Housing, Affordability and Gentrification
In May 2007, the typical housing ("benchmark") price of a single-detached house in East Vancouver was $627,758 (a 9% increase over the previous year and a 90% increase over the previous five years). Many home owners in East Vancouver rent out their basement suites to assist with mortgage payments.
Increased housing prices are causing changes in East Vancouver neighbourhoods, such as fewer new immigrants moving to the area and decreasing affordability for artists, seniors, young families and others.
However, increased housing prices have also caused significant positive changes in East Vancouver, such as greater retention of existing residents (partly due to a lack of affordability in some other areas), increased densification (increasing the number of affordable housing options (e.g. townhouses)), more residential investment, neighbourhood-led artistic projects, more community-pride events (e.g. neighbourhood clean-ups, block parties and community gardening), and greater tax base for new amenities(e.g. a new planned library and $2.7 million in street, lighting and sidewalk improvements at Kingsway and Knight Street).
Rising prices throughout the city have produced challenges for new social housing projects. This has caused conflict where East Vancouver residents feel that social housing projects are disproportionately located in their communities versus areas in Vancouver's West Side, some of which have no social housing at all (Dunbar, Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy)
Other general Vancouver housing concerns include increasing rental rates due to speculation associated with the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and recent provincial economic growth.
Read more about this topic: East Vancouver