To the editor:
Re: "City eyes affordable housing," Dec. 28.
Maintaining housing affordability isn't rocket science. It's all about protecting the rental housing stock, which is something successive municipal and provincial governments have failed to do since the beginning of the real estate boom in the late 1980s. In Vancouver, it started with the wholesale conversion of older rental properties into strata units, such as in the Mount Pleasant and Kits areas. This was compounded by the advent of lower interest rates in the 1990s and onward, as it became advantageous for middle-income earners to purchase, rather than pay high rents in a tight market. And now those days are drawing to a close as prices have reached such a level that it now takes two average incomes to make an entry level purchase. Regulations to prevent the demolition or conversion of rental properties, and incentives to encourage developers to build more apartments, even if they were put in today, would probably be too little too late.
The only thing that could restore some level of affordability would be a major correction in the real estate market to drive out speculators. But maybe that is the bitter pill that years of lack of foresight will force us to swallow.
Charles Leduc, Vancouver
