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In 2009, Vancouver created policy and legalized laneway homes. (If you’re not up on laneway housing, click here. I’ve written too much about this topic.)
Since then, the number of laneway homes built in Vancouver has steadily increased to the point where roughly 350 new homes are built every year.
Here’s a chart I found showing the number of laneway home building permits issued in Vancouver since 2009 (the year to date number for 2015 is up to and including June):
This is pretty interesting in its own right.
But as soon as I saw this chart I started wondering how these numbers fit into the overall new home construction landscape. So I decided to dig up the City of Vancouver’s Statement of Building Permits Issued for June 2015.
As the chart above shows, the number of laneway dwelling units built (well, permits issued) was 221 as of June 2015. But what’s really fascinating is that this numbers exceeds the number of building permits issued for single family dwellings, which was only 192!
Also super interesting is the significant spread in building permit value.
For single family dwellings, the total value was $156,086,861 (or $812,952 per dwelling unit). On the other hand, for laneway dwellings the total value was $36,478,785 (or $165,062 per unit).
Now to be fair, if you add single family dwellings with a secondary suite into the mix, you get a total count of 608 new dwelling units (as of June 2015). But at 221 new units, laneway dwellings still make up a meaningful portion of the new construction market.
So while laneway houses might seem fringe for Toronto and other cities right now, they’re really not that fringe. In fact the numbers above start to show that they can be a viable source of new and relatively affordable single family housing.
Eventually other cities will realize this too.
In 2009, Vancouver created policy and legalized laneway homes. (If you’re not up on laneway housing, click here. I’ve written too much about this topic.)
Since then, the number of laneway homes built in Vancouver has steadily increased to the point where roughly 350 new homes are built every year.
Here’s a chart I found showing the number of laneway home building permits issued in Vancouver since 2009 (the year to date number for 2015 is up to and including June):
This is pretty interesting in its own right.
But as soon as I saw this chart I started wondering how these numbers fit into the overall new home construction landscape. So I decided to dig up the City of Vancouver’s Statement of Building Permits Issued for June 2015.
As the chart above shows, the number of laneway dwelling units built (well, permits issued) was 221 as of June 2015. But what’s really fascinating is that this numbers exceeds the number of building permits issued for single family dwellings, which was only 192!
Also super interesting is the significant spread in building permit value.
For single family dwellings, the total value was $156,086,861 (or $812,952 per dwelling unit). On the other hand, for laneway dwellings the total value was $36,478,785 (or $165,062 per unit).
Now to be fair, if you add single family dwellings with a secondary suite into the mix, you get a total count of 608 new dwelling units (as of June 2015). But at 221 new units, laneway dwellings still make up a meaningful portion of the new construction market.
So while laneway houses might seem fringe for Toronto and other cities right now, they’re really not that fringe. In fact the numbers above start to show that they can be a viable source of new and relatively affordable single family housing.
Eventually other cities will realize this too.
Urbanists generally don’t like to talk about cities like Houston. It sprawls. It’s car oriented. It’s over air-conditioned. In other words, it’s the antithesis of the dense and walkable cities that urbanists today like to tout as being exemplary.
But despite all this, Houston is one of, if not the, fastest growing city in America. According to The Economist, the population of the Houston metro area grew faster than any other city in America between 2000 and 2010. And between 2009 and 2013, its real GDP grew by 22%.
So why is that? Here’s a snippet from that same Economist article (“Life in the sprawl”):
Paradoxically, perhaps the city’s biggest strength is its sprawl. Unlike most other big cities in America, Houston has no zoning code, so it is quick to respond to demand for housing and office space. Last year authorities in the Houston metropolitan area, with a population of 6.2m, issued permits to build 64,000 homes. The entire state of California, with a population of 39m, issued just 83,000. Houston’s reliance on the car and air-conditioning is environmentally destructive and unattractive to well-off singletons. But for families on moderate incomes, it is a place to live well cheaply.
So while Houston may not check off all of Jane Jacobs’ boxes, it does provide one important thing: cheap housing. And that’s clearly valuable for a huge number of people.
But the other interesting thing about the snippet above, is that it starts to illustrate how frequently supply constrained markets operate with housing deficits.
The fact that the entire state of California issued only about 30% more building permits than the Houston metro – which you could easily argue is closer to a “perfect market” – tells me that there’s probably a lot of people bidding for the same housing in California.
That’s less so the case in Houston.
Urbanists generally don’t like to talk about cities like Houston. It sprawls. It’s car oriented. It’s over air-conditioned. In other words, it’s the antithesis of the dense and walkable cities that urbanists today like to tout as being exemplary.
But despite all this, Houston is one of, if not the, fastest growing city in America. According to The Economist, the population of the Houston metro area grew faster than any other city in America between 2000 and 2010. And between 2009 and 2013, its real GDP grew by 22%.
So why is that? Here’s a snippet from that same Economist article (“Life in the sprawl”):
Paradoxically, perhaps the city’s biggest strength is its sprawl. Unlike most other big cities in America, Houston has no zoning code, so it is quick to respond to demand for housing and office space. Last year authorities in the Houston metropolitan area, with a population of 6.2m, issued permits to build 64,000 homes. The entire state of California, with a population of 39m, issued just 83,000. Houston’s reliance on the car and air-conditioning is environmentally destructive and unattractive to well-off singletons. But for families on moderate incomes, it is a place to live well cheaply.
So while Houston may not check off all of Jane Jacobs’ boxes, it does provide one important thing: cheap housing. And that’s clearly valuable for a huge number of people.
But the other interesting thing about the snippet above, is that it starts to illustrate how frequently supply constrained markets operate with housing deficits.
The fact that the entire state of California issued only about 30% more building permits than the Houston metro – which you could easily argue is closer to a “perfect market” – tells me that there’s probably a lot of people bidding for the same housing in California.
That’s less so the case in Houston.
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