# Vancouver’s Crime Pandemic! That wasn’t.

We now have over six months of pandemic conditions in Vancouver and crime data to (roughly) match. We also have all kinds of claims about crime flying around, sometimes pushed by the police (VPD) themselves, only heightened by click-seeking reporters and the vote-seeking politicians. So we should probably check into the data. Long story short: there’s scant evidence of a crime wave showing up in the VPD crime data.

First a quick round-up of claims. Let’s start with a recent police report, promoting the idea that crime, and particularly assaults, have risen. This was touted by various media reports and politicians as pointing toward a breakdown in law & order associated with the pandemic and prominent tent cities in parks near downtown. But the police report – though they failed to emphasize this point properly – explicitly referred to data from the first two quarters of the year. In other words, they mixed pre-pandemic and post-pandemic data from earlier in the year, and this data was used to make claims about conditions on the ground now. This was perhaps potentially useful to the VPD in the face of calls to defund the police, but bad form overall! The report has been joined to anecdotes, polls, and neighbourhood and political campaigning all pushing the idea of a pandemic-induced breakdown in public order.

Despite the VPD reporting only on data from January to June, regular monthly VPD data now extends through August. We can use this data to more carefully separate pre- and post-pandemic conditions. Let’s first do this for the most common crimes reported (i.e. those where trends are most easily distinguished from random variation). These include both violent (Assaults) and non-violent (Break & Enters, Thefts of Motor Vehicle, Thefts from Vehicles, Thefts up to and around $5,000, and Mischief) crimes, all of which tend to average more than 100 cases a month. We’ll compare all of 2019 to the pandemic period we’re currently experiencing. What’s that look like? Let’s start with assaults, the most common violent crime (top lines above). It looks like any rise in assaults relative to 2019 occurred BEFORE the pandemic. Indeed, for July and August, we’re running well below where assaults were in 2019. Of course it’s possible that the composition of assaults have changed, with drunken brawls on Granville down, and hate crimes up. So it’s worth paying closer attention to the data than is available in VPD reporting. But there’s nothing about post-pandemic 2020 that looks like a violent crime wave. The picture for common non-violent crimes is more suggestive. But here it looks like we’ve seen a dramatic drop in crime reporting associated with the pandemic. The seasonal pattern from 2019 whereby crime rises through the summer months looks like it might’ve been replicated in data from June to August of 2020, but at a much lower level overall relative to 2019. Looking at the most common crimes, we’re not in a crime wave. If anything we’re in a crime trough. But does it cover the spots most identified as trouble spots by recent political rhetoric? The VPD data also allow us to break out data by neighbourhood. Here I’ll zoom in on Downtown Vancouver (the Central Business District) and the Strathcona neighbourhood, both of which surround and contain the neighbourhood of the Downtown Eastside, where many have recently claimed a breakdown in public order (also associated with tent cities in parks) is threatening public safety. What do assaults look like in these neighbourhoods? The patterns for assaults are pretty similar in these neighbourhoods as what we see for the city as a whole, but there as some variations. Assaults downtown ran high in January and February, but seemed to drop dramatically at the beginning of the pandemic, and have since risen with the warm weather, but not to levels comparable level to 2019. In Strathcona there wasn’t any sustained drop in assaults early in the pandemic, but relative to 2019 they declined from heightened levels in January and February to roughly match and recently drop below 2019 patterns. The pattern for non-violent common crimes looks much the same for Downtown and Strathcona as it does for the rest of Vancouver. There’s been a big and sustained drop in these kinds of crimes relative to 2019. If there’s been a breakdown in public disorder, it’s not showing up in common reported crime data. Are we seeing anything different in less common crimes? I’m wary of monthly patterns in the data, but including March, we’ve now got six months of data since the pandemic began. So let’s look at all kinds of crime reported by the VPD and compare the six months of the pandemic (March – August 2020) to the data for the six months prior (September 2019 – February 2020), as well as the six months matching the same year-over-year period (March through August) from 2019. Here we can see that there’s not a lot of variation in most crimes between how they’ve appeared in the pandemic relative to the prior six months or the same set of months last year. The most recent drop off in Assaults doesn’t really show up as notable across the full six month period. But the decline in Thefts of all kinds is striking and strong (as compared to the other crimes of Break & Enters and Mischief, which appear down relative to the prior six months). Overall, very little evidence to support a pandemic crime wave. But there is one exception to the trend… What’s up with Arson? Any interpretation of Arson data needs to be keep in mind that Arson is not a common crime, but let’s set aside my concern about random fluctuations to just take a peek at the monthly arson data. Is this a sustained rise, or driven by a weird month? That looks… pretty sustained. Though arson cases generally remain rare relative to other kinds of crime (nowhere near my arbitrary cut-off of a hundred cases a month for common crimes), they appear to have gone up, mostly in conjunction with the pandemic itself. The one month during the pandemic where they drop below 2019 levels looks like a weird spike in arson in July of 2019. It’s hard to fully interpret the arson data without more context. Properties left unattended subject to a particular form of mischief? Business owners weighing their insurance policies against the cost of staying open? Pretty interesting… but who knows? Not me. The consequences, as with the New Westminster Pier, can be terrible. But overall, arson is still pretty rare. My big takeaway: we’re not seeing a big crime wave associated with the pandemic here in Vancouver. Anyone running on that theme would appear to be doing so with bad information or in bad faith. If anyone wants to play around with the data themselves, I’ve downloaded the VPD monthly report pdfs into a common spreadsheet here, complete with the summary of data and figures above. Enjoy! *** UPDATE Nov 17, 2020 *** Given that crime and VPD remain in the news with the VPD’s survey on crime feelings and attempt to set up a new unit, I thought I’d update the chart to their latest data (now from September, but October should be out soon). The story remains consistent with the above. Feelings aside, no evidence of a pandemic crime wave, assaults comparable or below 2019, common property crimes still waaay down. # Metro Flows Sometimes we talk about cities as if they’re settlements, where people become fixed to place. But in fact, if you track movements of people, cities look more like rivers. People churn through the urban landscape. Net migration numbers are really useful in some contexts, but also obscure the full extent of this churning. Fortunately, BC Stats has numbers that attempt to break down actual flows of people through regions. We can break out Metro Vancouver (a.k.a. Greater Vancouver) and see just how many people we think might be flowing through. Here’s a little graphic I made to highlight this churn, while I continue playing around with the best way to present it. The numbers and categories for inflows and outflows are straight from the BC Stats regional district migration file for Greater Vancouver (which itself is derived from a more detailed version of Stats Can table 17-10-0140-01 on components of population change). Population, birth, and death figures similar come from BC Stats and StatCan files. I’ve rounded them off and expressed them in millions here both for ease of reading and in recognition of some of the underlying uncertainty in accounting for population shifts. BC Stats figures divide up international flows into immigration, emigration, returning emigrants, net temporary emigrants, and net non-permanent residents. The many categories reflect both legal statuses and movements of people, which is part of why there are so many and starts to get at some of the complexities of international migration regimes. Then we get interprovincial in and out migration (to Metro Van from other provinces) and intraprovincial in and out migration (to Metro Van from elsewhere in BC). I find it super-cool to see all the flows laid out. The basic takeaway for me is that over the course of thirteen years, from 2006 to 2019, we see enormous churn through Metro Vancouver. From a base population of 2.2 million, an additional 1.1 million arrivals came to the region. A smaller 0.7 million left. Wow! That’s a lot of turnover! The total 1.8 million moves into and out of the region over the thirteen year period nearly approaches the starting size of Metro Vancouver as a whole, and represents a much bigger number than the net migration of 0.4 million. Adding in 0.3 million births and subtracting 0.2 million deaths, and there’s your growth of roughly half a million people in Metro Vancouver through 2019. What’s even more striking is that the moves into and out of the region are dwarfed by the moves within the region. That’s because, as I’ve previously discussed, local moves are a lot more common than regional ones. Heck, most moves are within municipal boundaries, and well within metropolitan ones (see previous post for more discussion of this figure). So the churn we see in metropolitan flows is only a small part of residential churn overall. People move! When we think of cities, we need to recognize this movement as fundamental to how they work. Our “settlements” really aren’t very settled at all. UPDATE June 10th For comparison’s sake, let’s update the figure above by adding an estimate of internal moves. These are moves from one location to another within the metro area of Vancouver, and as such they don’t add or subtract from the metro population as a whole. Instead they just highlight the centrality of mobility to urban life. We don’t have a straightforward estimate of these moves from StatCan data. So here I draw upon Census microdata from CHASS. I hold the internal moves constant by averaging the estimates of how many people recorded a move within the Vancouver CMA across three census years (2006, 2011, and 2016). The estimates vary a bit between years, dipping from 260,590 moves in 2006 to 251,635 in 2011, before rising again to 278,632 in 2016, but I don’t have data for every year and I like the graphic impact of treating it as a constant for comparison with in- and out- flows. Takeaway: when you add in local moves, the city looks even more like a river. In fact, the total number of moves between 2006 and 2019 adds up to roughly 5.2 million. The population in motion more than doubles the population of the “settlement” at the start (2.2 million) and nearly doubles it at the end (2.7 million) of the period in question. You say settlement, I say river. # Mapping Vancouver’s 1907 Trolley Ride A couple of weeks ago I took my urban sociology class on a tour of downtown Vancouver. We followed the route of the captivating film of downtown shot from the front of a trolley in 1907. The trolleys! The street life! The bicycles! The horse manure! Well worth a watch.* Our tour began at UBC Robson, but then we joined up with the trolley film just outside of the former Hotel Vancouver, on Granville and Georgia. From there we proceeded down Granville toward the old Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) Station, before turning right on Hastings. The trolley stayed on Hastings till Carrall, and so did we. Then, following the film, we jumped down to Carrall at Cordova, and come back Cordova until returning to the intersection of Cambie & Hastings. At that point we parted ways with the trolley film (which speeds off to parts of the West End), and made our way over to Chinatown. I tracked down old fire insurance maps to accompany our tour, providing an overhead view of the route and its surroundings from roughly 1889, 1901, and 1920. These took a little work to assemble from the City of Vancouver Archives (1899 and 1910-1920) and the Collections Canada (1897-1901), but thankfully pretty much all of the pieces were there (see below)! Here’s the basic overview of the route in animated gif form, tracking through each year, with an overlay from 2020 tacked on at the end. A little crude in assembly, but wild fun! The maps document how Vancouver grew from 1889 (three years after the City’s incorporation as well as the Great Fire that burned it all down!) through its early years up to 1920 (just after WWI and the great flu outbreak of 1918). A few big patterns are immediately evident. First, old Vancouver was still pretty sparse in 1889, and mostly centred around the old Gastown area (Carrall & Cordova above). By 1901, there were still large stretches of the trolley route relatively barren of buildings, but a booming decade ahead successfully built out the city, ending with a spectacular bust in 1913 (followed by a world war and the terrible flu year of 1918). Second, the CPR succeeded in pulling the young City of Vancouver westward toward the Hotel Vancouver (which it owned) and its sizable property holdings down Granville Street. Vancouver (a.k.a. “Terminal City”) was both the end of the line and the start of numerous speculative real estate fortunes. Third, as the city grew, its old buildings – especially its early shacks and dwellings – quickly made way for more substantial buildings. Before the advent of zoning, the urban core of the city was allowed to grow both upward and outward. Many of the buildings on the maps by 1920 remain in existence (and protected under heritage agreements) today. Let’s zoom in a bit and follow the trolley along for a little e-tour… I’ve added flags for some of the fun things to see in the 1907 trolley movie, as well as the 1910-1920 Goad’s map I’ve used as an underlay. In the description below, I’m also timestamping (x.xx) some of the sites in the film. We start outside the Second Hotel Vancouver (5.15), at the end of a block I’ve examined in-depth before! From there we pass the Hudson’s Bay store (still there!) Then I highlight some of the off-Granville features of the map, including the old houses along Howe and Richards streets. Of course many of these houses were actually side-by-side semi-detached houses. Not far away were townhouses, cabins, and an array of other kinds of housing. Rooming houses were also popular, and hotels were not neatly distinguished from apartment buildings. So it is that the Hotel Badminton (on the 1901 map) becomes the Badminton Apartments by 1920. Once surrounded by other churches, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Cathedral remains downtown. My first foray into old fire insurance maps took place across Dunsmuir, when I examined historical change in the blocks near Cathedral Square. Next we pass the old turretted Bank of Montreal building (5.32) and then we scoot the map northeastward. [see Vancouver Archives Goad’s Map: Plate 18 ; Plate 16] Now the Gothic old Second CPR Station is visible at the end of Granville St. It doesn’t show up on the map from 1920 because it was torn down around 1915, when the new Waterfront Station was built nearby. Before we get there, we pass the Sun Ban Japanese store (5.48), the sign visible in 1907 (colourized-photo from image #4 here). Not far away was the Japanese consulate, showing up on the 1901 map, and indicative of the strong trans-Pacific ties that characterized Vancouver’s early days. The beautiful old post office building from 1905 sits at the corner of Granville and Hastings, and that’s where we turn Eastward on Hastings, swinging around the Birks Clock (5.58), back in action today! [see Vancouver Archives Goad’s Map: Plate 16 ; Plate 3] Heading down Hastings, we move into a heavy banking district, passing the Molson’s Bank (6.24) on the left, and what would soon become the Union Bank on the right, now SFU’s Morris Wosk Centre. The streetscape is currently dominated by the Harbor Centre, looming over us as we scoot the map a little further Southeast. Just to highlight how much fun it is to zoom in on the high-resolution archival versions of these old maps, I highlight a few of the buildings off Pender & Homer. Look at those mixed uses! The Ellesmere Boarding House (in yellow) sits above mixed shops and offices. Across the street sits the Hartney Chambers (1909), containing printing, offices, and apartments on the 3rd floor. Behind are more offices, but also a billiards hall and an auctioneer space, with a dance hall above and a bowling alley below. Heading further down the street, Vancouver’s landmark Dominion Building wasn’t yet built in 1907. Instead we pass a drug store connected to an arcade (6.54) before Hastings swings left at Cambie. There’s also no Victory Square across the street, because there had as of yet been no victory in WWI. instead the space was known as Government Square, and contained the old court house (before it moved over to Robson Square, near where we began). [see Vancouver Archives Goad’s Map: Plate 3 ; Plate 4 ; Plate 5] As we follow the turn in Hastings Street, we get a fabulous view of some of the signs and storefronts ahead, including an advertisement for the “Dominion of Canada Assay Office” where precious metals could be tested for purity – hello BC Mining history! We see storefronts for the Vancouver Rubber Company, Westinghouse, and The Province Printing services (7.05). Across the street, though we don’t get a good look at it, is the Flack Block, recently restored (and currently containing baked goods favourite PureBread). Beyond we pass the famous Woodwards Department Store (1903), recently redeveloped as the giant Woodwards complex (2010) (7.22)! From there we pass through a vibrant block (that would eventually host Save-On Meats) capped off by the B.C. Electric Railway Company Terminal at Hastings and Carrall (7.35) – home of the trolley hosting our film. We get a fine glimpse of the brand new turretted Woods Hotel (1906) at the right, recently renovated as the Pennsylvania Hotel, and run by the Portland Hotel Society. We also get a view of more old street advertisements, including for “Knowlton Drugs and Seeds” and “Wo Sang, Merchant Tailor” (7.57). Wo Sang’s shop had ten employees and cleared$18,000 in annual receipts in 1907, as recorded in data collected by William McKenzie Lyon assessing the damages wrought by the anti-Asian riots of September 8th, which occurred about four months after our trolley tour. Chinatown, which shut down for six days after the riots, lay mostly to the right (south) of Hastings.* A glimpse down Hastings beyond Carrall reveals the dome of the Carnegie Library (1903) & Community Centre, near the former site of City Hall, and the spire of the First Presbyterian Church beyond. But we go no further. Instead we jump to Carrall and Cordova, aboard a trolley heading the other way!

[see Vancouver Archives Goad’s Map: Plate 5 ; Plate 6 ; Plate 7]

Heading first up Cordova (8.05), we can see the prominent signage for the Woods Hotel (on the left), as well as the Rainier Cafe & Hotel (on the right), which we sweep around to face as we turn right onto Cordova. It’s still there, and like the former Woods Hotel is also now run by the Portland Hotel Society! As we cruise down Cordova, we get a glimpse of the New Fountain Hotel on the right (8.17). The facade still stands, and will be incorporated into the new building going up behind it.  A little further down we pass a Drug Store and cross Abbott past the first Hotel Metropole on the left (8.31). The old Metropole’s lot would be taken over by the old Woodwards Department Store’s expansion in 1924, and the Metropole would subsequently move across the street to the former Traveler’s Hotel. At the end of the block, we catch sight of the prominent advertising for Cascade Beer, “The BEER without a PEER.” Finally we turn the corner onto Cambie, heading back toward Hastings. Here the advertising for Herman House Co. Real Estate (9.02) becomes especially prominent (you can find them in this searchable old Henderson’s Vancouver directory from 1907!), reminding us that real estate has always been at the heart of Vancouver’s history.

Speaking of which, about six years after the 1907 Vancouver trolley ride, the remaining residents of the Squamish village of Sen̓áḵw, just across False Creek from downtown Vancouver, would be expelled from the city. Fast forward to the present, they’ve won some of that land back, and are moving forward with the most ambitious development Vancouver’s seen in decades, free from the City’s direct control. History keeps coming back.

I’m bookmarking all of the individual map panels assembled above here. Check ’em out for a much more detailed look at local history and change! And please pass along any other resources that might be out there! I’m looking to catch them all…

For Full Route, 1889, see Vancouver Archives Plan of Vancouver (Dakin Fire Map): Plate 8 ; Plate 7 ; Plate 1 ; Plate 2 ; Plate 3 ; Plate 4 ; Plate 11 ; Plate 6 (extra)

For Full Route, 1897-1901, see Collections Canada Insurance Plan of the City of Vancouver (Goad): Sheet 18 ; Sheet 16 ; Sheet 3 ; Sheet 4 ; Sheet 5 ; Sheet 6 ; Sheet 7 (extra) Sheet 17 (extra)

For Full Route, 1910-1920, see Vancouver Archives Goad’s Atlas Vol. 1: Plate 18 ; Plate 16 ; Plate 3 ; Plate 4 ; Plate 5 ; Plate 6 ; Plate 7 (extra) ; Plate 17 (extra)

If  you haven’t had enough of that 1907 film yet, check out this Vancouver Historical Society centennial celebration.

Thanks to the Vancouver Archives and Collections Canada for posting all of this stuff, and to the many other sites (e.g. Changing Vancouver) posting historical information. Yay History!

* Lots of versions of the 1907 film up on-line, but I like this one both cause it’s posted by Library and Archives Canada, and the pacing and clarity are pretty good. Scroll back to ride through Victoria and see some bridges!

** See Paul Yee’s extraordinarily useful UBC Master’s Thesis on “Chinese Business in Vancouver, 1886-1914” for details, esp. p. 40 & 134.

# Keep On Moving

co-authored with Jens von Bergmann & cross-posted over at MountainMath.

More results from the new Canadian Housing Survey dropped earlier this week! And they provide new insights into why Canadians move.

Last time we only got provincial results. Now we can break down reasons for the last move by metro area and current tenure, but this time around we looking at the last move no matter when it happend, as opposed to only considering moves in the past five years as in the previous data release. So the stats aren’t directly comparable to the numbers from the previous release. But as we’ll show, the trends are pretty similar.

First to the question guide. Lots of good stuff here, but we’re interested in the questions about peoples’ previous residence: “People move for a variety of reasons, either voluntary or non-voluntary. Why did you move from your previous dwelling?” Importantly, respondents are allowed to choose more than one, and only the respondent (rather than other household members) counts. Let’s look at the proportion of people selecting each reason for their last move by metro and by current tenure.

Overall the reasons for moving is fairly uniform across major metro areas, with generally positive housing moves explaining most moves, as we’ve noted before. Hence people move to “upgrade” their dwelling in size or quality; to “become a homeowner”; and to “be in a more desirable neighbourhood.” More ambiguous housing moves, including those to “reduce housing costs”, vie with family-related moves (“change in family size”; “form own household”; “be closer to family”) and work-related moves (“new job”; “reduce commute”) as explanations.

Separating by current tenure (did people move into a place they rent or a place they own), the stories are still pretty similar. The first big takeaway is that mobility is pretty normal and common, and most people move for positive reasons. But there are a couple of notable differences. Moving “to reduce housing cost” or “to reduce commute time” factor more into renter’s than into homeowner’s decisions to move.

Finally, there’s are two reasons for moving that seem unambiguously negative for those involved, reflecting “forced moves.” One set of “forced moves” occur due to “natural disasters and fires.” The other comes down to social causes: “Because you were forced to move by a landlord, a bank or other financial institution or the government.” This happens far more often to renters and far more often in Metro Vancouver.

This brings us to the second big takeaway. In terms of forced moves, Vancouver sticks out like a sore thumb.

While Vancouver stands out, the other CMAs and rural areas in BC follow closely behind. Exposure to socially forced moves (e.g. evictions) seems to reflect something province-wide. Like our provincial protections for renters (Residential Tenancies Act) and how they’re enforced (or not) by the RTB. Or like our profound lack of rental options overall (low vacancy rates coupled with sometimes predatory landlords). Or like our heavy reliance upon the least secure kinds of rental stock (basement suites and condominium rentals) within secondary rental markets and subject to landlords reclaiming for their own use.

The results we have so far may reflect past conditions rather than the present. After all, we’re looking at peoples’ last moves here, many of which occurred more than five years ago. But we’ve got lots to follow up on in future analyses. And hopefully further releases from the CHS will clarify just what mechanisms are at work driving outsized displacement in Metro Vancouver.

As usual, the code for the post is available on GitHub for anyone interested.

# Mapping Four Blocks of Vancouver Neighbourhood Change, 1889-1920 (or so)

Guess who’s been playing around with Fire Insurance Mapsagain?

This time, let’s use these brilliant old maps to zoom in on a recognizable Vancouver intersection: Granville and Robson. What did the four surrounding blocks look like back in the day (i.e., 130 years ago)? Worth remembering, this is a scant three years after the incorporation of the City of Vancouver, the raging fire that burned it all down, AND the subsequent passage of the City’s first Fire Bylaw (hence the importance of fire insurance maps…) So we’re looking at a very new city in 1889.

By 1889, Granville & Robson was still pretty sparsely developed. Only one corner of the intersection contained a building, with a storefront (S) recorded as “vacant”, just like the storefront next door. But as it turns out, the surrounding four blocks contained a major Vancouver landmark in the brand new (1887) Hotel Vancouver (upper right), as constructed by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). The Hotel contained a billiard room and saloon as well as an expansive kitchen and dining hall, with servants’ quarters and a laundry below and rooms extending up a towering five floors above.

Across the street from the Hotel Vancouver were three-story buildings containing eight store fronts, offices, and dwellings, with only a few floors vacant. Though the offerings along Granville grew increasingly spare further away from the hotel, it’s already clear by 1889 that Granville had been targeted to become a commercial thoroughfare, complete with a brand new electric streetcar line. “Mixed use” was the norm, with lodging rooms or apartments frequently appearing over top of saloons and storefronts, generally built out to lot lines on the front and sides. Off Granville, along Howe and Seymour, appear some sixteen houses with smaller footprints. That said, these were not the “single-family detached” houses protected by the zoning of today. Instead, they included semi-detached (wall-sharing) houses (as in the lower left), and multiple shacks mixed in with sheds but used as dwellings on the alley (like the “accessory dwelling units” or “laneway houses” of contemporary policy-speak!)

Browsing the National Archives, we see find the Goad’s Fire Insurance Plan put on-line for 1897, as updated with revisions to 1901. Let’s revisit the block some 8-12 years after our first image and see what’s changed!*

The Granville strip is fleshing out, with the assistance of an expanded streetcar line now extending further beyond the Hotel Vancouver. The left side of the intersection with Robson now contains a butcher, two grocers, a hay & feed store, and a fancy drug store, as well as a variety of other shops. A handful of other shops also now decorate the Granville strip, mixed in with dwellings over top for the three-story Vermilyea Block, though numerous empty lots remain a part of the urban fabric. Closer to Georgia, a brand new “Opera House” is now tucked in next to the Hotel Vancouver, which has also grown considerably in size by way of additions. The Waverly Hotel appears at the lower right corner. Kickstarting higher education in the province, Whetham College took over the upper floors of the building on Granville & Georgia, across the street from the Hotel Vancouver, apparently sometime in 1891, but it only ran as a college until 1893, when one of the real-estate investing brothers who founded the institution died. While the lower floors housed a grocer & offices, the upper floors still bear the College’s name by the 1897 map.

Off the Granville Strip, the number of houses has more than doubled along Seymour & Howe, and despite the demolition of at least one older house, some thirty-nine houses now appear. It becomes more difficult to categorize these insofar as most no longer bear “dwg” for dwelling as an indicator of use.

Let’s jump forward to the Goad’s Fire Insurance Map from 1910, as updated with revisions to 1920 (Vol I). This takes us forward another 8-18 years, passing through an enormous period of growth.

Boom! Not a single lot along the Granville Strip remains empty. Transformations abound. The First Hotel Vancouver has been torn down and replaced by the Second Hotel Vancouver, wrapping around the former Opera House, now turned into the Orpheum Theatre (it would later move down the street). Down the street, the Vermilyea Block has transformed into the Palm Hotel. Across the street, Whetham College has been transformed into the Birks Building, with the Vancouver Block building going up nearby. Uses remain decidedly mixed, with shops, restaurants, bars, plumbers, tailors, and banks below, and offices, lodging rooms and apartments above. New theatres include The Maple Leaf and The Allen Theatre, then under construction, but offering a deluxe new movie experience. Fittingly, Globe Motion Pictures appears to have been housed just down the street near the Palm Hotel. The awesome folks at Changing Vancouver provide more information about the 700 blocks (East and West) and 800 blocks (East and West) of Granville, already a booming thoroughfare for entertainment in Vancouver by 1920.

What about our residential thoroughfares on Seymour and Howe? Houses have been diminished by nearly a third. Though new houses have been built, older houses have been torn down, with only around twenty-seven remaining. New shops, billiards halls, rooming houses and apartment buildings have gone up on the corners with Robson. Tailors, hotels, bakers, apartment buildings, plumbers and tire stores (with rooming house over head) have gone in on Howe & Seymour proper, complicating what had been residential landscapes. Two houses to the left of Robson & Howe appear to have been surrounded and subsumed by commercial outbuildings, including a tailor (with dry-cleaning) and a shop carrying out auto-repairs off the lane in the back.

This returns me to a point I repeat often. Prior to the arrival of use-based zoning later in the 1920s, residential neighbourhoods largely remained part of the urban fabric, open to change. The process of neighbourhood change, often referred to as “succession” by sociologists of the day, was a normal part of urban growth. Use-based zoning would seek to freeze this process in place, in particular in the service of defining and protecting neighbourhoods of single-family detached houses from change. Quoting Harland Bartholomew, the planner hired by the City of Vancouver to assist in modernizing its zoning bylaw:

… Largely to prevent the intrusion of apartment houses in single or two-family residential areas, an interim zoning bylaw was prepared and approved by the Town Planning Commission, recommended to the Council, and became law on 5th February, 1927.

I think this was probably a mistake. As I’ve written in my book, we could do a lot better by re-integrating single-family detached neighbourhoods with the broader urban fabric and returning to the vibrant mixed landscapes of the past. As it is, we’re largely still stuck with the interim zoning map of 1927, though Vancouver has recently re-legalized many of the flexible housing options that once adorned its residential streets (e.g. duplexes & laneways & secondary suites).

But let’s set aside lessons from history for more fun looking back, and animate the four blocks of neighbourhood change surrounding Granville & Robson. Thirty-odd years of neighbourhood change, commence!

Returning back to 1889, apparently the remote location of the First Hotel Vancouver from the original townsite to the east was already remarked upon at the time. Indeed, despite being built and owned by the CPR, it remained some distance down Granville Street from the CPR’s railway station, constituting the western terminus of Canada’s Pacific Railway. But the CPR had in mind a plan to encourage the westward expansion of the city toward its considerable land holdings west of downtown (then centred on Gastown). Over time, it would successfully tug and pull downtown in the direction of it real estate holdings, even as it moved the Third Hotel Vancouver elsewhere, eventually leaving a giant mall in its place. Indeed, now the “Vancouver City Centre” skytrain stop is right outside the old Hotel Vancouver’s door.

What did this stretch look like back in the day?

Sit back and relax with this super-awesome old motion picture taken from the front of streetcars in Victoria and Vancouver back in 1907. Starting at the 3.13 mark, you’re in an electric streetcar right outside the First Hotel Vancouver (on your left) headed toward the old CPR station at the end of Granville Street. See, it really did take awhile to get there!

For urban history junkies, you’ll continue to turn off Granville onto Hastings headed East at 4.30. From there, you’ll stay on Hastings, heading East till around 6.45, making your way toward Carrall Street, at which point the video will jump you further North to Carrall turning onto Cordova, and head you back West, turning onto Cambie toward Hastings (I used landmarks including the Hotel Metropole, the Hotel Eagle, and the Herman House Co. Real Estate, along with the old business directory from 1907 to get my bearings). It’s a sweet ride!**

* Archival Links to full plates excerpted above – zoom in for even more detail:

• 1889 Dakin (Georgia to Howe to Smithe to Richards)

Also see Goad’s Fire Insurance Map, Vol II, for Eastside Vancouver, and note that the somewhat less detailed 1912 Goad’s has been fitted to VanMap under aerial layers!

** dial back to the beginning of the video to start in Victoria, where after a few turns, you’ll head down Government Street and stop in an admiring pan of the Empress Hotel, Provincial Parliament Building, and Victoria Harbour. [UPDATE: You can also check out a great documentary of the 1907 streetcar ride through Vancouver from the vantage point of 2007, put together by the Vancouver Historical Society)

# Comparing Homeless Counts, BC Edition

We most commonly hear about homelessness as a big city housing issue. But are big cities where people are most at risk of becoming homeless? Comparing homeless count data enables us to start answering this and related questions.

Homeless counts draw upon volunteers and service-providers to provide point-in-time (one night) estimates of people without regular access to long-term housing. People are typically defined to be experiencing homelessness, as in the BC Homeless Count from 2018, “if they do not have a place of their own where they pay rent and can expect to stay for at least 30 days” (p. 11). People counted as homeless include both those staying in shelters and transition houses (counted by service providers) as well as those sleeping in “…alleys, doorways, parkades, parks, and vehicles or people who were staying temporarily at someone else’s place (couch surfing)….” (p. 11-12). Suffice it to say, this is not an easy population to find or track on any given night, and people are often also asked about where they spent the prior night during visits to service providers the next day. As a result, the “hidden” homeless population is always going to be larger than the number of people counted through homeless counts, meaning counts are always underestimates.

Homeless counts are also a lot of work, and even with the generosity of volunteers, they require significant funding and coordination to carry out in a defensible manner. We tend to know a lot more about homelessness in big cities in part because they’ve got more resources to direct toward tracking the issue. So it’s great news that BC Housing has been working with partners to provide counts for smaller communities. The BC Homeless Report, delivered in December of 2018, summarized much of what’s been learned so far.

The report is worth a read, and the count data, all by itself, is useful in assessing where urgent need for more supportive housing can be found. Here’s a lovely summary map of the data for BC, bringing together new counts funded for smaller communities with the most recent (at the time) data from other counts, funded by the Federal Government or independently (often from larger communities like Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley).

We can clearly see from the numbers that more people are homeless in Metro Vancouver than anywhere else in BC. But Metro Vancouver is larger than anywhere else, so this doesn’t seem too surprising. What’s more, adding all of the communities covered, more people appear to be homeless outside of Metro Vancouver (3,904) than within (3,605), despite the fact that Metro Vancouver contains over half of the total provincial population within its boundaries. And we haven’t even got homeless counts here for several large communities in BC (e.g. Squamish, Whistler, Powell River, Trail). So already we know homelessness seems bigger outside of Metro Vancouver than within. Maybe not just a big city problem after all!

But we can try and do better than that. Let’s try and create a rough baseline risk of experiencing homelessness at a given point in time for each community covered by a homeless count. We can do this by dividing the number of people counted as homeless by the total number of residents in each community. This seems pretty simple, but there are actually a number of considerations that go into creating this baseline risk (which is perhaps why the report itself does not attempt it). First, are most people experiencing homelessness coming from the community where they’re being counted? In fact, we know that they are. Check table 3.9 (p. 37). In no community studied in the report do the majority of people counted as homeless report living there for less than a year. In most communities studied, the majority counted as homeless have lived in the area for five years or longer. Homelessness is mostly local. So we’re on sound footing assessing the risk of homelessness as local.

But what do we mean by local? Local can easily cross municipal boundaries to include broader catchment areas (e.g. metropolitan areas). And there may be clustering of homelessness within broader catchment areas, following services and shelters. We know, for instance, that while the City of Vancouver contains around a quarter of the Metro Area’s population, it includes well over half of the region’s homeless counted, (table 34, p. 39). So fitting local base population to local homeless count isn’t entirely straightforward. Still, outside of metro areas these problems are diminished.

In the chart below, I draw upon homeless count data while making a best guess as to what constitutes a local population to set a baseline risk of experiencing homelessness in each community where counts took place. I mostly use municipalities here, but switch to metro area or regional district where suggested by the Homeless Count Report. For BC communities, I order by population size. But I also include, for comparison purposes, baseline risks calculated from homeless counts for a few other big cities (Calgary, New York City) as well as King County (Seattle) and LA County (Los Angeles). Data for US cities come from a big report to Congress also released in 2018.

Pulling all the data together, it appears that homelessness is definitely not just a big city problem. Tiny little Merritt, BC, appears to have the same baseline risk of homelessness (1.4 in 1,000) as Metro Vancouver. More strikingly, the little communities of Nelson and Salt Spring Island seem to have nearly 8x the risk for people experiencing homelessness as Metro Vancouver. These estimates reveal greater prevalence of homelessness for these places than we get from population-adjusted counts in New York City, Los Angeles, or Seattle.

Let’s put some bands around these estimates and put them back on the map, where the southern half of BC (rightfully) takes its place as centre of the world. In comparative perspective, while Metro Vancouver contains a LOT of people experiencing homelessness, the overall risk of experiencing homelessness at any point in time seems strikingly low, putting the area on par with other communities like Cranbrook, Merritt, and Comox Valley. The risks of homelessness seem higher in other large communities, including Nanaimo, Greater Victoria, and Kelowna. But it’s the high risks in small communities; Smithers, Terrace, Prince Rupert, Port Alberni, Nelson, and Salt Spring Island, that really stand out. Each of these little communities looks like the big cities to our South in terms of the base risk of experiencing homelessness.

For comparison’s sake, let’s see what happens if we use the (more generous) base populations of Metro Areas (CMAs and CAs) from BC Stats in dividing count data to assess risks of homelessness. Does much change?

Not really. A few communities (e.g. Nanaimo, Williams Lake, Vernon) move down a category, but we don’t see major shifts, which is encouraging. Still lots of caveats remain with respect to the data: is the quality the same across communities? How do count methods differ? Check the reports for these and other details, and by all means have a look at the reports and play with the data yourself! I’ll park my little excel datasheet here in case anyone wants to check my work or use it.

(And yes, yes, in case you’re wondering I’m still hoping to transition to a nice transparent R system with GitHub support later this year, but I’m… slow… and sometimes excel with hand-entered data – it’s artisanal! – works ok too).

# A visit to Union St.

The resumption of Spring in Vancouver found me biking down to Union St. to grab some delicious Portuguese sweet bread from Union Market (near Hawks Ave). Highly recommended! Union Market is one of these old store fronts that popped up along an otherwise residential street prior to the advent of zoning. It was grandparented into the neighbourhood’s current RT-3 zoning through allowing:

“Dwelling Units, up to a maximum of two, in conjunction with a neighbourhood grocery store existing as of July 29, 1980, subject to the provisions of section 11.16 of this By-law.”

For anyone in love with these little corner grocery stores (and there are a lot of us), it’s striking and bizarre that we don’t allow them in residential zones anymore. But Union Market isn’t actually a corner store. Why? Because this beautiful old townhouse complex right next to Union Market occupies the corner.

To those of us who love townhouses, it’s striking that this form of housing is also forbidden from the majority of residential zones in Vancouver. Here it’s grandparented in with RT-3 zoning to preserve the pre-1920s cityscape of Strathcona. It’s even got heritage designation. It’s clearly a valued streetscape. So why isn’t this form of housing allowed on other residential streets?

Just down the street I passed another old store front. This one is also heritage (if you squint, you can see the marker near the door). But it’s no longer being used as a store. It’s been turned over to residential use. The whole lot was redesigned to support three different residential units about twenty years ago (1999). One in the back (along the laneway), and two up front. (UPDATE: as noted by an observant twitter user, the storefront portion seems to be AirBnB‘d, so it retains an ironic (?) commercial use…)

The history of this lot is fascinating, as revealed in a staff recommendation to City Council from 1999 supporting variance from existing RT-3 zoning to enable its renovation:

Heritage Value: The site at 658 Union Street is listed in the “B” category on the Vancouver Heritage Register and is noted as being an “unique example of [an] early multiple structure”. Three distinct structures were built on the site between 1893 and 1913:

· middle dwelling: the earliest structure was a one-and-a-half storey dwelling built in 1893 and situated in the middle of the lot; only the foundations and wall fragments remain;
· rear dwelling: the next was a one-and-a-half storey end-gable frontier-style structure erected sometime between 1901 – 1912, along the rear property line; and
· grocery store: the final addition was made in 1913, after street levelling activities in Strathcona were complete; it is a two-storey clapboard-sided grocery store with tin cornice, which abuts the Union Street edge of the property.

The latter two extant buildings are representative of architectural and historical themes unique to Strathcona including: Strathcona’s working class heritage; urban change/street levelling activities and community response; and vitality of neighbourhood through grocers and other home-based business.

Of note: the valuable “working class heritage” of Strathcona is precisely what was zoned out of single-use residential neighbourhoods of all sorts (RS, RT, and RM) in subsequent years. And supporting the renovation of the old store front required all sorts of variances from the RT-3 zoning currently in place. The administrative staff helpfully catalogued all the variations proposed:

That’s a lot of variance! It also demonstrates nicely just how many restrictions around development are currently in place in zoning by-laws. And this, of course, is simply to restore the “working class heritage” of the lot. Were there objections?

Oh yes:

As part of the Development Application review process, a sign was placed on the site and 47 surrounding neighbouring property owners were notified. Eight neighbours responded. Four support the project in its entirely, including the immediate neighbours to the west. The four others support the conservation component of the proposal, but have the following principal concerns:

· the proposed site coverage leaves little useable outdoor space at grade;
· the building length next to the east property line is excessive;
· entries, decks and coach house configuration would significantly detract from the privacy of the property to the east;
· the extent of proposed changes to the existing rear structure is excessive;
· the configuration of the front unit lends itself to conversion to an illegal secondary suite;
· the current difficulty of finding parking on the street will be exacerbated; and

· the proposed development is too dense relative to the single family dwellings typical of this block.

Strikingly, the neighbourhood association supported the retention (with some caveats) and the half of respondents supported the project in its entirety, with the remainder supporting parts. The most pertinent objections came from the property to the East of the lot. A variety of alterations were made accordingly. But the basics of the renovation remained, and ultimately the lot provided room for three units, subsequently stratified, and now assessed as worth $832k,$868k, and $1,100k. That’s a lot for twenty year old dwellings, and probably well beyond “working class” territory. But most of the value, as always in Vancouver, is in the land. What do we get in allowing three households to split the cost of the land rather than one? Well, the single structure beat-up house next door (to the West, partially obscured by the tree above) is assessed at$1,568k. Even taking into account a bit of land lift, each of the three twenty year old units created remains far cheaper than the nearly hundred-and-twenty year old unit (likely in need of some repairs?) next door.

What about that persnickety neighbour to the East? Well… about that… some dozen years after the old store front building was re-done, the lot to the East was entirely re-developed through a lot assembly with the adjoining house. Now the redevelopment of the two lots support and serve as their own heritage infill case study.

It’s pretty fancy! What’s striking is that the two lots together now support SEVEN different dwelling units, centred around an interior courtyard.

And how much are these new (2013) units? They’re assessed from $523k all the way up to$1,259k (I’m assuming for the big laneway house at the back). In other words, none of these practically brand new units reach the price of the run-down old house on the lot two down. Why? Because they’re sharing land costs. Here’s what the four lots in question look like from the back, via Google Maps satellite view:

Even though there’s been uplift in the land value with the permission of extra density on the two redeveloped lots, the uplift still doesn’t come anywhere near cancelling out the benefits of sharing. From left to right for the lots centred above, beginning with the partially shaded lot containing the old car covered in vegetation, here are the assessed land values for the lots:

• one lot with one dwelling*: $1.523 million =$1,523k/unit
• one lot with three dwellings: $2.291 million =$764k/unit
• two lots with seven dwellings: $3.878 million =$554k/unit

Despite the benefits of sharing land, none of the ultimate unit prices (ranging from $523k to$1,259k) seem likely to provide stable and affordable housing for the working class households of today. For that, we’ll need more purpose-built rental and social housing. But both of these things become more viable when land costs can be shared across units. Maybe the best way to insure that the working class heritage of Vancouver continues on into the future is to enable and support purpose-built rental and social housing everywhere – especially in the places this kind of housing has historically been excluded. Vancouver’s re-legalization of duplexes on RS zones and moves forward on Making Room are probably good steps along the way.

*- It’s actually unclear how many dwellings are contained in the dwelling with the car in the backyard because we don’t know whether it’s been subdivided to contain one (or more) suites. Legally there is only one dwelling available to be owned.

# How are condos used?

Comparing How Condos are Used Across Canada

Co-authored by Jens von Bergmann; Nathanael Lauster; Douglas Harris (Cross-posted at mountainmath.ca)

Condominium apartments are fascinating! At their heart lies a relatively recent legal innovation enabling individual ownership of units in multi-unit developments. Since their arrival, condominium apartments have become places to build homes, sources of rental income, sites of speculative real estate investment, and experiments in private democratic government. They’re also in the middle of many on-going debates about housing and the future of cities in Canada and around the world. In 2018, we formed a team to study condominium apartments and how they were being used in order to better inform public and academic debates. Team members include data analyst and mathematician Jens von Bergmann, sociologist Nathanael Lauster, and law professor Douglas Harris. We recently presented some preliminary findings at the National Housing Conference in Ottawa and we’re looking forward to continued research collaboration.

Here we make public some basic information about the development and use of condominium apartments across different metropolitan areas in Canada.

The first thing to note is that the legal architecture of condominium is deployed across a broad range of structure types. In addition to apartments, developers commonly use the condominium form to subdivide row houses, and occasionally single-detached houses (as in some gated communities). Nevertheless, condominium is used most commonly to subdivide ownership in low-rise and high-rise apartment buildings, and that’s what we focus on here.

The next thing worth noticing is that condominium is much more common in some metro areas than others. Vancouver jumps out for the proportion of its apartments – and housing stock overall – owned within condominium. Calgary and Edmonton also rely heavily on condominium to subdivide apartment buildings, although these sprawling metro areas are dominated by single-detached houses, much more so than Vancouver, reducing the overall prevalence of condominium.

We know that condominium apartments are exceptionally flexible forms of housing, but how are they being used across different metro areas? What proportions are owner-occupied? Rented? Occupied temporarily? Unoccupied?

We couldn’t extract data to answer the last two questions from the census because condominium status is recorded by respondents. However, using a variety of datasets, we figured out a transparent and replicable (if somewhat complicated) method for estimating temporarily occupied and unoccupied condominium units.

The answers to these questions about how condominium apartments are used speak to important elements in popular discourse and public debate. Since provincial governments introduced a statutory form of condominium in the late 1960s, developers have built condominium buildings rather than purpose-built rental apartments across much of Canada. Does this also mean that the proportion of owner-occupiers increases while that of renters decreases in cities where condominium developments proliferate? Or do owner-investors rent out their condominium units, augmenting the existing rental stock?

Our findings on how condominium apartments are used are really interesting! In all the metro areas we analyzed, the modal use of condominium apartments is owner-occupation. As a result, it appears that condominium apartments are enabling more homeowners to live in increasingly dense cities.

However, condominium apartments also make up a substantial proportion of the rental stock in many metro areas. While many condominium apartments are rented, relatively few show up as vacant (i.e. empty but listed as “for rent”) at any given point in time. Here we distinguish these rare vacancies, which are good for renters, from unoccupied condominiums. In tight markets such as Vancouver and Toronto we see effectively non-existent condominium apartment vacancy rates, comparable to purpose-built rental vacancy rates.

The least common use of condominium apartments is as a temporary residence (where owners declare their principal residence as somewhere else in the census, but occupy the unit occasionally).

Finally we get to the “empty condos,” or those that show up as unoccupied in the census. Overall, we estimate that between 10% to 23% of condominium apartments were unoccupied in 2016, depending upon the metropolitan area. We don’t know why so many condominium apartments appear to be unoccupied, but it likely relates to their newness and to their inherent flexibility as property. Flexibility can show up in the census as “unoccupied” directly, as when owners use condominiums as second homes, and indirectly, as when condominium apartments are left empty in order to facilitate transactions between uses. We suspect that condominium apartments may cycle more frequently than other forms of property between different uses and occupants, thus creating transition periods without occupants and inflating the proportion of unoccupied units. For instance, condominium apartments can more plausibly be re-claimed for owner’s use than purpose-built rental apartments, cycling in an out of rental supply and potentially creating less stable rental housing.

Strikingly, Vancouver and Toronto stand out as having the lowest proportion of unoccupied condominium apartments, a finding that may be somewhat counter-intuitive given the public attention that vacant units have received, rightly or wrongly, in both cities. When metropolitan areas rely upon condominium apartments as a key form of new housing supply, they should take the flexibility of the form into account. However, it appears that the proportion of unoccupied units in the housing stock will rise as the proportion of condominium apartments in the housing stock increases because condominium apartments are more likely to be unoccupied than purpose-built rentals, a pattern also noted with respect to other flexible housing forms, such as secondary suites (especially basement suites, which show up as units in a “duplex” in the census). This means that even though a smaller proportion of condominium apartments are unoccupied in Vancouver than elsewhere in Canada, a larger proportion of Vancouver’s housing stock shows up in the census as unoccupied.

In Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas, a pretty simple rubric applies: for every ten condominium apartments built, six are owner-occupied, three are occupied by renters, and one is unoccupied. In Calgary and Edmonton, add a renter and take away an owner-occupier. The data for the other cities we surveyed is available in the graphic above. As a bonus, we also provide a comparison with estimations from 2011 data to show changes over time in the graphic below.

In Vancouver, where condominium apartments have been an established part of the housing market for longer than in the rest of the country, there is very little change in the occupancy pattern between 2011 and 2016. In other big metropolitan areas, it appears that condominium apartments are increasingly used as rental stock. In most cases, the proportion of empty condominium apartments appears to be decreasing, something that may reflect the lingering effects of the 2008-09 property market crash. However, this is all very preliminary. But we’ll keep looking at the details as we proceed!

## Methods

We mixed two data sources to arrive at these estimates–the Census and the CMHC Rental Market Survey–and that made coming up with the estimates a little more complicated. There are several assumptions that go into the estimates, and there are several issues with mixing the data that we set out below.

### Overview

We cut the condominium stock into five different categories. The numbers of units occupied by owners and renters are straight-up census estimates from 98-400-X2016219 and 99-014-X2011026. To estimate the unoccupied units and the units occupied by temporary residents we used a custom tabulation of Structural type by Document type. We received this cross tabulation from Urban Futures, which one of use has worked with before on secondary suites. Both of those variables–the categorization of the dwelling type as well as the decision to label a unit without a census response as empty or occupied by someone who did not respond–is made by the enumerator. This allows us to ascertain the structural type of unoccupied units, and we can also get that information for units that are temporarily occupied.

So, we know how many apartment units were classified as unoccupied or temporarily occupied. To estimate how many condominium units fall into that category we need to make some assumptions. First, we assume that the apartment stock consists of three distinct type of units: condominium units, purpose-built rental units and non-market housing units. That’s not quite accurate. For example a single-family home with two secondary suites will be classified as an Apartment, fewer than five storeys if the census found the suites. These do exist in Vancouver, and elsewhere, but their numbers are small.

Given those three types of apartment units, we need to understand how many of the unoccupied and temporarily occupied units fall into each category. The CMCH Rental Market Survey has annual estimates of vacancy rates and universe size for the purpose-built rental stock. We take those estimates, only counting apartment units, to attribute unoccupied units to the purpose-built rental stock. In Vancouver, with its extremely low vacancy rates, this is a fairly small number. In Halifax, that number is comparatively larger. Further, we assume that the non-market units have a vacancy rate of zero, so that there are no empty non-market units. What’s left over we assign as empty condominium apartments.

Finally, we use the estimate of vacant condominium apartments and those on the rental market from the CMHC Secondary Market Rental Survey, using their estimates of the condominium vacancy rate and the condominium rental universe. The vacancy rate is not available for all years and all CMAs. We have marked the CMAs with an asterisk in case the data was not available and back-filled it with our estimate of the condo rental universe and the Rms vacancy rate. We have seen previously that the Rms vacancy rate tracks the secondary market vacancy rate reasonably well.

Attributing the temporarily occupied units gets even harder, but the numbers are smaller so getting things a little wrong has less impact. Here we again assume that no temporary residents live in non-market housing, and we assume they are equally likely to live in a condominium apartment (as owner or renter) or rent in purpose-built. That is a bit of a judgement call, but the details of these assumptions don’t make much of a difference to the numbers, and we invite people to grab the code if they would like to adjust the assumptions.

There are several issues when mixing CMHC Rms data with census data. For one, both are point-in-time estimates for slightly different times. The census is pegged in early May, the Rms for October. There may be fluctuations in temporary and unoccupied units, in particular in areas dominated by universities such as Waterloo, with the census being outside of the regular semester and the CMHC survey within.

Next comes the geographic problem, with CMHC switching to new census geographies at the end of the year, so the rental universe still reflects the previous census geography. Montreal is one such example where the CMA changed 2011 to 2016 as we have explained before. That leads to problems when estimating the rental universe, but the effect is moderated when focusing on the empty units.

Another issue is that the definition of apartment that CMHC uses differs slightly from the census.

Finally, for estimating the vacant condominium apartments that were on the rental market we used the CMHC rental condo universe estimate and not the one we derived from the census. There appear to be some differences in how CMHC and the census estimate rented condo units, with CMHC relying on surveys of property managers. In BC that likely involves tallying up units for which Form K was filed, likely leading to CMHC under-estimating strata rentals.

It is instructional to compare the two different estimates.

With the exception of Hamilton, the census condominium rental estimates are higher, in some cases substantially so. To shed more light on this we also compared the estimates of overall condominium apartments.

We looked at two separate census estimates: the occupied (by permanent residents) units that come straight from the census by filtering occupied units for apartments that are stratified, and the overall condo estimate that we derived by adding in vacant and temporary units. With the exception of Montréal the census estimate of occupied units only comes quite close to the CMHC condominium universe estimate. The differences are worth looking into in more detail at some point.

### Waffle graphs

To communicate the makeup of condominium apartments we settled on a custom version of a waffle graph. Displaying proportions on a square grid makes it easier to read them compared to pie charts or tree graphs. The 10×10 layout rounds numbers to percentage points, which is the appropriate level of accuracy given the uncertainty in the data and is intuitive to understand. When rounding to the nearest percentage, the numbers don’t always add up to 100. So we don’t do traditional rounding but round with the constraint that the total adds up to 100 while minimizing the $$l_\infty$$ error.

This does introduce potential problems when comparing across time or across geographies, where theoretically we could see an increase in the number of squares in one category although the actual estimated share dropped. This will only happen under very specific circumstances, and we checked that this did not occur in our graphs.

## Reproducibility

The code underlying this post is available on GitHub, as are the parts of the custom tabulation for 2016 and 2011 used in this post. Part of the Statistics Canada data we used requires conversion from XML into more manageable data format which, for performance reasons, requires python to be installed next to R that runs the rest of the code.

# Urbanism Axis & IMBY Allies

Last post I talked about how Vancouver’s election provided possible insights into the relationship between Urbanism (or IMBY-ism) as a political axis running perpendicular to more traditional Left-Right axes. Now we have results!

But first: a clarification. Initially I drew from the Cambie Report‘s clever crowd-sourcing of placements for political parties and prominent independents in Vancouver along both a municipal urbanism axis and social and economic left-right axes (ultimately combined), as follows.

Positions were allocated (and defined) by the wisdom of crowds. Not surprisingly, I received some pushback for accepting this wisdom – not everyone agrees with crowds! And that’s fair. Many policy positions and histories, especially within my area of housing, were actually more nuanced. Here I’ll provide a – still very rough – breakdown of how I see the axes providing important information about different positions and histories, which may be of use both for interpreting Vancouver and thinking through IMBY coalitions more broadly.

Starting with the Urbanist Right in the upper-right quadrant, we have a relatively familiar market urbanism: anti-zoning and libertarian inspired. Pro-housing everywhere “the market” wants it. Market urbanists tend to extol the virtues of density and disruption. YIMBY everywhere.

Moving clockwise, below we have the Preservationist Right. To add a bit of nuance, this is a position that I’ve argued actually much better characterizes the North American tradition: Rigid zoning for exclusive single-family neighbourhoods and more flexible market allocation of housing within a constrained urban core. Right leaning municipal coalitions offer a grand bargain between middle-class detached homeowners’ relatively conservative desires to be left alone and developers’ interests in making money downtown. The mantra goes something like: “Strong protections for me and the market for thee.” Or NIMBY in the Great House Reserve, YIMBY in the Urban Core.

Continuing around the clock to the Preservationist Left, we move toward the left-leaning reaction against the North American tradition. Anti-poverty alliances frequently identify developers as villains. This makes sense insofar as many alliances have borne repeated witness to the displacement that can result from unleashing market development upon the marginalized neighbourhoods of the urban core. Anti-developer politics can seem like a progressive end in their own right and can sometimes also win over middle-class voters (think “All neighbourhoods matter”). For a farther left subset, the socialization of housing seems the best bet for protecting those marginalized by the market. Lots more social housing is in order – but often concentrated in and meant to preserve neighbourhoods viewed as under development pressure. The orientation runs from NIMBY everywhere to PHIMBY (Public Housing in My Back Yard).

Moving up to the Urbanist Left, we find alliances that often view urban growth as good, both in terms of promoting diversity and in terms of reducing environmental impacts. Many accept that disruption is part of living in a city. But it shouldn’t be imposed unequally and policies should work to avoid displacement. Those I’ve also termed Inclusive Urbanists set their sights on returning exclusionary neighbourhoods to the urban fabric by reforming single-family zoning. They look to introduce social housing and diverse rental options to every neighbourhood. The tendency is YIMBY, but reform-oriented, with an egalitarian emphasis directed at diversifying single-family exclusionary hoods and large helpings of PHIMBY.

Ok, now let’s get back to what happened in Vancouver, where we had parties occupying each of these quadrants. Who won? And what does it tell us about IMBY-coalitions?

The mayoral race ended up a showdown between two strong Urbanist Left candidates (Kennedy Stewart and Shauna Sylvester) and the strongest of the Preservationist Right (Ken Sim from the NPA – historically the epitome of the grand bargain party: NIMBY for detached home-owners, YIMBY in the urban core). Stewart beat Sim by less than a thousand votes (half a percentage point) in a real squeaker of a race.

Broadly speaking, both the Urbanist Left and the Preservationist Right fielded strong candidates. But what happened to the Urbanist Right and the Preservationist Left? The Urbanist Right candidate was clearly Hector Bremner, and at 5.7% of the vote, his Yes Vancouver party failed to attract much support beyond its passionate young base of market YIMBYs. The Preservationist Left initially had a party-supported candidate in COPE’s Patrick Condon (who early on made clear he wouldn’t run if the Green Party’s Adriane Carr had decided to try for the mayorship). But Condon dropped out after experiencing a stroke. Late in the race he endorsed independent candidate Sean Cassidy, who failed to attract much other support. Even adding in support for the fringe candidacy of IDEA Vancouver’s Connie Fogal (widow of progressive hero Harry Rankin), the Preservationist Left failed to crack 2% in the mayoral race.

So can we collapse the field, calling YIMBYism a left-wing phenomenon and NIMBYism mostly driven by more conservative impulses? Not quite so fast… let’s turn to Council! Here I note the average % of total council votes accorded to candidates in each party, highlighting the parties that actually won council seats (no independents won seats, despite overall respectable showings). I also provide the range of averages for major parties in each quadrant.

While the mayor’s race seemed to reduce relatively neatly to a singularly important Urbanist Left – Preservationist Right axis, the council race sees a real and strong split between the Preservationist Left (COPE and the Greens) and the Urbanist Left (OneCity and Vision), with the Preservationist Centre-Left ultimately receiving the most support. Indeed, the new council will be made up of five members from the Preservationist Right (NPA), four members from the Preservationist Centre-Left (three Greens and one COPE), and one member from the Urbanist Left (OneCity).

So what does this all this tell us about IMBY coalitions?

First: it’s important to distinguish those BYs: the backyards of Single-Family House neighbourhoods are treated differently from the backyards of the Urban Core.

Second: Right-leaning coalitions tend to do well in cities only when they leave the back yards of Single-Family House neighbourhoods alone. So far there’s little evidence that a right-leaning YIMBY coalition can win, though this could change in the future, as single-family neighbourhoods continue to lose population.

Third: Most YIMBYs lean left by quite a large margin, and left-leaning YIMBY coalitions can win. A Lefty Urbanist won the mayoral race in 2018, despite the competition from an exceptionally strong contender in the same quadrant. Moreover, Vision Vancouver’s coalition held power for the last ten years until their organizational implosion in 2018, and still placed well ahead of most other parties even if they won no seats.

Fourth: There’s a real and consequential split between Lefty Urbanists and Lefty Preservationists. I think this is often about perspective. From the point of view of anti-poverty activists working in the urban core, developers almost always look like villains (non-profit developers MAY be exceptions). From the point of view of people feeling excluded from cities’ vast tracts of single-family neighbourhoods, developers look like potential allies. On the flip side, the path to political success often runs through middle-class homeowners, and it’s easier to get them on your side by promising it won’t inconvenience them much than by suggesting they might need to sacrifice some parking or sunlight on their gardens. Vancouver’s Green Party, in particular, has walked this line to great success.

Theoretically, this election should put to rest the notion that all or even most YIMBYs are mostly market-oriented. After all, if they were they would’ve come out in mass for Yes Vancouver. Instead YIMBYs seemed to support Urbanist Left candidates in numbers easily surpassing support for the Urbanist Right. But to be fair, this was also a really messy election, witnessing the organizational implosion of the reigning party (Vision) and a confusing profusion of new parties. This likely benefitted those older organizations that managed to avoid imploding (Greens, COPE, and above all the NPA, who recovered strong from a shaky start), above and beyond informed platform comparisons.

Final Question: Can those Urbanist Leftys who made it into office this year work with their Preservationist Left or Preservationist Right colleagues? I’m guessing efforts to Make Room in single-family neighbourhoods are going to slow down again after Vision’s successful last-minute drive to introduce duplexes (with suites!), opening up all nearly all lots to four potential dwelling units (2x owned, 2x rented) across the City. Given housing plans put forward by the NPA and Greens, maybe we’ll eventually get matching legalization of an additional main unit rental suite (1x owned, 2x rented, 1x laneway rented), legalizing what’s already happening on the ground in many places. It’s less clear what will happen in the urban core, where alliances may shift project by project (remember, NPA councillors look pretty market YIMBY outside of single-family zones).

Let’s animate that GIF:

Addendum: (preliminary) vote tallies from the City of Vancouver obtained here! Looking forward to the voting location breakdown we got from the 2014 election.

# How to Become a Resort City

I think many people are concerned that Vancouver is turning into a “resort city” – a playground for the rich – rather than a diverse and thriving city for all. But is this really happening? Yes. And I’m concerned too!

Certainly we see a lot of luxury cars and retail outlets, but we don’t really track wealth very well in Canada. Nevertheless owner-occupiers report their home values in the census and that’s where most wealth ultimately lies for Canadians. We can ask a simple question: where do the millionaires live? By millionaires I’m referring to anyone who reports owning and occupying a home worth a million dollars or more – not a perfect proxy, but not bad. The census uses self-reporting to get at this, and Statcan Table 98-400-X2016232 – in conjunction with total household numbers from Census metro area profiles – enables me to generate the following figure.

Vancouver contains almost as many millionaires as Toronto, despite being less than half the size. Together the two metropolitan areas account for less than a fifth of Canada’s total number of households but over three-quarters of all owned dwellings worth on million dollars or more. To put matters differently, nearly 25% of Metro Vancouver’s households own a dwelling worth a million dollars or more, compared to just over 1% of the Rest of Canada (outside Toronto). We are literally concentrating the One Percent in terms of Canada’s wealthiest households.

Maybe Vancouver’s not quite a resort city yet, but it’s definitely in the neighbourhood!

So how did we get to this point?

In some ways Vancouver was predisposed to growth because it’s got lots of things people want: ocean, mountains, one of the mildest climates in Canada, a thriving port, a railroad line, lots of jobs, diverse ex-patriot communities, parks, strawberry-picking in the Agricultural Land Reserve, etc. This could explain growth overall. But everybody wants these things, not just rich people.

If it’s not just amenities that attract specifically rich people to Vancouver, then how are we becoming a resort city? Some people blame the fact that Vancouver’s amenities have been heavily marketed to rich people around the world in recent years. They have a point: this has certainly happened. But lots of other places try to market themselves to the rich as well. What makes Vancouver special?

We might not be attracting the wealthy so much as we’re systematically excluding everyone else who wants to live here. It’s about changing the composition of in-movers, so that wealthier and wealthier people tend to come (incidentally, this fits with research on neighbourhood change suggesting this is mostly how gentrification occurs).

How are we systematically excluding everyone who’s not rich? Easy! Under conditions of growth, all we have to do is preserve lots of urban land for millionaires and largely prevent anyone else from competing with them. Effectively this is what residential single-family (RS) zoning accomplishes in places like Vancouver, which we can see by comparing what proportion of detached and duplex housing is evaluated at over a million dollars.

Across Metro Vancouver, nearly 60% of detached or duplex housing is evaluated at over one million dollars, yet the vast majority of urban residential land is zoned to support only these forms of housing. This is how you get a resort city, fit only for millionaires (with a little bit of room for their servant-tenants living in basement suites below – which is what duplexes mostly consist of in Canada). This compares to around of quarter of detached houses worth over a million in Toronto, and just over 2% in the Rest of Canada.

We can flip the question around to ask what percent of million-dollar dwellings are single-family detached or duplex dwellings. Strikingly, the answer in Metro Vancouver, Metro Toronto, and the Rest of Canada is pretty much the same: almost 90%.

Luxury zoning is almost entirely detached zoning. Across Metro Vancouver, the converse is also increasingly the case: detached zoning is becoming luxury zoning, affordable only to millionaires.

In places with lots of amenities – including jobs! – where people really want to move, growth is mostly limited by housing. If we only make housing for millionaires, we’ll increasingly have a city of millionaires. If we want to keep Metro Vancouver from becoming a Resort City, we’re going to have to tackle the zoning issue.