Housing Hypocrisy: Flimsy “affordability” claims don’t hold water

If we’re serious about this housing crisis, blocking the redevelopment of aging apartment buildings on the grounds of “affordability” is, frankly, absurd.

Goodman Report

“Existing housing is the most affordable housing.”

It’s a line repeated so often that most would probably agree it must be true. And in some sense, it is: setting aside the costly capital upgrades that will be required over time, apartment buildings built in the 1950s and 60s cost investors less on a per-suite or per-square-foot basis than building new ones.

But what about affordability for the tenants? Over the long term, does restricting the redevelopment of older apartment buildings translate to lower rents for tenants? In Vancouver and other jurisdictions with strong tenant protection policies, the data suggest the opposite is true.

We analyzed the rent roll of a typical Mount Pleasant apartment building with potential for redevelopment under the Broadway Plan; factoring in legal rent increases and randomized suite turnovers, the data clearly shows that in both the first year and throughout a 10-year timeline, tenants would pay lower rents if their building was redeveloped than if it were preserved under the status quo.

Broadway Plan rules entitle existing tenants to move back to a redeveloped building at the lesser of their current rent, or 20% below CMHC citywide average rents. In our Mount Pleasant test case, 12 of the 23 tenants (52%) currently pay more than the mandated below-market rents and would therefore see their rent reduced by an average of almost $200 per month upon moving into a new building. Some tenants would see decreases of over $400 per month! Overall, average rent for the 23 units would decrease immediately by 6%, from $1,510 per month to $1,415 per month.

If this sounds surprising, it actually understates the potential rent reductions for many buildings in the Broadway Plan area. Our previous analysis showed a majority of tenants within the Broadway Corridor (64% across 22 buildings studied) are currently paying more than the mandated below-market rents and would see their rent reduced if their building was redeveloped.

Under the status quo, each time a unit turns over, rent is reset to market. If redeveloped, those same units, now secured at below-market rents, would be reset to 20% below the CMHC average – roughly 30% below estimated market rents for the existing 70-year-old building, and 50% below the going rate for new buildings. So, existing tenants would immediately benefit from lower rents if the building is redeveloped, and new tenants moving into those same replacement suites would face rents well below what they would pay for a vacant suite in the existing 70-year-old building.

We mapped this over 10 years, assuming two suites turn over each year (in line with CMHC averages), a 5% annual increase in both market rents and CMHC average rents, and a 2.5% annual legal rent increase. Under the status quo, rents would increase by a whopping 99% – from an average of $1,510 per month to $2,998 per month after 10 years. In the replacement units, rents would increase by 58% – from $1,415 per month to $2,235 per month. In the first year, average rents in the redeveloped building would be $95 per suite per month lower and, after 10 years, $763 per month lower.

As with any financial analysis, these estimates are based on a set of assumptions. We can’t predict when a given suite will turn over or what future rents might be. Broadly, however, the data is clear: in terms of affordability and meeting the housing demands of a growing city, redeveloping older apartment buildings – with tenant protections in place – is a no-brainer.

Critics will try to suggest tenant protections are untested and imply unscrupulous owners will skirt the rules. That’s always possible – just as it’s possible some tenants may dodge rent or trash the building. However, every new development in Vancouver with an affordable housing component has a Housing Agreement registered on title, in perpetuity, ensuring the terms are enforceable with current and future owners. Anyone breaching the terms can, and should, be held accountable.

The opportunity cost of pushing redevelopment away from these transit-oriented properties in already high-density neighbourhoods is enormous. This aging 23-suite building sits on a lot that, at 6.5 FSR, could accommodate 120 or so new homes. This includes 23 replacement suites (with lower rents for both current and future tenants), plus 97 new market-rate homes for tenants who otherwise would be competing for space within the existing housing stock.

City of Vancouver Q2 2025 data show that the majority of active rezoning proposals in the Broadway Plan are for properties with no existing rental buildings. In these cases, the blanket requirement for below-market units is actually detrimental to affordability because it precludes new buildings that could help ease competition across the existing housing stock.

The remaining 58 proposals involve properties with 1,650 existing market rental units. If redeveloped, these sites would create 2,023 secured below-market units along with 8,111 new homes. Every existing tenant is guaranteed the same or lower rent, over 2,000 units are secured in perpetuity at lower rents than what new tenants will pay moving into the existing buildings, and more than six times the number of households will be able to find somewhere to live. If we’re serious about this housing crisis, challenging this solution on the grounds of “affordability” is, frankly, absurd.

The remaining issue, then, is the emotional impact and disruption to tenants being relocated. Rather than calls to block redevelopment, which clearly offers significant benefits for both existing and future tenants, we should work to find solutions to ease this transition. Using swing sites on government properties in the same neighbourhood and implementing policies that incentivize developers to build back similar-sized units are ideas that could be hugely beneficial on this front, but they seem to lack the political motivation to see them through.

Given the clear benefits for existing and future tenants, critics who are actively fanning the flames of fear – producing anxiety-inducing renderings and running to media with exaggerated claims (or worse) of entire neighborhoods being razed – might instead join the search for solutions. That, coupled with the promise of secure new housing, might finally help the people they claim to be standing up for.