How feasible are Kennedy Stewart's housing promises for Vancouver? 2 experts weigh in

Vancouver mayor-elect Kennedy Stewart is pledging to build 85,000 new homes over the next 10 years, but some housing experts are concerned about how realistic his election promises are.

"Running in an election, you have broad ideas of what you want your city to look like," Stewart told CBC.

"For me, the priority out of the 85,000 new homes is the 25,000 that will be run by non-profits on city land that will be affordable rentals."

Jennifer Bradshaw, a data analyst and a member of Abundant Housing Vancouver, said she's not convinced the city has enough land to support all the promised rentals.

"The city does have quite a bit of land that they could certainly, with non-profits, build on," she said.

"But I do think they would perhaps have to go buy more, especially on the West Side."

She pointed to areas like Shaughnessy and Point Grey, with declining populations, as good places to build in rather than areas like Chinatown and the downtown core already facing densification.

"We're going to have a Burnaby model where you are going to have to demolish those buildings and then build new developments on top of that, which is really not ideal," Bradshaw told Stephen Quinn, the host of CBC's The Early Edition.

"We want to keep those affordable rentals and we want to build elsewhere."

Market rentals

Bradshaw said an extra 25,000 affordable rentals won't have a significant impact on rental prices.

"It will have some downward pressure but really, most people in Vancouver, are living in market rentals," she said.

"What is important there is the vacancy rate [of less than one per cent in Vancouver] Without that going up, then it's very unlikely that rents come down."

In Kennedy's plan, 60,000 of the units would be market-driven rentals.

Running numbers

Jon Stovell, the president and CEO of Reliance Properties,and chair of the Urban Development Institute, ran some numbers on construction and soft costs, looking at the minimum return on investment or recovery of capital for a non-profit.

"Without any land cost at all, the cost of a 600 square foot studio would be $1,800 to $2,000 a month," he said.

"That just barely clicks in at 30 per cent of somebody making 80,000 a year but that's at the very top end of this affordability range that they're looking for."

Land costs would mean an additional $700 to $800 a month, he added.

He described developing rentals in Vancouver as "death of a million cuts."

"It's easy to think that it's just the land but it's also construction costs that are very, very high right now," he said.

"Processing is slow and costly.You're paying property taxes while you're waiting. A lot of these things are working against even creating that affordability."

With files from The Early Edition.

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