February 10, 2016

Ohrn Words: Do CACs add to the cost of housing?

From Ken Ohrn:

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Another piece of the discussion about housing prices in Vancouver. The City of Vancouver hired consultants Coriolis to report on CACs (Community Amenity Contributions*) and their effects.
To quote the conclusions:

There is no compelling evidence that CACs have constrained the pace of apartment development in Vancouver or contributed to increasing housing prices. The City absorbs over a third of all new apartments in the region, which is remarkable considering the large number of high density urban nodes under development across Metro Vancouver.
Nor is there evidence that CAC policy has constrained the pace of rezoning. Rezonings are adding development capacity at a rapid rate and the City has capacity for more than 20 years of development. CAC rates generally leave considerable financial incentive for land owners and developers.
Housing prices are high and rising in Vancouver because there is strong demand from many sources including local households wanting affordable homes, affluent households shifting into apartments from single detached units, and non-local buyers.
The City’s CAC policy is not restricting development. In fact, CACs have been associated with a large increase in the City’s capacity for new development, have paid for amenities that otherwise would have been funded by property taxes, and in some cases have created affordable housing units. CACs are not the cause of rising housing prices in the City of Vancouver.

The report is dated June 2014.

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*Community Amenity Contributions and Development Cost Charges.
CACs are negotiated by the City where a rezoning would result in a significant increase in the value of the land. The City then receives a percent, usually large, of that increase for public benefits. Development Cost Charges are a flat fee calculated on the size of the development for amenities in the district zoned for that particular DCC requirement.

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So why will the Province require a listing of the CACs and DCCs, as well as any other municipally imposed levy, on the cost of a house or condo?  Presumably because it makes local government the bad guy.  Disconnect the immediate charge from what the money will provide in the away of collective goods – the parks, the arts and community centres, the non-market housing – and then let the animosity build.  Hey, it worked for the transit referendum.

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Comments

  1. So why will the Province require a listing of the CACs and DCCs, as well as any other municipally imposed levy, on the cost of a house or condo?
    As you allude, Christy Clark is trying to turn a lemon into lemonade and create a wedge issue for the upcoming election campaign. The best defence is offence.
    Whether this will be effective is another matter.

      1. Not to mention public schools, teachers, unions in general,
        Further, let’s list the real estate fees, include those profitable, er, scams.

  2. CACs are all very nice but CACs do not grow on trees, someone has to pay them and this is obviously the end user, the buyer of property.
    Vancouver has acted over $500 million during the past five years. This wasn’t given to the city as charity.
    Note too that Coriolis, the company that gave the favourable report to their client, the City of Vancouver, is now working again with the City on recommendations for development of TheFlats.
    I’m not suggesting for a second that anything is wrong with this arrangement. They are based in Vancouver so they should receive commissions here too. I’m certain they are completely unbiased.

  3. Hmm, the city hires consultants to report on a policy that’s near and dear to everyone in city hall, and, surprise, the consultants say the policy is a good one.
    Leaving that aside, how can anyone believe that paying for city amenities like community centres and parks and the arts via CACs is a good thing? It’s like selling the silver to pay for food. That stuff should properly be reflected in property taxes, because they’re part of the costs of running the city. Using CACs to pay for these things hides the actual costs from the citizens of the city, and, worse, makes the city beholden to developers to provide amenities.

          1. Thomas has been here from New York (Real Estate Development) and San Fran (Berkeley) for just a few years. I guess he knows everything. He’s a Prof!

    1. CAC’s and DCC’s pay for growth, not for ‘running the city’. They are not to service/pay for existing residents. If there’s no growth, there’s no CAC’s or DCC’s but there’s theoretically no need to provide new services.
      You want new development, you need to pay for the impact of development. How you calculate how much you have to pay is relatively straight forward for things like sewer and water, it’s more nebulous for things like parkland.
      Of course home buyers pay for it in the end, as the end buyer always does for everything.

      1. I should add, current taxpayers do pay for some of the growth, that’s the assist factor. In some places it is 1%, in others 20%. Depends on the Council of the city in question, context, etc.

      2. I think we are missing that the price of an apartment is set by supply and demand. If the inputs, (CACs, cost of concrete etc.) into building something are too high the product is just not built. Lowering the CAC’s will not lower the price of the apartment nor does it imply the new owner pays for that new park. It is developer who pays by having less profit.

        1. Yes, but the problem is the unknown of CAC’s. If developer x knows the CAC’s are going to be y, then they offer z for the property. If they don’t know and guess or assume or ignore, and are then told CAC’s are going to be y after they’ve paid z1, then the complaints about CAC’s driving up housing start.

  4. The province had better be careful. The city could pull a Toronto, such as when Rob Ford commissioned a study on the illusory gravy train there. What the consultants he retained found was that the biggest city in the nation was 97% efficient.
    As one pundit reiterated, there was no gravy, and there was no train. And not a Ford in sight today either.
    I have a question: What could the province do if the Metro took it to court for not fulfilling its Constitutional responsibility to provide adequate support?
    Certainly, the mayors who would support this move would make enemies in the BC Liberal Party who seem to be profoundly anti-urban. But I really don’t see how Robertson and Corrigan and several others couldn’t be worse in their eyes as it is. The Defendant may claim that because cities in BC are under its Constitutional jurisdiction the case should be dismissed as frivolous. But that argument leads to the obvious question of an irresponsible lack of support for much overdue urban infrastructure like better transit, independent regional planning and governance.
    With 51% of the province’s annual GDP occurring within Metro borders, there is a tremendous amount of economic power that could exude significant leverage toward either better support or even independence if it came down to a long struggle. $110 billion in annual economic activity (7% of the entire nation’s in 2009) should count for more than the province currently cares to admit. Without the Metro, the BC economy would literally collapse.
    I wonder where the BC NDP stand on urban issues?

  5. Here is some news for you Eric & Bar:
    CACs or CDBs or whatever you wanna call them are common throughout the Metro. They are publicly conceived, publicly administered and publicly accountable, and information on them is available on each city’s Web site. Only the negotiations surrounding them remain in camera as private financial information may be discussed, but the results of the negotiations a always public. More times than not, the negotiations are long and very tough. CACs They are not some kind of hidden slush fund for politicians.
    Moreover, CACs are now common in most cities in Canada.
    This is not like “selling the silver to pay for food” unless you count air rights as silver. The developer gets an agreed upon increase in density, the city gets an agreed upon community amenity or cash in lieu of, the contractors keep their workers working longer with all the attendant economic multipliers, and best of all the public gets new day care centres, social or special needs housing units or grants to non-profits, parks, libraries and other amenities without additional tax draws. CACs are an effective tax-limiting mechanism.
    Where does the buck stop? With the wealthy purchasers of the new penthouse units that wouldn’t have come on stream without negotiated density increases. They can afford it. If they disagree with the policy, then they can always chose to not buy the unit.

    1. ” new day care centres, social or special needs housing units or grants to non-profits, parks, libraries and other amenities”
      All very nice. What if a Trump-like mayor comes in and wants firing-ranges, gas stations, parkades, martial arts studios, etc., ? OK too?

          1. Don’t just take the extreme and argue the idea is therefore not worth it. Plenty of places have set CAC rates tied to specific projects in specific areas.
            When those rates are known up front the developers factor then into their pro forma like they do all other assumptions. All that goes into the price paid for the developable land, the cost of those CAC’s are not at the feet of future home buyers.
            This is not new or innovative, it’s just that Vancouver refuses to have set rates so it’s speculation and assumptions run amok.

    1. Condon’s article is factually wrong. CAC’s are NOT unique to Vancouver. They are called Density Bonuses, Community Density Bonuses, Community Amenity Bonuses and a host of other handles in many cities across Canada. Several Metro munis have been using them for years. It’s most unique feature is that it remains outside the property tax system.
      Patrick Condon is deeply unhappy that Vancouver has chosen a path that is the antithesis of his own vision. It is very sad that parts of this vision are often profoundly anti-urban and monochromatic. Because of our geography and demographics there is a place for everything here …. high, mid and low-rise development, Eurotrams, trolleys, subways, bikes and Reeboks, laid back academia and risky innovation, as long as they support a sustainable urbanism and economy in the long run.

  6. I’m sorry, but absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. Economic theory strongly supports the notion that large, opaque taxes on a particular industry or product will raise the cost to consumers.
    This is equivalent to saying the tax incidence falls entirely on producers, which would be quite a claim.
    I teach this to my econ 101 students.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence
    How hard did they look for this evidence… just comparing apartment construction in different cities? They can’t know the counterfactual of what *would* have been without CACs without using some serious econometric analysis. Are they just looking for what they want to find? Is this blog just looking for what it wants to find?

    1. Yes, they could know the “counterfactual.” It’s called the existing zoning bylaw which governs height, floor area ratio, use, et cetera. When someone applies to rezone a site for additional density — which by law is a public process — it first has to be analyzed by the Planning Dept and ultimately approved by Council. If approved, the project is then rezoned as Comprehensive Development and often labourious negotiations lead to a CAC in return for a specified extra density. That is measureable.

      1. So infuriating. This blog is like slamming my head against the wall. The fundamental issue in empirical social science is the inability to conduct experiments or control for confounding variables. All we have is mostly observational evidence, where a large number of endogenously related variables moving together at the same time. Disentangling the birds nest to ensure correlations are causations is extremely hard.
        But you can always commission some report to find you can tax anything you want at random rates without any economic distortions. Because the whole planning profession relies on these sorts of activities.
        http://www.coriolis.ca/about/company-profile/
        These hacks don’t know what the bloody nuts they are doing. They have bachelors degrees in planning and marketing and they are commissioned to support policies bureaucrats want. That little blurb made me literally LOL.

        1. Hmmmm I have a sneaking suspicion if they ‘discovered’ what you wanted to hear they’d be a reputable planning firm with decades of experience.
          This whole ‘government just does whatever they want’ line is tiresome.
          And to you or anyone, I have yet to here an alternative or positive proposal for our to pay for new amenities attributable to growth.

        2. I don’t claim to have done an empirical analysis of the effects of CACs on housing prices. I don’t “want” them to discover anything! It just aggravates me hard when I see this utter bullshit being used to influence policy! If you want a proper empirical analysis, hire an econometrician from a reputable university like UBC or SFU.
          If I used solid empirical methods and found this result, I’d be well on my way to publishing in the American Economic Review and getting a tenure track position in a university. This would be a REMARKABLE discovery… if CACs did not distort prices or housing supply… RE-bloody-MARKABLE. Because it’s almost certainly not true.

          1. I guess I don’t understand how you can say you’ve done no deep analysis into the topic but then be incredulous that the result might not be what you already think it is.

      2. You take the new and deduct the existing. Study many rezonings over time and you may see a trend, or a correlation. There seems to be a great reluctance to dig deeper for more politically sensitive data to arrive at the point of claiming a ream of data is the god honest truth. Until then then it’s all conjecture to prove CACs or foreign buyers cause the majority of housing price increases.
        Another two points. The rising value is mostly in the land, not the house in lower density parts of Vancouver. Detached homes on open lots have a separate and steeper price increase rate than apartments. These are significant issues that are often folded together in these discussions and distort the facts.
        Huh. I managed to say that without using words like “endogenously.”

    2. The cost is born the consumer in a competitive market, for example if an auction was used to sell city land then a tax put on it yes it would be born by the final home owner. But in reality the land can not be sold via auction since we have to go through a long expensive planning process involving public consultation. This means that the tax is born on the producer through reduced profits.

  7. Stephen Quinn on CBC’s Feb 10 Early Edition interviewed a real estate analyst who concluded the interview by stating that CACs definitely increase the cost of housing. In fact he compared them to gasoline taxes, saying that politicians preferred the “hidden” nature of the levies as it allowed them to avoid the political hit of raising, allegedly, more visible taxes. The interview is at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/programs/theearlyedition/real-estate-analyst-on-shadow-flipping-and-the-bigger-picture-1.3442978..

    1. It’s not clear how he calculates that. How on Earth are 2 floors of affordable / subsidized housing encapsulated in the “higher price” category when included in a large development where the unit costs of construction are lower than if they were built as a stand-alone project?
      How do you rate the higher costs of special needs housing? As “costly development”?
      How does he calculate the average cost of housing in the absence of CAC’s? Are the higher property tax rates charged for public amenities without CACs not a “housing cost” when applied to the operating side of the ledger along with heating and repairs?
      I think a broader view is needed when claiming CACs lead to “higher” housing costs.

  8. What is a typical CAC, say per sq ft ?
    What is a typical DCC, say per sq ft ?
    What other typical fees beyond those does a developer pay in Vancouver ?
    How is Vancouver different here (if at all) than say Surrey or Abbotsford or Kelowna ?

  9. It’s been questioned in the past, so there’s nothing particularly unusual about it being raised again (are people being more critical because it’s the Province asking this time?)
    Frances Bula from 2012:
    http://www.francesbula.com/uncategorized/vancouvers-community-amenity-contributions-making-density-livable-or-making-housing-unaffordable/
    BC Chamber of Commerce from 2014 (figure seem to be off on the $148M figure (?):
    http://www.bcchamber.org/policies/removing-uncertainty-community-amenity-contributions

    Along the Cambie Corridor, the CAC charges are $45 per square foot or $33,750 for a 750 square foot apartment.

    http://www.bcchamber.org/policies/removing-uncertainty-community-amenity-contributions
    Some past data here:
    http://www.vancouvermarket.ca/tag/community-amenity-contribution/

    1. Without trawling through every link perhaps you can paraphrase references to what value the CAC revenue will bring to the community in the form of public amenities, additional construction jobs, etc.

    1. Thanks. What I see here is roughly $12-$15/sq ft in a high rise. Let’s assume Vancouver is higher, say 150-200% of this ? What else is charged to a developer ? What is a typical CAC ? What other fees ?
      With downtown land costs around $175-250/buildable sq ft and build costs north of $300/ft these fees are fairly small still, even for Vancouver, are they not ?

  10. William J Stern used to be the chairman and chief executive officer of New York State’s Urban Development Corporation. A few years later he wrote this about the big schmear in an article for The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
    Funny how it seems so pertinent.
    “Kafkaesque regulations have turned builders into a cartel of political wheeler-dealers.”
    “A flurry of recent news stories report that a scarcity of apartments and office space is putting a damper on New York City’s ebullient economy. Businesses are having trouble hiring skilled help because out-of-town candidates balk at the high rents and hard-to-find apartments.
    “During the past ten years, the Planning Department has been the law and the law has been whatever suited the fancy of city planners.”
    “No longer can an architect look at the zoning map and tell you exactly what you can build on it,”
    ” the developer must publicly agree to bankroll the politician’s pet causes. To get then-borough president Ruth Messinger on board for his Riverside South development project on Manhattan’s West Side, Donald Trump had to promise to set aside for low-income residents 10 percent of the luxury apartments he wanted to build and spend another $5 million sprucing up the 72nd Street subway station. The City Council piled on its own demands before giving Trump the okay: he’d have to cough up $500,000 on senior-citizen, youth, and job-training programs and agree to hire a quota of 20 percent women and minorities on the project. Where else in the nation would a developer have to agree to fund social services?”
    “How far these agreements get honored is unclear. Such deals would require an efficient and talented bureaucracy to monitor the developer’s compliance—something noticeably absent in New York. But the politician at least gets to announce that he’s shaking down the rich developer for a “progressive” goal, while the developer gets the green light to build his apartments.
    This political and regulatory rigamarole is a major reason building a high rise in New York costs 17 percent more than in nearby Jersey City and 31 percent more than in Atlanta, and that it takes five years to put up a structure that would take 18 months to build elsewhere in the region. There’s a hidden cost, too, the authors of a recent New York University law school study claim: projects never get started because of the “chilling effect” New York’s building climate has on builders. No wonder New York lacks office space and housing and that rents are so high. ”
    This was 16 years ago. In New York. There’s nothing new under the sun.

    1. People like Trump always want to build higher, denser, cheaper and more profitably than what is permissible. Thank the god of your choice there is a mature city administration to put a damper on it and seek a return to society for the heavy impact that development imposes on it.

  11. As others have stated here already, the big problem with CACs is that they are a highly opaque form of taxation. Not only that, in Vancouver, where they are negotiated on a case-by-case basis with developers in a highly non-transparent fashion, the potential for abuse and manipulation is enormous. Who can say that all developers are treated equally, and that having the right contacts in the right places doesn’t influence the amount the developer has to pay?
    The city and politicians are quite happy to keep citizens in the about what it costs to run the city (and yes, building community centres is part of the cost of running the city). If we all knew the true costs, there might be a bit of restlessness amongst the natives… The city has become addicted to CACs so that property tax increases can be avoided, which suits those in power, but is unhealthy for the rest of us, because it gives developers significant, disproportional influence over the governance of the place.

    1. As others here have repeatedly stated above, CAC’s are not opaque or secretive. That is illegal. They are negotiated on a case-by-case basis during the public rezoning process. They are recorded. They are posted on every city’s Web site.
      The negotiations are conducted in private with many parties where private property acquisition and financing information is discussed (a normal procedure in every city), but the results are always posted in open source formats.
      CAC’s have many, many benefits, the major one being saving the taxpayers millions by negotiating for private funds to build public amenities. But if you are offended by that, then by all means run for office on a platform of eliminating them and increasing taxes to pay for parks, community centres and special needs or subsidized housing.

      1. I guess your definitions of opaque and transparent are different from mine. The CACs are negotiated in secret on a case-by-case basis, the rates and conditions are only known to the city and the developer, and whether the dollar amounts claimed are reasonable for the benefit provided are known only to the developer. Sure the results are posted afterwards. I’m sure in some people’s minds that’s highly transparent.
        As it turns out, I don’t like paying my property taxes any more than the next person. But I pay them and I understand the need for them. It’s just that I believe that we, as citizens, should know exactly what the costs are of the benefits we expect to get, and should be able to make informed decisions as to whether it’s worth it or not.
        And I really you hope you don’t believe that taxpayers are being saved millions through CACs being used to build our public amenities. We’re paying for those amenities however you look at it. The people who pay more for their condos because of the CAC are paying for the amenities. The people who rent the condos are paying for it in their rents. The higher price of goods in the city pay for it. There is no free lunch.

        1. People don’t ‘pay more’ for their condos because of CAC’s. People pay whatever the market determines.
          You’re confusing amenities required for growth vs amenities we have now.

        2. You would be shocked, bar, absolutely shocked at how much screaming and fist pounding occurs behind closed doors between planners and managers, who are legally bound to represent the local taxpayer’s interests, and developers over CACs and all other negotiated aspects of their developments. I have seen how much better the developments are as the result and the public benefits that flow from them, even though the developer would be reluctant to admit it until after the second glass at the planner’s retirement party.

          1. I’ll take your word for it. I have no choice, because these negotiations are conducted in secret (as far as regular citizens are concerned). Hence my starting point, the use of CAC’s is an opaque way to extract taxes and hide the true cost of running the city and providing the amenities we all want.

  12. I presume that CACs are tax deductible? So, again, CACs are a way for the municipality to indirectly take provincial and federal taxes for their own pet items.
    If my town wants a pre-teen shooting range in the town centre, along the waterfront, we can call on our developer friends who want to build some condos. Change the zoning to give them more height, as long as they put in a shooting range on the ground floor. We’ll get the local gun club to run it. The condos will all have water views so they’ll be a bit pricey but they’ll sell.
    We’ll put into the zoning permit the contribution, along with a receipt, for our developer buddies. They then use that as an expenditure which they can use to reduce their taxable earnings, saving taxes. Sweet.

    1. Again, you’re just being silly to avoid the point. Using the extreme ridiculous scenario to prove why something is wrong doesn’t fly.
      What’s the problem with CAC’s when they are pre-determined, transparent, and guaranteed to go to certain projects in certain neighbourhoods? Do you not think new development should pay for new amenities?
      Again, I don’t get your point or your alternative.

      1. No. The Cambie Corridor was subject to policy that allowed mass rezoning of many lots that were amalgamated into many separate developments. Coal harbour was a collection of properties surrounding the old CPR lands that were rezoned collectively. Large properties like Oakridge and the TransLink bus depot on Oak x 41st (14 acres) are hardly “spot” sites.

  13. The area where the city is probably most vulnerable on rezonings is taking a disproportionate share of the lift in land value on subject properties. However, rezoning is within its purview and there is great responsibility in the decision to proceed, especially on large areas like the Cambie Corridor where significant densification will impact city utilities and services (although this is also covered in DCCs, which may need to be recalculated). I believe Michael Geller addressed this some time ago.
    Then again, no one to my knowledge has proven that even if the city decreased its share of the land lift, that doing so would result in lower housing and commercial space prices, though in theory developers could do so with an increase in their share of land lift that theoretically could offset purchase prices. My guess in today’s red hot market is that most developers will keep the increase and set prices to the highest possible level buyers are willing to pay.

  14. Replying to many things here, because the indenting makes things impossible to read. Kind of opaque, like CACs, ha ha.
    First of all, I live in Vancouver and I pay my property taxes, and my kids use the community centres and parks and trails and what not. I’d much rather all of that stuff was paid for openly through property taxes and not CACs and the like. Of course our property taxes would go up, but this would have three salutary effects, IMHO:
    1. We would all know what it costs for the amenities we enjoy. Then we could have rational discussions about what amenities we would like and how much we want to pay.
    2. There would be some new-found discipline in budgeting and expenditure in the city. The councillors we elect would actually have to do their jobs and take hard decisions about priorities and expenditures. Right now it’s easy for them to hide behind the slush fund that is the stream of CAC money, which allows them to keep property tax increases well below the cost of actually running the city.
    3. Developers would lose at least some of their sway over the city, because there would be less incentive for everyone to approve projects that bring large chunks of CAC money with them. You can argue all you want about how city staff bang their fists to extract more money, but we all know that the city couldn’t run without that money, so they’re going to give the developer what they want in the end.
    You all that are in the property development industry only see your side of the coin. Maybe should step outside and see what the rest of us outsiders see.

    1. barfoo, the issue with just adding it to your taxes, well, one of the issues, is that you are then paying for new amenities required because of the growth. We only need that new park or new soccer field because development is occurring, no development, no need for that new park or soccer field. So, by relieving the developer of providing that, you’re just putting that burden on yourself.
      The process in Vancouver is far from perfect and I’ve said here repeatedly the process should be more transparent (like the process in Surrey) but I don’t know why you’d be ok with paying for development driven amenities when you have nothing to do with the need for those new amenities.
      CAC’s do not pay for ‘running the City’, that’s the second time that’s been said. They pay for things required because of growth.

    2. I am not in the property development industry. The often heated arguments behind closed doors are the push-pull of developers wanting the rings of Saturn with city staff cutting them back halfway to the moon. Sometimes I wish these meetings were made public, then the rhetoric, whining, bombast and stubbornness would be somewhat downplayed. Those private conversations are only an intitial part of the rezoning process. The rest is public.
      Your interpretation infers collusion between a city and developers. No matter what donations developers make to political parties, it’s staff who do the processing and must remain neutral and professional. Otherwise they are open to lawsuits and dismissal. I am firmly in support of city staff on the frontlines who put up with so much bullshit from multiple directions, not the least from critics who haven’t a clue. Planners with experience in design, construction and people skills are the best, as are experienced but very, very underappreciated technical staff who do most of the work without enough person power. These folks often experience several wrenching changes of regimes at the top too, but must carry on.

  15. Glad you asked the question, Ken Ohrn! My view is that CAC’s, while by no means “free”, do not add in any measurable way to the overall cost of housing. It is the marketplace that dictates how much the buying public will/can pay for housing and, as we know, Vancouver’s super-heated (in fact, distorted by flush off-shore investors and the low CDN. $) real estate market seems infinitely capable of quickly scooping up whatever housing product is offered. If CAC’s were to be reduced, with a consequent reduction to funding of needed public amenities, this would not bring down by one penny the selling price of new housing. Developers would simply pocket the reduction. Just to review, the $ value of a CAC “extracted” in a rezoning is calculated based on the market value of the increase in proposed density over zoned density, minus a developer profit factor (15% a few years ago but now, I’m told, more like 20+% since developers complained the lower figure was insufficient incentive). This value has typically worked out on spot rezonings to about $43/s.f. of increased density, with which the City can fund its choice of needed public amenities from a lengthy, declared shopping list (sorry, no gun ranges listed!).
    In certain areas where a neighbourhood policy plan incorporating specified maximum increases in density has been put in place through a public process, such as the Cambie Corridor, the stated (in the Plan) CAC has gone up to as much as $55/s.f. of density increase. So we needn’t shed any tears for developers not having a very good, if not precise idea of how much CAC will be extracted …they know that they are buying additional density from the City and are expert in fleshing out a pro forma by which they can determine whether a given project will be profitable enough. For Thomas Beyer, Vancouver DCL’s are now set at $13/s.f. of ALL proposed floor area.
    As for opaqueness, it is true that the first probes by a developer re: the City’s appetite for a particular potential spot rezoning are behind closed doors. But at the earliest possible moment, when the proposal actually appears to be serious (quite a number are merely fishing expeditions!), the City has been getting better recently at having the developer host Open Houses where the essential components of the proposition as well as the design are publicly outlined. And, of course, when all aspects including detailed financial breakdown of “the deal” regarding CAC’s and where the money will go have been determined, these are documented in public City Staff rezoning reports leading to a Public Hearing.
    All this is predicated on the premise that increasing density IN THE APPROPRIATE LOCATIONS, i.e. first and foremost, where an area is well served by transit, is not only desirable but necessary for Vancouver’s healthy, sustainable (in all the ways that this word implies) growth (Please refer to Pricetags very nest post.…ULI (2016 ULI Europe Conference: Richard Rogers on Density…)). And as any economist would insist, the most direct way to bring prices down is to increase supply! So bring on hundreds, no, thousands of new units in the Cambie Corridor, Little Mountain, Jericho, Arbutus Corridor, Joyce-Collingwood, Norquay, Broadway/Commercial, etc., etc….no shortage of opportunity here. All this, PROVIDED (and this is a big proviso) that the increased density, with all its physical ramifications (including increased building size), can be configured in an urban design that truly enhances, environmentally and experientially, and brings new vitality to the affected context/neighbourhood, in accord with well-documented principles of livability, public realm, neighbourliness, etc. contained in City discretionary urban design policies and guidelines. These stated urban design principles provide quality-based latitude for innovation, against which an individual proposal or a neighbourhood master plan must be tested. This will mean that those Vancouverites who lament the loss of ’50’s and ’60’s bungalows along Cambie, to be replaced by 6-storey apartments, and on major, huge sites such as Pearson-Dogwood and Langara Gardens, replaced with a mix of numerous hi-rise and mid-to-low rise buildings along with expansive, integrated public open space and a host of other community amenities for all….well, these folks will have to live with this new urban, rather than suburban reality. The thoroughness and rigour of this process and the testing of a proposal’s qualitative urban design response first, before City Staff buy- in to its increased density and the public goodies the resulting CAC’s would deliver, is what led to Vancouver becoming over the previous two decades a leader in best practices of urban development and a model for growing cities world-wide.
    While much good work by the Planning Dep’t continues, there has, unfortunately, been a deterioration in the pursuit of the planning and urban design quality that up until about 2011 had given the City its well-deserved reputation. The recent early buy-in to huge density increases (triple and quadruple the zoned density) in too many politically motivated spot rezoning projects in the past 5 or so years, however justified on the back of consequent public benefits, and then driven through the process, despite internal concerns raised by City Staff, by the then City Manager (since fired), has resulted in compromise to, if not abandonment of proven principles of exemplary Vancouver urban design, typically resulting in excessive building scale and a compromised relationship to neighbouring development (urban “fit”). This has led to an understandable loss of confidence by the public in the process and a resultant questioning and cynicism about where we are headed if this continues. Some prominent folks have even suggested that the way to redress this is to hold our breath for 3 or 4 years and come up with a brand new comprehensive City Plan, deluding themselves that this would be the path to solving housing unaffordability and a myriad of other city growing pains, including public dissatisfaction! I would argue that Vancouver has already in place a comprehensive Plan combining city-wide broad policies laying out long-term growth objectives along with its unique discretionary zoning and design guidelines for each and every district, neighbourhood and street of the city. This system, with core urban design principles carefully and thoughtfully pursued, combined with evolving new neighbourhood plans tailored through now exhaustive public consultation for those areas requiring updated visions, had been working quite well, thank you, until its underlying principles were undermined by the ill-advised interventions mentioned above, squandering the good will built up over the previous 20+ years of the generally outstanding performance that we see on the ground in a host of significant developments and evolving neighbourhoods.
    With the forthcoming hiring of a new Director of Planning AND a new City Manager comes the opportunity of restating the core principles of Vancouver’s present Discretionary Zoning system which upholds the requirements of exemplary urban design that captures the uniqueness of this city we all love, as well as, of course, updating it as needed to reflect today’s and tomorrow’s needs to accommodate more density in consort with expanded public transit and other public infrastructure. At the level of architecture, even the visceral criticism of ubiquitous glass towers could be addressed by encouraging greater variety in more innovative building forms and inviting public spaces. Finding the right individuals for these two key positions and then giving them the mandate and authority to do their jobs (including the ability to say “NO” to Council (and explain why) if too much density is being foisted onto a site or neighbourhood that would compromise proper urban design). That’s my two cents.

  16. The above is one of the best posts I have read on Price Tags or other urban issues sites. I would nominate Ralph’s piece for its own lead article.
    By perchance, Ralph, are you applying for the position of Director of Planning?

    1. Thanks for nomination
      .
      Sorry, I’m not politically astute enough for Dir. of P’l’g position. I’d get myself fired within a month….leaving me without a sweet severance package!

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