Affordability crisis not just a Vancouver problem anymore: report
Posted October 11, 2018 11:38 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A new report from UBC and Union Gospel Mission confirms what many have been thinking: rental housing has been disappearing in municipalities outside Metro Vancouver.
The affordability crisis is now more of a regional problem than simply a Vancouver issue, and vacancy rates in the suburbs are approaching zero while rents continue to climb higher, according the report.
Vacancy rates in some Metro Vancouver municipalities have been cut in half in the last two years – they’re below one per cent in most areas, including Surrey and Burnaby – and it is increasingly difficult to find low-cost housing, even outside the City of Vancouver.
“In 2016, there were signs that the affordability crisis was spreading, but this report confirmed it,” says Professor Penny Gurstein. “It’s now very difficult, not just to find affordable housing in Vancouver, but to find it in places where you normally could find it a few years ago, which was in Surrey, Burnaby, New Westminster.”
When she started working on the report, Gurstein assumed there would be more affordable housing in some of the other Metro Vancouver municipalities, but she was shocked to find the affordable housing stock had begun to disappear.
“It is becoming increasingly more difficult to find affordable, rental housing for low-income people, which is a reason why homelessness is increasing, or near-homelessness,” she says. “The rental rates have gone up in almost all areas, and the incomes of low-income people have not gone up, both those who are working in paid labour and on social assistance.”
RELATED: CMHC says annual pace of housing starts slowed to 188,683 units in September
Even more people, including families, are at risk of homelessness as more people find themselves living paycheque-to-paycheque, almost to the point of becoming homeless if something goes wrong, she says.
“That’s happening because there is gentrification, these kinds of affordable units are being demolished, and more expensive housing is being built,” Gurstein says. “Just generally, the cost of housing is going up.”
Professor Penny Gurstein says 61 percent of families on B.C.’s housing registry are families – and it’s tough to know where they’re going to go.
