How to survive a housing crisis

An introduction to Vancouver

It’s time to talk about housing, because housing is about how we as a society conceptualize living. Because how and where we live is 100% related to the climate crisis and climate justice. Because the houses we build today are still going to be standing 50 years later.

This is the first in a series called How to Survive a Housing Crisis, which is about the struggles of making it work in Vancouver. I’ll be writing from my lived experience as a young, queer, racialized local, from my academic background in human geography and urban studies, and from what I’ve learned working with the provincial government (all opinions are my own).

Let's tackle the first question.

Is housing in Vancouver getting more unaffordable?

I found publicly-available data from StatsCan and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (federal housing branch). If we compare median incomes vs. income required to afford median rent (assuming people are paying 30% of income on rent in the primary rental market), you can see that the income required is growing larger year-over-year.

In 2020, if you made the median income in Vancouver ($40,000) you would be spending just over 40% of your income for a 1-bedroom rental. In 2015, if you were making the median income ($34,200) you would’ve have only been paying 35%.

This might be obvious, but it's clear that incomes are not rising fast enough to meet the pace of rents. And that's not even renter incomes, which I suspect are lower than the median. Something to think about.

Excited to share with y’all all the other housing things I’ve learned!