Vancouver academics, planners urge federal action to protect existing rental homes | Daily Hive

Vancouver academics and urban planners urge federal government to protect existing affordable rental housing

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A group of Vancouver urban planners, architects, academics, and self-identified urbanists is calling on Ottawa to ensure the federal government’s new Build Canada Homes (BCH) entity delivers lasting affordability rather than just more housing supply.

In a new detailed submission to Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada — the federal department led by Housing Minister Gregor Robertson, the former Mayor of Vancouver — the group asserted that without stronger safeguards, public investment risks fuelling speculation rather than securing homes Canadians can truly afford.

The submission stresses that Canada’s housing crisis is “above all, a crisis of affordability.”

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Submitted to the federal government on Aug. 28, 2025, the letter carried 28 signatories, among them former Vancouver chief urban planners Larry Beasley and Ray Spaxman, former Vancouver urban planner Sandy James, former Burnaby urban planner Robert Renger, UBC School of Community and Regional Planning lecturer Erick Villagomez, former urban planner Arny Wise, SFU City Program director Andy Yan, and UBC landscape architecture professor Patrick Condon.

They assert that Metro Vancouver has seen decades of high construction housing starts, and that over this period home prices have remain untethered from local incomes, which have seen a sluggish pace of growth.

The group argues that programs like Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) MLI Select — a mortgage loan insurance program for multi-unit residential buildings — have not produced affordable supply, and that affordability should be defined as no more than 30 per cent of local incomes, not relative to inflated market medians.

Instead, they are urging the federal government to prioritize tenant protection and zero net-loss of affordable rental housing — opposing demolition-driven development models. They assert that many older units being demolished are often cheaper than the new units replacing them that are deemed to be below-market rate. They advocate for rehabilitating and retrofitting existing rental housing buildings to preserve affordability and reduce construction-related emissions.

During the recent election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal Liberals party promised to spin affordable housing programs and initiatives out of CMHC and into the new federal entity of BCH. Public and stakeholder consultation to help finalize BCH’s mandate and approaches began last month.

While BCH envisions pursuing a small number of large-scale housing deals, the Vancouver group claims that smaller, community-scaled projects often yield better outcomes for affordability and livability. They also recommend using the current housing market correction to secure land for non-profit, co-operative, and public housing — but oppose using public funding to bail out speculative developments and artificially inflate land values.

Calling BCH a “once-in-a-generation opportunity,” the signatories of the letter suggest the federal entity should avoid one-size-fits-all solutions, focus on family-friendly co-op housing, and resist the overreliance on high-rise towers. Instead, they call for “gentle density,” more wood-frame housing, and long-term affordability mechanisms such as 99-year leases and strong covenants.

The submission also draws examples from global housing systems. Singapore’s public housing model, Vienna’s limited-profit housing associations, the Netherlands’ loan guarantee backstops, and Finland’s long-term affordability covenants are all cited as examples of how Canada could design programs that better provide affordability.

As well, the group stresses that municipal governments should not shoulder the infrastructure costs of federal housing targets alone. They argue Ottawa and the provincial governments must direct more of the income tax base back to municipal governments to fund growth, instead of the current dependency on continuously hiking local property taxes and building development fees.

This builds on an earlier submission the group sent to Ottawa on July 28, 2025, which featured many of the same signatories and echoed similar themes and recommendations for addressing Canada’s housing crisis.

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