Vancouver Special(en.wikipedia.org) |
Vancouver Special(en.wikipedia.org) |
1. The Vancouver Special originated as a way to evade zoning regulations. The lower floor is 18" below grade which qualified it as a "basement" not counting towards floor area ratio calculations.
2. Once the design became widespread, the building permitting process was streamlined -- there was no need for a detailed review of plans if they were identical to previously approved homes.
3. These were fundamentally "cheap and fast" housing, and have a poor reputation not so much for their conformity as for the poor quality construction.
4. As a cost saving measure, Vancouver Specials often came with "unfinished basements". An entire generation of Vancouver homeowners learned to install drywall -- and often electrical and plumbing -- which further contributes to the poor quality of the construction.
Their design was optimized for 2 suites even though they were usually built in single-family zoning districts; enforcement of the 1-family rule was fairly lax: https://twitter.com/GRIDSVancouver/status/134921351159592140...
It led to a situation where the law was at odds with reality on the ground (tens of thousands of people living in technically-illegal suites), and I think that was a huge factor in Vancouver's decision to (finally) legalize secondary suites across the city in 2004.
I lived in one of those for about a year in-between actual apartments, and always thought it was weird how it was just slightly below grade. Thank you for solving that mystery :).
BTW the "slightly below grade" situation is helped by Vancouver having lots of hills -- in many cases the front door is at grade even though the average ground level is 18" higher.
and 2) these maligned "cheap and fast" building styles eventually become (at least somewhat) loved.
Looking at a generation of houses before the Vancouver Special, it's abundantly clear that all the 1910s era heritage homes one finds near downtown are also pretty much all tweaks on a similar core design, just like the Vancouver Special.
FAR zoning not allowing for a simple 2 story home seems absurd but I suppose those were written to imply a certain setback from the property line.
Vancouver's biggest problem right now is housing affordability, and "the missing middle" (i.e. 20-30m high buildings). There isn't really very much housing stock in between single family homes and 30 story buildings, and getting those larger high rises built is expensive, and time consuming.
Truth be told, while I have a lot of nostalgia of the Vancouver of the 90s, I've since been back to visit and if given the choice, I would pick living in New York every time.
I'm under the impression that despite being maligned in the middle of the century Vancouver Specials are in relative high demand compared to houses newer and older because of how their basic flexible layouts make things relatively simple for new modern renovations.
It is like this in the nearby suburbs as well (Burnaby, Richmond, etc.)?
My kids like to play count the Vancouver Special when we drive down 1st Ave.
His ‘Revenge’ on Architects Was the Vancouver Special
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2019/12/17/Vancouver-Special-Reve...
Most people in my circles (UBC engineering and humanities) agreed with this appellation. I wonder if it’s still used.
There are plenty of towers downtown but the rest of Vancouver (i.e. most of the city by land area) is still zoned for suburban levels of density: https://twitter.com/Scott_dLB/status/1599177703466610688
the missing middle isn't just what's between two extremes, so here, it's not 20-30m (~65-100ft, or roughly 6-10 stories) as you've stated, though i'd certainly prefer cities to adopt zoning that allows much more density too (along with the mixed-zoning, public transportation and micromobility upgrades needed to support that density).
the missing middle specifically refers to 2-6 story stick-framed buildings that can be built quickly and cheaply while also providing ~4-10× the density of single-family zoning. 6-10 story buildings don't fall in this category since they usually need at least a concrete podium for the first 1-4 stories, which puts it in a different (higher-priced) construction category.
the missing middle is literally the space between single-family homes and the 6+ story buildings that require more expensive construction techniques.
A 3-bedroom rental unit is considered "affordable" if it rents at $4000/mo, or $48k/y[1]. The poverty line is at $60k[2] for a family of four. The city is encouraging developers to supply housing at a full 80% of poverty-level income, and wondering why tent cities keep growing.
[1] https://www.straight.com/news/4094-rent-for-three-bedrooms-n...
[2] https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/national-news/new-study-c...
The global poverty line is $785 but in New York City, the cutoff for cash aid is $83,250. Why does NYC keep giving aid to the top 1% !?
This is an oversimplification that has been repeatedly pushed by Carlo Pablito for clicks. He knows it's not quite right, but the incentives for media these days are what they are...
I would summarize the situation like this:
- Vancouver wants to incentivize some % of new development to be rental instead of condo
- For various reasons (some dumb, some legal) they ended up using the word "affordable" when defining some limits on said rental developments
- Newer-than-average buildings are understandably more expensive than average, so the limits are fairly high
It's a bad choice of words but the program is generally more ambitious than what other municipalities around the Lower Mainland do for rental housing. Please think twice before sharing this misleading information again.
Each of those condo forests house more people than the mile of suburban housing surrounding them.
I would say maybe half of the stations, but otherwise agreed.
I guess it's hard to get exact numbers on this, but the things I've read suggest that a lot of Vancouver Specials had multiple households right from the start. e.g. Barbara Pettit's excellent thesis:
"By the 1970s, the Special had a distinctive style and was spreading throughout the east side as the "popular plan." Neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, and residents began complaining about its size, its appearance and its use as a multi-family dwelling."
https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses...
Even relatively flat terrain can have "walk out basements" which make what is technically a basement feel more like a ground floor.
Tons of houses like that in Phinney Ridge.
This is somewhat aspirational, but I live in Vancouver and if/when we get PR, we'd like to buy a home and possibly want to renovate.
Condo living (or in local Canadian "Strata Living") has been a very mixed experience for us.
I'm interested to see what happens in the next couple of years — Ken Sim (Vancouver's new mayor) had significantly improving permitting speeds and decisions as a key plank in his platform. I'm curious to see how he and his party are planning to follow through on that.
It's nice to say, but I heard a consistent response from the Vancouver subreddit every time this has been brought up that permitting speeds in Vancouver have been more down to how hard it is to hire/train/retain code inspectors, than down to how many red-tape policies they need to evaluate a plan against. Even with a permanent budget increase for hiring code inspectors, given the training time, you wouldn't expect to see the effects within Sim's tenure. So it's questionable what he's actually planning to do here.
(One thing I personally think could help is to get major property developers to peer-review one-anothers' work for its adherence to code; or even to require, as a condition for allowing such firms to do any development in the city at all, that said firms loan some of the talent that would normally be designing to code to instead sit on the other side of the table as code-inspection attachés — like a very domain-specialized form of jury duty. Most large development firms are already experts in local building codes, given that they have to design to them; so why not use that existing talent base?)
Average salary : Canadian normal. (median $33K, 90% of people under 90K - Stats Canada and Canada Revenue Agency for sources circa 2015-ish). Need at least $300K/year to afford rent, and if you're not a multimillionaire, owning a home is out of reach. Well, except condos... then $200K+/year is ideal.
The rents are too damned high!
And yeah, there's a whole pile of homelessness and safety issues over that. That Vancouver has (on the whole) nicer climate than Seattle, let alone anywhere else in Canada - makes it "easier". I worry a lot about the people I know still stuck there.
Oh and if anyone's looking for causes, I recommend this podcast : https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/191-sold
FWIW the local market is fairly bimodal; there are the FAANG companies and those who keep up with them, and there are some local companies that still pay peanuts. The gap between those two is large.
I'm not sure about that. I'm sure there's a bit of both but Vancouver has remarkably complex (and often unique to Vancouver) policies for pretty much everything to do with real estate.