Units in a new rental building in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood were expected to be affordable but some say they are the opposite.
A 393-square-foot unit in the building on Larch Street and West 2nd Avenue is being offered for $2,600 a month.
A 555-square-foot one-bedroom unit is being offered for $3,200 and an 840-square-foot two-bedroom unit is $4,300 a month, leading to some confusion about what “affordable” means.
“I think that’s insane. So expensive,” Vancouver resident Lucy McQueen told Global News.
“My family’s middle income and that’s too expensive for the size.”
Fellow resident Joanna Quigg said she also thinks the prices are very expensive but she wasn’t too surprised.
“In the grand scheme of what rent is in Vancouver at the moment, I wasn’t completely shocked by the prices,” she said.
“It’s an area that a lot of people want to live in. I know that, like, the apartments are pretty small. But I guess we were looking for it two-bed recently, and average prices we were seeing were like 3.5K and up.”
Tsur Somerville, a professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, told Global News that the rental prices are not higher than others people would see in the market.
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“I think the issue that we are concerned about is those rent levels for something that is supposed to be for more moderate income renters is a lot closer to what the market is than we want,” he said.
The provincial government said developers at 1807 Larch Street received a low-interest government loan to deliver below-market and market rental homes.
Eighty per cent of the units range from a studio to two or more bedrooms and are set for middle-income households at roughly $85,000 to $191,000 in annual household income.
“So the notion of where is the middle gets pulled up because you are including all these people who have income to own in this catchall of everybody,” Somerville said.
“If they had used instead, say the median income of renter families, that would have ended up with a much lower number.”
Amenities in the building include a rooftop terrace, BBQ area, bike storage, in-unit air conditioning and washer and dryer.
Applications are currently being accepted and units are available in September.