In 2004 I moved from Montreal to London with the intention of making a career transition from sales to marketing, while setting up a life on the European continent – it was a well executed plan built on 7 years of undergraduate and graduate education. In the end it did not work out. I had made the move too late in life, I didn’t hold a EU passport at the time, and London was never a place I aspired to live in, rather a city I enjoyed to visit, a stepping stone for moving to the European continent.
2005 was a reset, a return to the Westcoast. The objective was to build a property business, which would in time marry well with the construction company our family had established. It has been a battle, the details of which are not worth repeating here. At a global level, big changes of this sort often involve deep questions, they also lead to conflict, as different parties try to marry together often incongruent visions and expectations. Nonetheless, there has been success, as what was once a tiny holding of a one bedroom condo in the suburbs has taken fruit into something considerably more substantial. My hopes and aspirations are that the upward trajectory will continue and our property business will make the next big step in becoming an important contributor to the development of beautiful, smaller, more efficient housing in this fair and so beautiful place, “The Land of the Lotus Eaters”.
I continue to devote considerable time and thought to this endeavour, as I believe it to be a worthwhile one. People need homes to live in, just as they need hospitals for care, and schools for learning. So why not make these homes beautiful? Why not make them just the right size for a Vancouver family – one or two people a room and not two or three rooms a person? Yes, how novel, small efficient beautiful homes that don’t waste space.
The latest challenge we are finding to executing our vision is the availablity of housing stock that can be developed into duplexes. For a city that is awash in condos and single family homes, the “everything in between” is neglected. It is as if the consumer and the smaller developers are channeled to one of two options: buy a condo in a tower developed by a large developer, or demolish a single family home and build a bigger single family home to recoupe the costs. Neither of these options is particulary appealing, and neither applies to our vision. Condos don’t build communities, rather they isolate people from each other and the street scape; bigger houses house less people and are an inefficient use of space and energy.
Lane houses have been pushed as the answer to this conundrum; however, I believe they are a misguided solution for two reasons. Firstly they are short sighted, as once the infill investment is made, the lot becomes indivisible should zoning change in the future. This means the land becomes locked in with a big house and a small house, when it could have been built as a triplex or fourplex – units that in turn could be owner occupied or rental stock. Secondly, lanehouses do not increase the supply of land stock for sale, as they cannot be sold separately from the principal house, which means that one of the residents will always be in a landlord position, while the other will in perpetuity be in the more precarious role of the tenant. The reality is that most people don’t want to rent, and most people do not want to be landlords, most people just want to own their own home that they can do with as they please.
In Vancouver there is little hope the city will abolish the single family zoning in the forseeable future. This remains the biggest obstacle to delivering our business’ vision.
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