(co-authored with Jens von Bergmann and cross-posted at MountainMath)

Earlier this year a report from the NSW Productivity Commission in New South Wales, Australia, included a useful estimate to illustrate the harm that’s being done by height restrictions in Sydney. We thought it might be helpful to replicate the analysis for the Vancouver context.

Taking ideas from the report we set up a simple counter-factual question:

What would rents be if every apartment building built in Metro Vancouver over the past five years had been on average 20% taller?

TL;DR

We estimate that planning decisions preventing apartment buildings built in the past 5 years in Metro Vancouver from being on average 20% taller are resulting in an annual redistribution of income from renters to existing landlords on the order of half a billion dollars across the region via higher rents.

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(Written jointly with Jens von Bergmann and cross-posted at MountainMath)

We have finally found some time to take a closer look at the Broadway Plan. There are many good things to say about the plan, it adds housing in an amenity and job rich area about to get a new subway line. It promises to not just undo the downzoning the city imposed on parts of the area in the 1970s but enables a bit more housing to make up for lost time.

The plan also tacks heavily against the displacement risk to renters in the established rental apartment areas by both 1) limiting the redevelopment potential in those areas and 2) increasing the strength of tenant relocation and right of return policies, a hard-learned lesson from the redevelopment activity around Metrotown in neighbouring Burnaby. In short, overall there’s a lot to like.

In this post we want to accomplish several somewhat diverse goals

1. Provide some code to improve the data analysis in the plan that uses census data,
2. Place the Broadway plan more firmly into context of historical zoning changes in that corridor, and
3. Interrogate the decision to limit development potential in the existing low-density areas, which we have argued in the past make for ideal sites to concentrate development becaues of their low displacement implications.

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