively constant across cycles. But, when examined over the longer history of the forests, standard commercial operations bring to mind the frenetic and shallow pattern of hyperventilating. After a clear cut, forests need some 200 to 300 years to recapture their lost carbon. The quick clip of the harvest cycle in most commercial forest operations allows for only a partial refilling, less than one-third, of the forest’s full capacity between extractions.

After harvest, as much as 40 percent of the trees—the stems, needles, bark, roots, and other bits—remain on the forest floor, and, unlike in a more ecologically-managed forest, can become short-term emission sources. Commercial foresters commonly burn all this leftover debris, or else leave it in place to decompose rapidly without the protective canopy. Though these methods make way for new seedlings, they also damage the other carbon pools found in native forests—the squishy forest floor, living soil, and decomposing dead trees—which combined, commonly surpass the carbon stored in the logs hauled away.

Extended growing cycles and selective harvests can double carbon drawdown compared with standard operations. Photo by Margaret Morales. Used with permission.

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Relief Buoys BC’s Affordable Housing Providers—So Far

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The people who manage co-op and nonprofit housing in British Columbia braced themselves for the worst on April 1. It seemed likely that BC’s affordable housing providers would be hit hard as the pandemic cut a swath through BC jobs and people weren’t able to pay their rent .

Government-assisted housing is home to many in BC who work at low- or modest-paying jobs—first in line for furloughs, reduced hours, and layoffs. Co-ops and nonprofits account for the vast majority of the estimated 113,000 subsidized households in the province. (Both types of providers serve a mix of incomes and not all units are subsidized.)

Lock downs and safety precautions added extra costs for nonprofit and co-op housing providers as well: more cleaning, more units empty because people couldn’t move in. But things have worked out surprisingly well, say those who lead the umbrella associations of nonprofit and co-op housing in BC. 

Providers of subsidized homes are staying afloat in large part because the BC government stepped up.


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Providers of subsidized homes are staying afloat in large part because the BC government stepped up with support, from bending the usual rules so that more people could access rent-relief programs to providing extra money for subsidies, cleaning equipment, and more.

“The provincial government has been very proactive,” said Thom Armstrong, the CEO of the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC, which represents the interests of the almost 16,000 BC households who live in co-ops (0.9 percent of BC’s total households).

On the non-profit side, which accounts for 65,000 units in the province, operators are assured that BC Housing, the provincial agency that oversees directly subsidized homes, will provide subsidies to compensate for tenants’ plummeting incomes.

“I’m confident the government will be there. We just don’t know what shape it will take,” said Jill Atkey, the CEO of the BC Non-Profit Housing Association.

1990s-era social housing (foreground) in Vancouver, BC. Photo by Frances Bula, used with permission.

BC’s social-housing system is big—and complicated

BC Housing, which spent $1.25 billion in its most recent fiscal year, provides subsidies for housing through a variety of mechanisms. There are direct subsidies, based on a rent-geared-to-income practice, in the 5,500 units of old-style public housing that it still owns and manages. Independent non-profit providers get subsidies based on their income mix, along with a lot of supervision of their budgets and operations. And the agency provides rent “supplements” to another 34,200 households in the private market. 

The agency also manages the development of new home creation projects that are part of the NDP government’s aggressive building plan (it funded 4,000 new units in its most recent fiscal year), housing that is typically turned over to nonprofits. 

Management of these homes is in keeping with the philosophy throughout Canada since the 1980s to serve communities better by shifting away from projects dominated by low-income households requiring a subsidy, and toward mixed-income buildings, run by nonprofits or co-ops, that charge rent on a sliding scale. Typical rents in a single building can range from a minimum of $375 (the shelter amount of a welfare check) to a maximum that is pegged to the low end of what is available in the private market in that neighborhood.  

And those projects can take many different shapes because of the way government-supported housing works in Canada—a far more complex and multi-layered system than what exists in the American part of Cascadia.

The US federal government’s main tool for creating subsidized housing doesn’t exist in Canada: the low-income housing tax credit. Created in 1986, it provides a stream of investment money, with rules about what the projects are supposed to achieve. These tax credits have flowed into more than three million units since the start.

But Canada’s federal government withdrew from any kind of tax benefit programs to incentivize rental housing by the early 1980s and ended its direct support for new social housing in 1994. Since then, it has been left mainly to the provinces to fund new subsidized housing projects and to manage those left over from the federal system. 

BC remained a leader among Canadian provinces, continuing to provide money for new developments, except for a few years after the BC Liberals were elected in 2001. Some BC cities have stepped up in recent years by providing free or nearly free land and density bonuses to help with construction of new social, but it’s the province that pays all the bills for operating subsidies.

Government-supported housing in the province operates under myriad rules, many of which can be rigid. Non-profits have their budgets carefully scrutinized by BC Housing, can’t always retain surpluses, must adhere to complicated rent level requirements, and have to fill out forms every time a household’s income changes.

“In the States, it’s run a bit more like a system. And the tax-credit program gives the operator so much more flexibility,” says Atkey. “Here it’s prescriptive. And, among the 65,000 units of non-profit housing, there are at least 30 different programs.”

That’s just among the non-profits. Co-op housing is a whole other system—one that’s almost unknown in the United States. Unlike co-ops in the US, which tend to be more of the private-equity kind, famous in New York for their rigorous screening of prospective tenants, Canadian co-ops are collective non-profits that don’t allow for sales of individual units. 

Instead, people accepted as members in Canadian co-ops pay a small share to join and the co-op as a whole remains the property of the legal association running it. They became popular in the 1980s, originally supported with federal subsidies to cover part of the cost of their mortgages. Co-ops are managed by boards of their residents, who decide on the mix of income levels and subsidies the group can sustain.

The constraints imposed by the high level of government control have been balanced by an upside during a cataclysmic event like the pandemic: the close link has meant more immediate lines of communication between the province and BC’s affordable housing providers—and tenants—and more efficient  government support. That’s a contrast to the American side of Cascadia, where non-profits have been struggling through the pandemic with little backstopping from governments. 

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US Mistrust of Cash Benefits is Devastating Pandemic Response

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couple shops for groceries in masks and gloves

Amid the many catastrophes of the coronavirus pandemic, Cascadians in the US are suffering under the nation’s long-standing fear of a sensible idea: giving people cash. As the region nears its second month of mandatory shutdowns, the indefinite delays that hundreds of thousands of laid-off Oregonians, Washingtonians, Idahoans and Alaskans are facing for federally boosted … Read more

We Shouldn’t Need a Virus to Embrace Cash Benefits

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On coronavirus lockdown, families will benefit from public cash benefits. For the long haul, cash payments give stability and flexibility.

As government cash arrives in the coming weeks to help millions of people in desperate financial need, we should be asking: Why don’t we do cash benefits more often?

The global coronavirus pandemic is an acute crisis, of course. But there’s never been a day in the world’s history without people in desperate need. Cash is the best way to help them, for the same reasons it is the best way to help people right now. Cash is faster and more flexible, allowing individuals and households put it toward their own unique immediate needs, whether it’s housing or other expenses. 

Households in Cascadia and beyond have been holding their breaths as federal coronavirus response bills race toward passage in both the United States and Canada. The US package should help stanch hemorrhaging finances for the nearly 4 million Americans who have filed for unemployment insurance since the beginning of March, including nearly 200,000 people across Oregon and Washington. 

The relief package is a response to the shock wave of layoffs triggered by coronavirus lockdowns. It includes public money to boost state-provided unemployment insurance (UI) by $600 per week for the next four months. 

For comparison’s sake, $600 is the weekly income of someone working full-time at $15 an hour. That’s on top of states’ usual unemployment benefit, which varies state to state. Oregon offers about two-thirds of pre-layoff pay; Washington offers half (up to a maximum in both cases).

This is a big deal—the largest temporary expansion of direct cash benefits in modern US history. (We were among those urging it last week as the best way to shield workers from the effects of an unprecedented public health crisis.)

Canada’s federal government announced Thursday that it is planning a similar provision: a flat $2,000 a month for four months to “people who have lost jobs or are unable to work.” On Friday, it added a 75 percent wage subsidy to small and medium businesses that keep workers on payroll.

British Columbia, meanwhile, is sending one-time payments of $1,000 to affected workers, and the US federal government will issue one-time checks of $1,200 per adult, and $500 per child, to individuals making less than $75,000 per year. 

This is a breakthrough moment for cash payments. It’s long overdue.

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One of North America’s Boldest Housing Initiatives Has Reached Its End: Did It Work?

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Last time, I mapped the political battleground of metropolitan housing shortages. This time, I draw lessons from an attempt to unleash abundant housing by assembling a different coalition. In the summer of 2015, long before the US national media noticed that something called the YIMBY movement had been born, before Minneapolis’s bold move allowing triplexes … Read more

The Climate Clock Is Running Out

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Last time, I asked what political strategies can circumvent the trench warfare of local upzoning and unleash abundant home building in low-carbon neighborhoods. In this article, I lay out the scale of the housing challenge in more detail. To grasp the daunting scale of the challenge of abundant housing in low-carbon cities, we could start … Read more

Yes, We Can Make Cities Affordable and Low-Carbon. It Requires Smart Strategy

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Since December 2018, Seattle and Minneapolis have passed laws allowing more people to live in their previously sacrosanct single-family neighborhoods, tripling the number of homes allowed on each lot. Sightline and others have trumpeted these reforms as wins for housing abundance, economic opportunity, and the climate. Breakthroughs! And they are breakthroughs. They have few precedents … Read more

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