Vacant Vancouver – a crowd-sourced map
Much attention has been focused recently on the matter of empty condos in downtown Vancouver, in the wake of Andy Yan's presentation at SFU Woodwards last month – one example of the news coverage is this CBC story. I attended that presentation and asked a question about empty houses, focusing specifically on the west side of Vancouver, but nobody on the panel had data or much interest in the issue. Vancouver's current self-image is all about downtown condos, it seems.
Yet, in the three years since I returned to Vancouver, I have heard repeatedly about blocks with empty houses – to be clear, not abandoned houses, but ones with neatly clipped lawns, drawn curtains and no residents. Most of them are new, most (allegedly) built by offshore investors using Vancouver's west side as a place to garage money. The west side house, like the downtown condo, is a modern version of the Swiss bank account for some wealthy people – you don't necessarily want or get any return on your money, but you believe it will actually be returned! It'll be there for you when you want to come for it, unlike stocks or factory investments or whatever. Vancouver, like the R.O.C. (rest of Canada), is a safe, orderly, law-abiding place.
I'm from the "where there's smoke there's fire" generation, and have heard the story of empty houses, loss of neighbourhood quality (and neighbours), along with stories of property flipping, from too many people to believe that's it's merely anti-change paranoia. I've also heard all the counterarguments: "those people spend the winter in Palm Springs"; "Oh, they're just away at their weekender in Whistler...." Yesterday, after a lecture I gave to the 125 members of a Probus group, the questions concentrated on this issue, as part of a larger concern about demolition and loss of character.
Is there truth to all the rumours? How could we aggregate the data?
Send in to this blog (click on the "Comments" button at the bottom of this post) a simple description of your block. It should say the equivalent of this:
1800-block West 18th, 3 houses vacant out of 20.
Add more details if you wish, such as houses under construction, but please try to identify the proportion of houses that are not occupied. Please don't send individual addresses.
Please note that you cannot change the map yourself! Just send me the data and I will do it.
This is obviously a project for the non-apartment/non-condo areas of the city, to try to get an idea of the depopulation of the city's neighbourhoods.
Please send the word around to all your contacts in Vancouver.... Here's the map, to be expanded as data comes in...
View Vacant Vancouver in a larger map
