Douglas Todd: Vancouver's 'bait and switch' on below-market housing disturbs critics

The development signboard for this tower project at 453-461 East 10th Ave. in Vancouver said it would include 20 per cent of units at significantly below-market rental rates. That's no longer quite the case.

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The City of Vancouver’s reversal on its affordable-housing rules has been called a “bait and switch.”

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The term refers to a deceptive tactic where an organization “baits” clients with an attractive offer, but then “switches” it for a lower-quality option after it is too late for clients to withdraw from the agreement.

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In this case, critics of Vancouver’s highly touted “below-market rental” policies, including the watchdog organization, Cityhallwatch, are feeling tricked by the city’s early commitments to make builders offer 20 per cent of units in their new rental projects at significantly lower than the going rate.

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The City of Vancouver has spent the past six years and more hyping its below-market rental schemes. More than 129 proposed highrises and other rental buildings had at one point been approved to include this so-called “inclusionary” zoning.

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But, slowly and quietly, developers and politicians are reneging.

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City politicians and planners “really promoted the below-market units in the name of affordable housing. But they’ve been watering down their policies since 2023,” says Robert Renger, a former senior planner for Burnaby.

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Much of the public accepted politicians’ arguments that the below-market units were a trade off for allowing developers to erect taller, higher-density buildings with less green space, while waiving many community development fees, which go to such things as sewers and parks.

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As an engaged citizen, Renger has been monitoring development decisions in Vancouver for years. But he’s found it especially challenging to track the city’s moves in regard to its “inclusionary” pledges.

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“It’s hard to get information out of the City of Vancouver. They make many things too complicated and difficult to understand. I have trouble following a lot of it.” And his career, he said, has been in professional planning.

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Still, Renger has so far counted at least 23 different rental projects the city has allowed to backtrack on their vows to offer rents 10 to 20 per cent below market rates.

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Here are some examples:

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East 10th Ave. and Guelph St.

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City council posted a large sidewalk development sign for an 18-storey rental highrise on this tree-lined street with eclectic duplexes and laneway houses. The project is one of more than scores of residential towers recently approved under the massive Broadway plan.

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The signboard said about 20 per cent of the 172 units would be “below-market rentals.” That means they would be rented at rates roughly one-fifth lower than what the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. considers the city’s average rents.

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However, this year Renger and others discovered the city’s general manager of planning, Josh White, had issued a memo amending the initial agreement with the developer of the 453-461 East 10th site. It allows the builder to rent the units for more money, at the same level as the city’s average rents.

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Screenshot from City of Vancouver’s public notice of a development application for 453-461 East 10th. It highlighted a commitment to making about 20 per cent of the units below-market. But council sharply increased the rents in 2026.

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White allowed the East 10th project’s rent rates to rise in light of the city’s new rental development relief program, which some critics are referring to as a “bailout” program for developers. The city said Friday that 20 other projects have taken advantage of this “relief” program.