Rethinking the Region 2015: HOUSE: Rethinking the Affordability Crisis - Event Program and Backgrounder

There is little doubt that housing affordability in Vancouver is in crisis. Recent plans policy documents from the City of Vancouver and Metro Vancouver have not hesitated to use the term, and governments,scholars and the private sector are devoting considerable attention to the question of housing. Simple answers, however, remain elusive. A housing crisis is really a series of individual crises. The challenges that individuals and families face in accessing affordable, accessible and appropriate housing are different, and overall statistics cannot adequately capture the diverse nature of the problem. Nonetheless, a broad understanding of the scale of the housing affordability crisis in Vancouver is essential as we embark upon a day of discussion and debate. This introduction provides a survey of evidence of a housing affordability crisis in our region, and some of the factors that are put forward to explain how it has arisen.