Background: Housing & Population

Our community is facing unprecedented housing affordability challenges with some of the highest rents and housing prices in Canada. We have very limited rental housing, and have one of the lowest vacancy rates in the region at 0.6%. People are leaving our community, and West Vancouver (and the Village of Belcarra) are the only municipalities in Metro Vancouver to have decreased in population between 2011 and 2016, while the region grew by 6.5%.

The share of children under the age of 14 has fallen from 30% of the population in 1961 to 14% in 2016. There is a “missing generation” of younger adults without children between the ages of 25 and 34, accounting for only 2% of the population.

Our high housing prices, limited housing supply, and demographic challenges affect our community in many ways: reduced population and imbalance; more people commuting to our community every day to work or attend schools, resulting in increased traffic and greenhouse gas emissions; reduced local workforce; and reduced services and increased costs for services in our community.