Tsawwassen needs housing choice

This was the ddocument that I submitted for my community comment piece in the Delta Optimist.

The editor chose to leave out the last paragraph which is unfortunate in my opinion......

A November 2009 Royal Bank of Canada study “Housing Trends and Affordability” states that... “it appears that the cost of home ownership will remain well above long term average in British Columbia”.

Indeed, Vancouver is now one of the least affordable cities in the world.

How is this situation going to pan out as hundreds of thousands of people move in to our region over the next thirty years?

In Delta, the Housing Task Force and the Tsawwassen Area Plan Committee (TAPC,) have been grappling with some of these issues.

In its draft “ideas” document, the TAPC notes that more shops, services and job opportunities should be available in the town core. That requires people, people!

In South Delta the benchmark price for a detached home is 665K, an attached home (town home) is 468K and it is 350K for an apartment (real estate board of greater Vancouver).

If you are a young family that would like to move to Tsawwassen, you really only have detached homes or apartment homes as options since there are precious little other choices.

If your pre-tax household income is 80K (average household income in Delta) and you would like to secure a 500K mortgage on a detached home with 160K as a down payment you are looking at $3200 a month. Affordable?.. no, probably not.

However, a 60K down payment on a 468K housing option does become more affordably realistic if you are considering living here.

On the flip side, a household wishing to downsize could put 200K of equity in the bank by moving to the more environmentally friendly mid-spectrum housing choice.

Some have suggested that the Tsawwassen Springs Resort will adequately provide for the mid housing price market. This is simply not the case. The new development will cater to the empty nester market that has traditionally moved to Surrey when downsizing. Young families need proximity to community amenities and they are not generally golf fanatics.

Some additions to our zoning palette would certainly go a long way to ensure that our community evolves vibrantly.

There are other considerations regarding “affordability” as well.

As Harvey Enchin noted in a recent Vancouver Sun piece... “Governments might not be able to move mountains, but they can make more land available to build housing with more sensible land use policies”.

Mr. Enchin went on to observe that “The Agricultural Land Reserve puts more than 4.7 million hectares off limits for development. Much of this land is not arable and the notion that its preservation is critical to our food security is ludicrous.”

Echoing a plan in our community that is not even in the ALR, Mr. Enchin suggests that “On a 100-acre parcel of land, for example, allot 30 acres to residential development and use the money it generates to pay for 70 acres of farmland. Turn the land over to a non-profit society for $1 under a covenant to maintain it as farmland in perpetuity.”

The TAPC in its draft “ideas” report suggests that “innovative policies supportive of urban agricultural activities could be supported”.

The social and environmental benefits of housing choice and all that it affords should be leveraged for smart long-term community and regional planning. For all of us, let’s hope it actually happens!