The city is facing a significant slowdown in development, with residential unit production falling 51% below the historic average and commercial building permit valuations dropping sharply due to high construction costs and negative rent growth. To stimulate new development and reduce builder costs, the upcoming comprehensive plan update will eliminate most parking requirements, expand middle housing zoning, and drastically shorten the permitting review timeline for projects under 200 units. Additionally, because a lack of state funding is bottlenecking affordable housing production, local officials are exploring alternative incentives like land valuation discounts, pre-development funding, and Multi-Family Tax Exemption (MFTE) renewals to maintain target housing density.
Building_development
City Center Redevelopment Authority · Mar 19, 2026 · 1:07:23–1:07:36 · Watch on CVTV ↗
Keywords: zoning comprehensive plan building permits affordable housing infrastructure density
What was said
1:06:22 because the price point between other areas around Vancouver and Vancouver itself is not different enough to warrant that additional travel. I'm sure some people have, I just, yeah. We don't have as much data on that. - But it's also just, I mean, there's been a lot of studies on this. It just pushes everybody down in the housing market. So a lot of studies have been done on like, what's the cause of homelessness? The cause of homelessness, you can, there's all sorts of ancillary factors, but the main cause of homelessness is lack of housing supply. So when you underproduce housing, it just is cascading impact down. And so people who should be in like buying a home or stuck in rentals, or they should be in bigger rentals or in smaller rentals, and it pushes everybody down, pushes prices up. And the folks at the bottom of the rental market are the ones who get pushed out into unsheltered. So you have that and obviously you can see it in all the different data, so vacancies and whatnot, but. - Thank you, that helps understand the gap.
1:07:22 - Yeah. - Yeah, and for our comprehensive plan, they're targeting a 7% vacancy rate for our housing supply as considered, as what they've identified as what would be a healthy market for from a renter's perspective and a resident's perspective. I think oftentimes for development that's flipped where a lower vacancy is better. And when you get to 7% vacancy, that's a little nerve wracking to make an investment in that kind of market. So here I've kind of shown from a renter's perspective, the green, yellow, red of what's healthy kind of more dynamic from a price standpoint and very difficult to decrease or a highly dynamic pricing environment in terms of vacancy. But this graph shows kind of historically where vacancy, both stabilized vacancy and overall vacancy has been in Vancouver in the multifamily.
1:08:22 You see a dip quite low in 2021. I think as you see pandemic migration away from urban centers, probably Portland and Seattle, and then a larger spike, particularly in overall vacancy,
Evidence (1 match)
direct keyword 1:07:23–1:07:36 zoning, comprehensive plan, building permits, affordable housing, infrastructure, density
om of the rental market are the ones who get pushed out into unsheltered. So you have that and obviously you can see it in all the different data, so vacancies and whatnot, but. - Thank you, that helps understand the gap. - Yeah. - Yeah, and for our comprehensive plan, they're targeting a 7% vacancy rate for our housing supply as considered, as what they've identified as what would be a healthy market for from a renter's perspective and a resident's perspective. I think oftentimes for developmen