By Jorge Julian Prieto

More housing results in lower rents. For this reason, economists recommend increasing the supply of market housing through more flexible municipal zoning.

Whether demand increases due to population growth, capital flows, or migration, it is crucial that housing options expand to maintain affordable rents.

Yet governments have not sufficiently allowed for greater market supply, instead focusing on taxing foreign investors, the wealthy, and “speculators”.  

This has reinforced attitudes toward Chinese buyers who actually represent less than five percent of the market, and toward developers who are seen to be greedy.

On the one hand, it is not too surprising that there would be a gulf between expert economists and policy. After all, elected officials must consider both politics and economics, weighing different views about urban density as well as ideals for what Vancouver should ultimately be like.

Paradoxically, we are all for more housing in general and against it in particular: “build more just not right next to my house”.

On the other hand, we may not be well informed about academic research.

The economists’ notion that Vancouver’s supply curve is abnormally inelastic is obscured in lingo and could be made more accessible to the public.

The Vancouver Urban Forum on June 12th will bridge the divide between researchers and citizens in an interactive conference on the causes of unaffordability in Vancouver.

The forum is part of a series beginning in 2012, which featured Harvard economist Edward Glaesar and other urban thinkers and doers. 

Five economists from UBC and SFU—professors James Tansey, Thomas Davidoff, Joshua Gottlieb, Tsur Somerville, and Andrey Pavlov—will discuss the impact of supply and demand, taxes, the relative importance of money laundering, and everything in between. 

Aled ab Iorwerth, deputy chief economist of the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation, will explain the seminal report, Examining Escalating House Prices in Large Canadian Metropolitan Centres, to isolate key elements that make Vancouver so expensive.

Finally, San Francisco’s Sonja Trauss will offer her perspective as one of the world’s most prominent YIMBY’s (“Yes In My Backyard” pro housing organizer).