Making Affordable Housing a Core Principle of Vancouver’s EcoDensity Charter
This submission to Vancouver City Council argues that affordable housing must be a central plank of “EcoDensity” on both equity and environmental grounds. The authors question the central premise of EcoDensity that increasing density is tantamount to greater affordability, and call for an EcoDensity Charter that fully articulates a strategy that will ensure an expansion of affordable housing. Without a deliberate, city-wide policy to ensure affordability, existing trends will worsen, leading to adverse impacts on livability and sustainability.
About the authors
Marc Lee is a Senior Economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Marc joined the CCPA’s British Columbia office in 1998, and is one of Canada’s leading progressive commentators on economic and environmental policy issues. From 2009 to 2015, Marc led the CCPA’s Climate Justice Project (CJP), which published a wide range of research on fair and effective approaches to climate action through integrating principles of social justice. Marc continues to write about climate and energy policy, strategies for affordable housing, federal and provincial budgets and macroeconomics. Marc has an MA in Economics from Simon Fraser University and a BA in Economics from the University of Western Ontario. Marc is a past chair of the Progressive Economics Forum, a national network of heterodox economists. He also served as a Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy in 2024 to 2025.
