When the Greater Vancouver Regional District housing committee meets on Friday (June 15), expect a great deal of discussion about the rising cost of shelter in the region. GVRD senior planner Lorraine Copas is scheduled to present the "Preliminary Draft Regional Affordable Housing Strategy" at the meeting. It's a nine-page document with three grand ambitions: increasing the supply and diversity of modest low-cost housing; eliminating homelessness; and meeting the needs of low-income renters.

There's no denying the magnitude of the region's housing challenges. According to Copas's accompanying staff report going to the committee, there are 5,000 families and 2,100 seniors on a waiting list for subsidized housing. There are 35,200 renter households across the region spending at least half of their income on shelter.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver recently reported that its average selling price of single-family homes in May passed the $700,000 mark for the first time. On June 11, Statistics Canada reported that new-housing prices rose 8.9 percent across Canada on a year-to-year basis in April, with Vancouver posting an annual increase of 6.7 percent.

In light of all of this data, some people might be surprised to hear that housing prices in the region still haven't reached previous highs in recent history. But it's true, according to some number crunching by Cameron Muir, chief economist of the British Columbia Real Estate Association.

He recently provided the Georgia Straight with a chart that included data dating back to January 1981. It tracked the monthly cost of carrying the average mortgage–and the income necessary to repay it–in the area covered by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. Muir included three key assumptions: homeowners had already made a 10-percent down payment; they negotiated a five-year mortgage at a fixed rate without discounts; and they signed on for a 25-year amortization period. He also adjusted the figures to account for inflation, which meant different years could be compared on an identical basis.

In April 2007, the average monthly mortgage rate reached $2,646. Muir calculated that a family would need a household income of $99,225 to be in a position to afford this. It's worth noting that the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver does not include Surrey and Langley, which usually have lower housing prices.

The affordability figure for April is relatively high by historical standards, but it's still below the average monthly mortgage rate of $2,669 last October. It remains below the four-month average mortgage rate of $2,739.50 between March and June of 1990. And it's far below the historical high of $3,831 in July 1981. At that time, the average household needed an annual income of $143,625 to afford the average mortgage, according to Muir's figures.

Muir told the Straight there could be upward pressure on housing prices over the summer because the Bank of Canada has indicated a possible increase in the overnight rate (the amount charged to banks to borrow money). This would lead to higher mortgage rates.

"Many home buyers or potential home buyers who are preapproved for a mortgage or who are thinking about buying a home may opt to jump into the market over the next couple of months over the summer in order to take advantage of lower available interest rates," Muir said.

Just over a year ago, Yale University economist Robert Shiller was in town proclaiming that Vancouver had a housing bubble that was ready to burst. The now-defunct Vancouver Housing Market Blog, operated by a man who identified himself as Vance, was spreading a doomsday message that the region was on the verge of a housing crash. The blog singled out Muir for special criticism because at the time, he was Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's chief market analyst, and he wasn't buying the notion of an impending price crash.

"I didn't get the fervent market crashers calling me or blanketing me with e-mails or anything like that," Muir recalled.

However, he also noted that it has been about eight months since he has even heard the term "housing bubble" mentioned in connection with the local real-estate market.

And if there is no Vancouver real-estate bubble, it means that the folks at the GVRD can't expect any market correction to solve the region's very real housing woes.