Stephen Rees’s blog

National Post

The Canadian Real Estate Association reported 75,476 homes changed hands in the first quarter of 2008, down 13% from the first quarter of 2007. In March, sales dropped 18.7% from the same month the year before, including a 39.7% slide in Calgary, a 34% drop in Edmonton and a 22.2% drop in Toronto.

Average prices rose just 5.5% to $327,620 in the first quarter over the first quarter of 2007, the smallest price increase since the fourth quarter of 2001.

So the sellers are holding out for higher prices against weaker demand at present. But that won’t last long.

Pretty much the same story was reported on Friday here

Sales edged down and new listings took another big jump during April in Greater Vancouver’s real estate markets, although so-called benchmark prices remain higher than they did a year ago, according to real estate board figures.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported 3,218 sales through the Multiple Listings Service, a five-per-cent decline from the same month a year ago.

This is of course just the start of the turn. Markets do not rise continuously over long periods, and the surprise is that ours has taken so long to slow down. And of course the local pundits are still “talking up” the market in the hopes of keeping the buyers interested.

board president Dave Watt, in a news release, said homes, on average, took six fewer days to sell than in April of last year

There are also people who think Vancouver is different - for a wide variety of reasons, of which the least convincing is the Olympics. A two week sports festival affects rentals and leases not sales.

The local trend I find disturbing is that of pre-sold condos turning out to be uneconomic to build. The local building and contracting market is very definitely overheated, and is being blamed for all sorts of project cost increases. That is another reason for thinking that our earlier trajectory could not be sustianed for much longer.

That does not mean there is enough housing - or that people are adequately housed. Because the market does not concern itself with such issues. Sadly, at present, government doesn’t either. Now is the time for government to start moving back into the affordable home business, as private sector projects start to dry up and resources become available again. But that would require a government that is aware, flexible and responsive.

Nah — not gonna happen

This is a departure into Gordon Price territory. There is an interesting development at 41st and East Boulevard I went to look at today. It has been there since 2000 so I am sure others know more about this than I do (I did determine it won a Georgy Award in 2001).

It is next to the former CP Arbutus line, which once was an interurban and has been looked at now and again as a potential LRT route. With of course massive resistance from residents who now enjoy what is still recognisably a streetcar village with good local transit - trolleybuses on 41st and Arbutus, and express buses to UBC, and a few blocks from the B Line on Granville.

The name is a bit sad I think. Like that one down at Steveston, the building simply marks where a station once was. But the building is an unusual mixed use development.

It is a four storey apartment building that faces on to East Boulevard. The apartments have a typically over arching name. Does anybody take these seriously?

And this is not “affordable” housing. This, after all, Kerrisdale. But the ground floor is, mostly, a London Drugs store. The frontage of the store is on to West 42nd Street which is not part of the original retail frontages which are on West Boulevard and 41st. One sore point for me is that London Drugs is one of those retailers who does not think that window displays are important. That may be that they do not affect sales per square foot, but they do change the interest of the street. I have noticed in other mixed use developments where retail is on the ground with housing over, that it is not unusual for the stores to have windows that are left blank, with blinds down behind them.

There must have been considerable up zoning over whatever was there before. It is considerably denser than the development on the other side of 42nd, and includes retail and residential but allows both to function without getting in each others way. The store has underground parking (as do the residents in a separate gated area) offering two hours free off street in an area which has metered on street places. The parking garage has two elevators one into the store’s ground floor and and the other to all the floors of the apartment building.

But what was a real surprise to me was that when I entered the apartment building, got off the elevator at the third floor and walked to the back there was a complete pedestrian street of town houses on top of the drugstore!

The level of detail is good, although I was a bit surprised that there is a flight of stairs between the third floor and the “street”. A level access would have been much smarter I think - and at these prices (a 2 bedroom townhouse here is currently listed at $958,800) I would expect it. But that is perhaps a minor cavil. The fountain was a nice touch, if a bit primitive.

When you look around most of Vancouver’s streetcar villages, the retail is nearly always single storey. And obviously this was not a cheap development. More than one level of underground parking will see to that. Now if there had been LRT at the front door, could some of that parking have been relinquished? Especially if there were some co-op cars located there? London Drugs is of course both a downtown and suburban retailer, but does seem wiling to be a bit more adventurous in picking locations. In the centre of Richmond the store is at “Plaza level” (1 floor up) of Westminster at No 3 - next to mostly restaurants at that level. The BCAA and an optician got the largest ground floor spaces.

But what really strikes me is the lost opportunity. The tracks are still there, unused since the brewery at Burrard stopped taking grain by rail. There would be no need for special working relatiosnhips with frieght trains - the last one ran years ago. CP is still the owner, bit the City seems to think they can get the right of way for a greenway. Certainly CP is not happy at the loss of potential development revenues. And meanwhile the tracks rust. And the roads are busy.

Sun

It seems to me that this article deliberately conflates two issues. We need a lot more housing for people who cannot afford to buy or pay market rents. This would not be such a huge issue if payments to people on various forms of social assistance had been set at a reasonable level. Far too often people who depend on pensions or welfare and other programs have to chose between rent or food, and if it wasn’t for the food banks would be forced to beg. This is a disgrace and has been for far too long. And the main justification for keeping government spending on the poor low is that the rich need tax breaks more than the poor need to survive.

But the article starts not with “social housing” but with a treatment facility. And a man called Ernie Mendoza, who is against a proposal to build a 32-bed drug-recovery and supportive-housing facility on a residential street in Richmond. And who has zero credibility but manages to rabble rouse based on quite unfounded fears. And people like him are one reason that so many facilities get crammed into the downtown eastside, which is probably the worst place for this kind of facility. The research simply establishes what is obvious to thinking people. The patients who live in drug-recovery and supportive-housing are getting better - that is why they need somewhere to recover. The people Ernie fears are not in recovery programs. They probably have all kinds of problems, but they continue to “self medicate” with a variety of substances.

Ernie also seems to think that somehow it is only “other people” who have mental illnesses or who drop through the increasingly tatty social safety net. And he is utterly devoid of compassion and is simply in thrall to the bizarre paper wealth that property owners have been accruing, a process that has distorted all kinds of relationships.

It is also true that people who sell real estate sell the area as much as the home. And developers like to put up the same kind of houses in the same place, partly because it cuts development cost, but it also makes it easier to sell to different demographics - and we like to buy where “people like us” live. The worst manifestation is the gated community, but if you think about it the condo with the security lock is the same kind of place, with its private recreation facilities, an exclusive clubhouse and pool.

We seem to be very good at throwing up buildings very fast. But building complete communities is much harder. We at least seem to have abandoned the Capraesque fantasy that helping poor people buy homes “makes them better people”. But as the debate I am having about :sink estates” shows, we really do not know very much about how to make places that people actually want to live in.

One contributory factor is the isolation that is brought about by car use. It is not unusual where I live to only see people in their cars - not standing on their own feet. They come and go through their garage with its remote door opener - and the only people seen outside their homes are the contractors who come once a week to clean up the yard with leaf blowers. They must spend a lot of time indoors watching television. For that is where they get their view of society and they are highly fearful. They have elaborate alarm systems, and some have cctv cameras as well as motion detectors. Even the letter carrier is kept at bay.

We have been told that our neighborhoods are desirable for grow ops, and it is clear that you can hide a high security drug lab or marijuana farm very easily when they look just like the house next door. Because they are just as paranoid about callers.

And if people like me start to talk about how we need to reinvent the suburbs, and make them more sociable communities we are alleged to be “social engineers”. If we are to avoid the pockets of poverty that spread to become “no go” areas like the famous sink estates or “the projects” we have to build places that encourage a greater social mix. Many different income levels, stages of life, occupations, ethnicities all in the same place. So we start to realise that we are first and foremost all human, and our differences are to be celebrated not feared.

UPDATE April 24 - Article from the Straight with some actual information

Sun

I am not going to comment on the rights and wrongs of this case. But most places in the region recognize that housing affordability and elder care are very big issues indeed. The building code and municipal regulations about secondary suites, not so much.  And yes I have a personal interest, because of the place I am renting while waiting for the house market to collapse.

But if you want to know what increased density looks like, take a gander at the houses we have been building, and realise that most of the larger ones either are occupied by extended families, or have “mortgage helpers”. And most municipalities have decided to turn a blind eye to them, or at least not been too agressive about enforcement. And some have done the right thing and made them legal.

If you want to scare people, talk about density. Because they will think of high rises. But what looks like the archetypal single family, ground oriented residence may be nothing of the kind.  And it poses very little threat at all. And has been there all the time we were talking about how density would destroy the area. And, of course, it didn’t.

Every homeless person costs system $55,000, an amount that could buy supported housing for each of them

Lori Culbert, files from Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, March 21, 2008

Once again an academic social science study supports what most of us had suspected for a very long time. The right wing politicians have stuck to their discredited social policies for far too long. The problem is that the reality does not coincide with their preferred theories.

Sadly many of us have been propping up the failures of our politicians - with the best of intentions. But I am surprised it has taken us this long to work out the food banks made cuts to welfare workable. That the huge amounts of charitable efforts with the homeless have simply perpetuated the injustice of our failed housing market and the point blank refusal of governments of all political shades and levels to acknowledge their responsibilities. The people who work with the homeless and the distressed typically burn out themselves. They work ridiculously long hours for poor salaries, and they feel responsible for the failings of the system. We leave front line mental health care to police officers.

Astonishing to me is the arrogance of the conservative - who is also so often these days a fundamentalist Christian too - who asserts that government should not get involved - except to lock up law breakers. As though prisons have ever solved any social issue. But you will find many people whose knee jerk response is to every problem is a tax cut and “law and order”.

The study argues homelessness has been increasing since the 1980s because of rising inflation, rents and unemployment, along with a decline in social assistance and cutbacks in government housing programs.

You might also want to think about what a lower than poverty level minimum wage does too - and a hospital system that relies on lotteries to buy basic equipment. Or a government that thinks casinos are a good way to increase revenues.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman was also not available for comment today.

To see the complete study go to: www.carmha.ca.

Trevor Boddy, The Globe and Mail

This follows on nicely from Michael Geller’s Lessons from Around the World. An architect in London has been trying to recreate the social diversity that used to make so many of the now over priced fashionable areas interesting. He has also noticed that if he puts in mixed use that includes shops too small to appeal to the big chains, the retail environment improves too.

It’s one of those ideas that when you read it, it seems so obvious you wonder why it hasn’t been tried before. But as Michael explained last night developers are herd animals that make sheep look like individualists.

Trevor Boddy also has taken the time to spell out what this would mean here and I will break from my usual practice and let him have a lot of space.

In Vancouver, our existing models for social housing provision have broken down, be it the 20 per cent of site areas set aside for affordable housing that then never get government funding, or the hyper-concentration in the Downtown Eastside of what little social housing does actually get built.

We now hear talk of the government reneging on its commitment to the Little Mountain social housing site (west of Main Street, south of 33rd Avenue) by redeveloping it as market housing, and market housing alone.

The social housing units promised for this project may instead be shipped to another part of the city, almost certainly further east.

Vancouver needs to stick by its long-established policies promoting variety in housing tenures and types, and reject this Faustian tradeoff of less diversity for more units elsewhere.

One of Vancouver’s historic strengths is its social and racial integration. Eastside arterial strips need to be developed with much denser concentrations of market housing and new offices, but we also need creative ways to integrate the needy, the aged, and the creative into our equivalents of Sloane Square.

Some of Paul Davis and Partners’ ideas on display in the Duke of York Square formula might work for Robson, South Granville, Dunbar or West 41st.

Miro Cernetig talks to Larry Beasely

The ostensible reason for the article is that we have moved up another of those best city lists.

These rankings take our attention off the question that’s really at hand: With a million more people expected to be here by 2030, how are we going to stay on the cutting edge of urban planning that’s put us in the livability big leagues?

Larry of course is building not one but two cities in the dessert of Abu Dhabi and

“I’m learning we’re not as far ahead on some of this stuff as I thought we were,” he says.

Which is refreshing. The problem with these rankings is they have gone to our head - or at least to the collective heads of the planners. And upstart furriners like me who keep saying “The Emperor has no clothes” are simply not listened to. But Larry, with his OC and new perspective will be.

The trouble I have is that they think it is about buildings and especially cultural institutions. Which seems to me to reflect the priorities of Marie Antoinnette.

There are some very basic things we need to be doing - and architects are not going to be the most important component of that, neither are the problems or their solutions the exclusive domain of the City of Vancouver. No doubt working for a Crown Prince with few budget constraints is a heck of a lot easier than herding cats, but in a metropolitan area being run (and ruined) by the province, that is what has to be done.

For starters, there is the problem of housing, and the related issues of mental health and welfare. These are basic social problems - and in my mind the quality of society is measured not by its glitzy buildings or cultural institutions, but by the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens. And right now the only thing that seems to be grabbing our attention is how to conceal the extent of our social policy collapse during the weeks of and around the 2010 Olympics. Lack of affordability of homes to buy is actually the least of it. We are supposed to have free at the point of service for public health, yet people with multiple diagnoses are simply turned away from treatment. We shy away from creating more and better public spaces for fear that the homeless will move in. We cannot buy a decent bus shelter or bench in case somebody finds it a better place to sleep than a doorway. And instead of building more public housing, we simply buy up a few more roach infested SROs, and do a half hearted job of trying to clean them up, displacing more people in the process. And actually destroying some of the best public housing we have, and rebuilding it to provide more marketable homes!

It is not the buildings that are the problem. They simply reflect what we are willing to pay for. And the answer here at present seem to be not much since the land costs so much. But it is the spaces in between the buildings that matter - and in the words of that tired old cliché we have private affluence and public squalor. We devote more space to car parking than almost any other activity. Our streets may be broad, but the sidewalks are mean. And public places where people gather are few and inadequate. And we concentrate on Vancouver - and especially downtown - as if that were the only place worth considering.

And I haven’t even started on our infrastructure. “World class” cities surely need good waste disposal (liquid and solid) as well as reasonable movement alternatives for goods as well as people.

Oddly enough there is no need to “push the envelope” with any of this, the solutions have been around for decades. We have just turned our back on them in our obsession with finance and profitability, as if that is the only way to measure worth. How can we boast of our GDP per capita - when so many of those heads have no pillow?

Douglas Farr Public Lecture

Tuesday, March 11, 7:30 pm SFU Harbour Centre

Streaming video

Doug Farr is a pivotal figure in sustainability today, leading and practicing at the crossroads of urbanism and green building. His firm, Farr Associates, holds the global distinction of being the first and only firm to design three LEED Platinum buildings.

At the same time, he has served as Chair of the LEED Neighborhood Development Core Committee, leading the development of sustainable performance metrics for urban development.

His new book, Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature, is a leading text on enhancing the sustainability of urbanism and his lectures are essential to understanding the pending sustainability convergence.

Doug Farr talked about integrating sustainable urbanism and agriculture on the urban edge. Having evaluated the sustainability of East Fraserlands, a project along Vancouver’s river edge planned by DPZ, Farr has been commissioned by Century Group (this evening’s sponsor) to consider opportunities for sustainable solutions at the suburban/rural edge in the Southlands of Tsawwassen.

Doug Farr is a Chicago architect. The mission of his practice is to design sustainable human environments. He has been closely involved in the leadership in to create LEED ND. Some of their developments include Lake Pulaski Transit Oriented Development (TOD) 1998 on the west side of Chicago. In 1999 they produced the first LEED platinum building, the Chicago Centre for Green Technology. “Urbanism did not come up at all in the first LEED standards” and there was no mention of building around transit. It was basically a systems integration approach – heating, lighting ,waste water and so on. Most clients really did not see the need: for instance at Orland Park TOD they were told to “remove the green stuff”.

Minneapolis at 46th & Hiawatha, a development relayed to a new LRT system there was a fight over density. Initially buildings had to be 1½ storeys, but after discussion it was agreed that four storeys could be accepted and an extra storey could be added if it was a green building. In Normal, Illinois he produced an Uptown development around a traffic circle: the area within the circle was used for stormwater detention, all the buildings were LEED certified.

LEED ND means “LEED for Neighborhood Development”. It is based on the observation of how much Americans drive and how far, for example, fresh produce has to travel to market: 1,500 miles on average. Children of middle class white families in up scale California developments spend 89% of their time indoors, or in vehicles.

He was sharply critical of Al Gore’s recommendations for action at the end of “An Inconvenient Truth”. He thought that Gore had“punted” the issue of transportation. What he wrote was not a mandate: that means “if the bus hits you, get on it”. By not directly tackling land use and transportation he had missed the single biggest greenhouse gas issue. We have seen in recent years the “tragic irony of efficiency” - per capita vehicle miles travelled had increased 5% which more than offset any gains due to Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards imposed on the automobile industry by the US government. At the same time average dwelling size grew 60% (from 1970-2005) but household size in the same period was declining. The Environmental Building News pointed out that even at present practices, transport to and from an office building uses 30% more energy than the building itself: and if that bldg meets LEED standards that rises to 130%.

The pillars of sustainability were set down in April 1996 when the 10 principles of Smart Growth were agreed. These can be grouped under four headings:

settle in the right location, create compact places, offer more choice and a fair transparent process.

In Atlanta, GA the average distance people drive is 35miles per day. But that is very heavily weighted by the suburbs. In the city centre residents driving distances average less than 10 miles.

The Charter of New Urbanism (also 1996) co-evolved with transit. The US Green Building Council was also formed in that year. All these institutions have become “Silos of Sustainability” promoting half measures, and each devalues the work of others. Conservation or LID development concentrates on issues like storm water and native plantings. He showed an image of an Arby’s at a suburban intersection. This could be a LEED Platinum Eligible building: “a unwalkable fatty food shack”. He also had an advert for a green building that proved hard to let that now offers free parking. He also took a swipe at Seaside – the first New Urbanist development. There the air conditioning condensers rust out every 5 years due to the sea air and the buildings also have to be painted every five years. The a/c units are located in between the buildings. This means that as soon as anyone turns one on, the house next door has to shut its windows to keep out the noise, and turn on its on a/c … and so on.

“We need to evolve to sustainable urbanism”. This has to be based on neighbourhoods that are walkable and have transit service. We need to establish relevant “weights and measures”. This what LEED ND does: its determines what where and how. A smart location is a pre-requisite: it is usually infill or adjacent to existing transit. On exception in the urban edge is where there is to be a projected transit extension. Land stewardship is central to the concept expressed as the neighbourhood pattern and design. No gated communities are permitted and the minimum density is 7 units per net acre (the US average now is 2). It is also includes erosion control and similar protection for water courses.

It is expected that there will be zoning code version, but so far 371 projects have expressed interest in certification in 42 states and 8 countries. The area covered in total is “bigger than Boston” and 80% of the projects are on brownfield sites or or infill. Many of the standards adopted have a carbon base and measurable public health benefit demonstrated by research. Even so the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) asserts that there is an “unproven connection between health and walkability”. They also accuse the proponents of a sociological agenda, as though building low density car orient4ed sprawl had no sociological effects.

He was critical of LEED ND. He pointed out that the prerequisites are a poor tool to balance competing trade offs, and they have had limited influence at the sprawling edge of the suburbs. So far they have had no discernible effect on sprawl. He gave the example of the East Fraserlands in Vancouver (on the Fraser North Arm at boundary. This was a former saw mill but included some woodland. The requirement of LEED ND is that 75% had to be previously developed and there also had to be a 100 ft set back of all development on riparian lands. So this site failed to qualify.

The “Southlands” in Tsawwassen are built up on all sides but have had no development on them, so they would also fail the LEED ND test. It is hoped that the current process will actually protect a lot of the green area from construction, unlike the original proposals which would have been a low density subdivision.

“LEED ND will not design a project” but he showed a simple, and familiar, diagram of a triangular site, based on earlier standards. This is now being used with a 10 minute walk circle to show how a dense neighbourhood can work, and reduce the meed for motorised trips.

He talked about “emerging thresholds” and something called the “80% rule”: apparently you need 2000 houses to build a TOD. (I may have this wrong as my typing could not keep up with the speed at which he was flipping through his slides). He introduced the idea of “biophilia” - people respond to nature and “nature shouldn’t be something you have to drive to”. So his developments have dual use stormwater retention and high performance infrastructure. The trip reduction potential stems from clustering buildings, but it also enhances neighbourhood health and security. The neighbourhoods are then linked into a “sustainable corridor” based on a transit line.

Most of our current planning codes should replace minimums with maximums – e.g. street width. “The current regulations are backwards.” He sees the need for a national campaign. It is a curious fact that Richard Nixon created all the US environmental agencies – and that very little progress has been made since.

“It’s the placemaking, stupid!”

LEED should apply to land use as well as buildings. The 2030 Architectural Challenge is to gradually move towards carbon neutral buildings by adopting progressively tighter restrictions each year - “like a slow burn fuse”. His practice has shown that the targets is completely possible and they will have built a 120% efficient house next year, that is one that feeds power back on to the grid.

He is now proposing a similar 2030 Community Challenge. This will be based on reducing the average driving distance – less than the 8,150 miles per person per annum which Americans now drive which is equivalent to the North Pole to somewhere in Brazil. For a family this is now 21,500 miles a year, which is very nearly like driving around the whole world. “When you experience a city at 50 mph you don’t care what it looks like.” He aims for a 2% reduction pa in VMT which would produce a 50% reduction by 2030. You can do this by “planning to drive less” - for instance simply eliminating that trip you wish you had not made last year to your in laws. But by designing “resilient communities” we can make the US less reliant on fossil fuels and hence more able to withstand the uncertainties of the future. Essentially the Challenge is a call to invest in land use and transportation integration.

In one development called Atlantic Station the average drive distance is now 8 mpd, a 75% reduction over the Atlanta average. The big gains will be achieved in the suburbs, where the driving distances are greatest will be where the highest percentage of projects need to be LEED ND platinum.

Changing the type of light bulbs we use took 5 years: changing our neighbourhoods will take 20 to 50, corridors take 20 -100 years. “We started at the wrong end.”

He endorses the view of Bill Clinton that this change represents a large economic opportunity.

Q&A

• Isn’t there a correlation between poverty and VMT? What is the role of legislation?
  A – Zoning is the way to make change. Vancouver is ahead of the curve. But in existing neighbourhoods there are “always bits being replaced” and it is here that the main opportunities will be found

• The standard of 7 units pda is about ⅔ of what is needed to make transit viable.
  A – It’s a compromise but you can exceed the standard and it probably ought to be 10 to 12.

• The Spetifore Lands is the correct name for the site in Tsawwassen. There has been little public process. Is there a way that we can have a development that encourages individuals to experiment? Will your development end agriculture on this land? After all, it was this site that spurred the creation of the ALR
  A – The first plan was sprawl. We now expect to have a charrette. There is no plan yet but we expect to set aside ⅔ of land either as green space, agriculture, or conservation. the basic question we are now asking is “Can we complete the town and make it a better place?”

• An advocate for affordable housing asked if LEED ND requires mixed income, and given current building costs of around $1,000 per sf, how can that be achieved
  A – It is essential to end segregation by economic strata. In 1990 we reformed on “CNU ideals”(?) “LEED ND is the duct tape that solves every urban problem.” Usually they insist on 10 % each for sale and rent at affordable levels. The response is convincing the powers that be that it is doable. The private sector is currently not building to the market, and often all they have to do is right size it.

• Are car co-ops just a gadget?
  A – NO. See the VTPI 2005 shared car study. Reducing car ownership actually increases wealth [note: I think he should have said “disposable income”] LEED houses cost more but the savings from redcuing car ownershop will pay for better houses.

• Why don’t the politicians get it?
  a – In places that have a planning culture – like Tsawassen and Portland – they do. And the public’s involvement in the process is crucial. Mostly it is the local plans that do not help. You must remember that sprawl is legal – it is mandated and approved by certified Planners. Chicago is not a plan town but a deal town. The question there is, can we make neighborhoods and corridors?

• Municipalities in Canada do not have the freedom of US cities, and they are bound to be concerned about the impact on property tax
  A – LEED ND is good government and fiscally responsible. the cost of infrastructure is much lower in dense, contiguous neighborhoods.

I am sure that a lot of you have RSS readers set up for the Tyee’s web page, especially those who have contributed to the longish debate that occurred here last time I picked up something by Erick Villagomez. Well he’s back with more but this time the focus is on affordability.

On the face of it more homes per acres or hectare should be cheaper other things being equal. Land costs are the largest element of most ground oriented houses, so it you can get more people into the same space then you would have thought that the cost per dwelling for high density isa lower than fro low density.  But land values are not the same over time or across space, and the comparisons that Erick produces introduce both dimensions. He also makes statements like

the costs of renting (or buying) such dwellings is still intrinsically tied to the land value of the lot on which it lies. So — similar to the situation described above — if land values continue to rise, so do the costs of rental.

Which seems to be sound theoretically, but runs contrary to actual experience. Landlords acquire property as a store of value, and in the expectation of capital gain. As long as the rent they collect covers their holding costs, and they have good tenants who are problem free and take care of the premises, raising the rent may not be the most important concern. Of course there are corporate landlords who will try to raise rents as much and as often as the law allows, and they often wonder why they have such a hard time getting and retaining good tenants. Or rather their unfortunate building managers do: the corporate executives being above such mundane concerns.

The point of all this of course is just to stress once more that density is not in and of itself the answer to anything. It can reduce costs, both of land and servicing. It can be affordable, if the land use is done properly and people can save on other costs. I was looking recently at new packages of timber frame housing being sold in Britain: the unit cost seemed to me to rather high, until I realized that the occupants would not have any energy costs. So initial capital outlay may be high but life cycle cost should be economical. Above all, the people who distrust politicians who come up with brand names for simplistic solutions are right to be wary.

Naomi Klein

I actually prefer reading the paper version to the on line but this is also available at the www.thenation.com. Naomi Klein’s Web site is www.naomiklein.org .

Good analysis of why the right wanted to end the class war by turning everyone into owners - and what went wrong south of the 49th. What is missing is any Canadian perspective, but also I have one small quibble about her understanding of a major plank of Mrs Thatcher’s strategy back in the UK.

Thatcher offered strong incentives to residents to buy their council-estate flats at reduced rates (much as Bush did decades later by promoting subprime mortgages). Those who could afford it became homeowners, while those who couldn’t faced rents almost twice as high as before, leading to an explosion of homelessness.

First of all it wasn’t the flats that sold - it was the houses. You will probably recall the bit I did recently on the role of the big Labour local authorities and the huge council estates that appeared in every large city - and a lot of small towns too had some very desirable council housing. In fact, some councils actually allocated housing in some places to a better class of tenants. And on some estates, provided professional and managerial housing too so that local employers and services could be provided with suitable candidates. And of course it was these houses that got snapped up really fast. But what also happened was that where ownership was not realistic or difficult to finance remained in public ownership but rapidly went downhill. And thus was born the “sink estate” - the areas of the highest crime rates and deprivation. And some former council estates had to be bull dozed - even though the houses were well built and could have been refurbished, but the area had become so undesirable that no one would rent or buy there.

And one of the features of Thatcher’s transportation policies was an end to subsidies for bus services. So in addition to the sink estate (often at the edge of town with high fares or poor services) we also have the rural areas of “social exclusion” - places that people cannot afford to leave but have no services and no jobs and no way to get to either, because the bus was uneconomic to operate and the county council refused to provide a socially necessary service.

Now I do not pretend to have any expertise in the Canadian public sector housing debate. But we have seen a withdrawal of government funding for housing, and affordable housing is a huge issue - and not just in Vancouver. And there are also problem areas - I know one because I lived in it. Malvern in North East Toronto. But also areas like Jane-Finch, an intersection which still seems to the nexus of all the social ills of that city. What we also seem to have lost is the ability to come up with other solutions to housing tenure. At one time Canada was the place you came to observe how ideas like co-ops and other co-ownership projects worked. The absence of senior government funding means not many of these are now being built (if any) and the ones that are still going find it ever harder to keep their internal cross subsidies working for those in greatest need. Municipalities don’t provide housing here either.

And in my bit on retirements and pensions, I also tried to highlight how corporate malfeasance has hit private pensions - it was not just Enron and Worldcom - it is an ongoing problem with corporate governance. Corporations are treated by the law as persons - but they behave like sociopaths.