housing
05. housing
There is a direct relationship between the proportion of renters in a community and the scale of that community’s apartment stock. This should inform planning for the future.
DREAMS OF FIELDS (OF APARTMENTS)
The latest batch of 2021 Canadian Census that’s just been released sheds new light on, among other things, our housing stock and market and, more specifically, characteristics and renter and owned households; a previous release covered details related to the physical features of our dwelling stock. Overall, these data have been relatively consistent over time, with the proportion of homes in Metro Vancouver that are (occupied) apartments remaining stable between the 2016 and 2021 Census counts, at 43%. The ratio of renters in Metro Vancouver was up slightly over the same period, from 36% of households in 2016 to 38% in 2021. When we look at individual municipalities across the region, a clear pattern emerges: there is a strong correlation between the scale of apartment stock in a community and the proportion of residents that are renters in that community. (We should note here that apartment refers to the built-form of the building and does not differentiate between
condominiums and purpose-built apartments; more discussion on condominiums filling the rental gap to come.) In this region, the UBC area has the highest proportion of both apartments and renters, which makes perfect sense given its large student population. Vancouver, the City of North Vancouver, and New Westminster all have more than 60% of their homes as apartments, and have the next three highest ratios of renters. At the other end of the spectrum, Anmore and Lions Bay have the lowest share of renters in the region, and no apartment stock whatsoever. In the spring edition of the rennie landscape we noted, “if you build it, they will come” in relation to new housing and population growth. Well, when it comes to rental housing, the same adage can be applied: if you want to generate housing opportunities for renters, you need to find ways to densify and build more apartments (and lots of them).
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