In Vancouver, the Squamish Nation had a chance to do what many housing advocates dream of, developing a plot of prime urban real estate without zoning constraints. So what did they build? Housing.
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Generations ago, zoning laws were seen as a sign of good government, reform. The idea of zoning was that we should have residential areas and business areas, that people should not live next door to a factory, for example. In more recent times, critics have seen zoning differently – it creates barriers to building affordable housing. What if that changed? NPR’s Planet Money team has been reporting on one real estate development that was liberated from zoning. Here’s Alex Mayyasi.
ALEX MAYYASI, BYLINE: I’m standing in the heart of Vancouver at the end of a leafy street of single-family homes. It’s pretty and peaceful and right by downtown, the kind of neighborhood where lots of people would love to live. But Vancouver has some of the highest housing costs in the world. That’s in part because the city’s zoning laws limit much of the city to just single-family homes. Right in front of me, though, is a big construction site. It is the exception to this trend, and it is an exception because of this land’s history. In the early 1900s, this was the site of a village that had belonged to the Squamish people since long before Europeans arrived. That all changed in 1913 when government officials from British Columbia came and took the land. Gilbert Jacob, who everyone calls Chief Gibby, grew up hearing his family talk about how the land was taken.
GILBERT JACOB: They put our people on the barge, and when they were going out there, they turned around and they’d set this whole place ablaze.
MAYYASI: In the 1970s, the Squamish Nation sued the Canadian government, and in the early 2000s, they finally got back some of their land.
JACOB: I was ecstatic, you know? This place, we never doubted it, belonged to our people.
MAYYASI: The land was 10 1/2 acres of prime, undeveloped real estate, and there was something else special about the land, economically speaking. Because it is Squamish sovereign land, Vancouver’s zoning rules do not apply. Wilson Williams is head of the Squamish Council.
WILSON WILLIAMS: So we can do different things, build higher, build differently, not abiding by the same bylaws and stuff.
MAYYASI: The Squamish Nation decided to build 11 skyscrapers, as high as 58 stories tall, basically across the street from a single-family neighborhood. The development is called Senakw, named after the original village. I got to see it up close.
All right. This is the roof, and it is spectacular. Oh, there’s the bay.
The buildings will be almost all rental apartments, about 6,000 units in total, which is about as much as Vancouver builds in an entire year. And 300 apartments will be reserved for Squamish families. In a way, Senakw is both the argument for and against zoning. Neighbors said it’s out of scale. It’s too big and will bring noise and traffic and change the area. But most economists believe zoning constraints increase rents and perpetuate housing shortages. And without zoning barriers, the Squamish Nation built the first three towers in just three years, which is remarkably fast for a project of this size. And it is doing what lots of cities are struggling to do – build lots of housing. So much so that the prime minister himself showed up for the groundbreaking. Before I left, Chief Gibby told me what the project means to him.
JACOB: We’re back (laughter). It’s just placing our footprint back on our land again.
MAYYASI: For NPR News, I’m Alex Mayyasi.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAPINTHETRAP’S “SLEEPWALKING”)
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