Vancouver plans to increase middle-income housing with 54-storey tower on city-owned land

The City of Vancouver announced a new plan on Thursday aimed at creating more housing in the heart of downtown, but housing advocates are critical of the plan. 

The plan enables the city to develop market rental housing on its own land, and in turn, generate revenue for the city through rent. 

"Vancouver's housing shortage, especially for middle-income earners, is holding our city back," Mayor Ken Sim said in a news release. 

The city is moving forward with a rezoning proposal for a 54-storey, 1,136-unit building in downtown Vancouver, located at Pacific Street and Hornby Street. It's part of the city's housing strategy, the goal of which is to create 83,000 new homes in Vancouver over the next decade. 

The city says it will be another three to four years until there are shovels in the ground. It added that it's targeting the units at families with household incomes between $90,000 and $194,000. 

Census data from 2021 shows the median household income in Metro Vancouver was $67,000.

Aissa Aggoune, an independent renter's advocate who helps people navigate cases at the Residential Tenancy Board, is concerned the tower won't actually provide housing to middle income households.

"I don't see how it addresses the unaffordability crisis, because if your household makes $194,000 per year, then your household can easily afford regular market value rent … why should the taxpayer pay for [building] that [tower] if it doesn't address the issues at stake?" he said.

Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, questioned whether the target demographic can actually be considered middle-income, when the median household Income for a renter household in the city of Vancouver was $59,600 in 2021.

Andrey Pavlov, a finance professor at Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business, said he thinks the tower will help alleviate the city's housing shortage. However, he said he's concerned that the city is planning to build and manage the tower itself because it has "no expertise" in this area.

"Anything that can be outsourced or delegated to the private market, of course should be because that's far more efficient and they're providing better service and minimize the cost and at the same time can maximize the revenue to the city," he said.

Instead, Pavlov thinks the city should sell the land and put that money toward other capital projects or set it aside and use the returns for regular city services.

The project will be led by the Vancouver Housing Development Office, which is looking for a way to introduce more housing and bring in revenue for the city.

Sim said generating income this way will reduce the need to increase taxes.