Following up on our recent post, ‘UBC Staff And Faculty Housing Demand Study’ [VREAA 19 Sep 2011], here below is a series of first- and second-hand personal anecdotes excerpted from UBC faculty and staff comments posted at ubc.ca 27 Sep – 3 Oct 2011 as part of a discussion UBC is encouraging in order to develop a ‘Housing Action Plan’. [Many thanks to David for forwarding us the link].
It is perhaps remarkable that not one of the discussants appears to address the giant over-arching truth: that a speculative mania in housing is the cause of the problem. On the contrary, many of the posters explicitly state the belief that local housing prices can do no other than power forever upwards.
Once the housing bubble is recognized for what it is, it follows that only with an implosion of that bubble will any housing challenges be meaningfully addressable. Housing in Vancouver is currently two to three times overvalued, as determined by fundamental measures such as incomes, rents, and GDP. The mania will end, as all manias do, with substantial price drops. This will likely occur not as a result of policy changes, but as a result of market dynamics. Indeed, such an implosion may have already begun.
Under the shadow of this mania, the vast majority of ‘affordable housing’ plans in Vancouver are akin to rearranging the proverbial deck-chairs on the Titanic; to blowing into a hurricane. Any such plans will be incapable of addressing the powerful negative forces of the mania. Getting 10% or 15% assistance purchasing extremely overpriced RE still results in it being very, very overpriced.
The coming Vancouver RE price deflation will go a long way to solving Vancouver’s (and UBC’s) housing challenges. Imagine how different the UBC discussion will be when prices are 50% lower. Or even lower than that. Yes, there will still be a need for sensible policy about campus housing, and perhaps a need for housing assistance plans to attract desirable faculty, but housing would no longer sit centre-stage, where it is now, and where it certainly doesn’t belong.
Granted, a real estate price crash will at the same time result in other significant problems for Vancouverites, many of whom are over-invested in RE. Our local economy will suffer greatly, as it has become sorely over-dependent on activity related to real estate. This is, unfortunately, what happens when a massive speculative mania plays out. It’s baked into the cake. UBC has, of course, been an eager bubble participant, via large for-profit RE development projects. While showing concern about the cost of housing, the university, ironically, also has an economic stake in the bubble being sustained. This is why we haven’t seen (and don’t expect to see) strong statements truly critical of the status quo coming from within UBC itself.
Regardless, the personal stories below are noteworthy, and the detrimental effect that the housing mania is having on academic endeavours is apparent.
- vreaa
—
As an Assistant Professor that was recently recruited to the University, I feel like I have no hope of supporting a family and purchasing a house in Vancouver. I lose a great deal of sleep over trying to make ends meet in Vancouver and I feel this is holding me back from making research and education advances at UBC. I believe housing is only a symptom of a systemic problem at UBC: very poor support of young academic faculty.
- G.T.T., October 1, 2011 at 9:36 am
Very recently, I lost a dear and outstanding colleague to Oxford. He confided that one of the main reasons for him moving was that Oxford offered him the opportunity to own a home near his work (The university partners with faculty to ensure they can own a place near campus). In Vancouver, he could not see how he would ever afford a place for his family, including a newborn.
I too am about to start a family. I have been incredibly worried about moving from my small apartment to a bigger place. Paging through the real estate ads is depressing. It is clear that my salary and consulting fees are simply not enough. In this sense, it is heart warming to read about colleagues with the same concerns and about UBC leaders trying to alleviate the problem.
- Nando de Freitas, September 29, 2011 at 4:12 pm
If I had known about the future housing situation back in 2004 when I was hired, I would have probably reconsidered my decision to come to UBC.
- L. Van Waerbeke, Faculty of Science, [September 30, 2011 at 10:45 am], who also suggests “create a parallel UBC housing market where sells/buys can only happen between UBC employees”.
I am a graduate student at UBC and my stipend is $21,000. I have to live one hour from campus to pay for rent that is $800 per month. After my health insurance and phone bill, I barely have enough money for food. This summer, I calculated that I could spend only $10 per day for food. To top it off, the on-campus housing is more expensive. Shouldn’t campus provide CHEAP housing for students? This makes me want to leave UBC…
- Anonymous, September 30, 2011 at 3:46 pm
I live in East Vancouver and I could drive out to Tsawwassen in less time than it takes for me to creep west in my morning bumper-to-bumper convoy of the damned.
- SR, Library, September 30, 2011 at 3:45 pm
My salary is competitive compared to performing a similar job at a non-profit or charity but Vancouver is just too expensive.
As a staff member with two young children I have been despairing for a while. My paycheque after deductions covers rent and both kids at UBC daycare ($1300 for 3-days/week) I am left with a couple of hundred dollars each month to pay for rising costs of food, clothing, vehicle expenses etc. We’re just able to make it with my wife’s part-time, self-employed income but if she doesn’t work (as happened this summer) we’re running up the line of credit with the bank just to keep food on the table.
As rents have risen and our family has grown we have moved further and further east. We rent a small, run down 2-BR East Van bungalow for a bit less than what a 2-BR apartment would go for on campus. We have privacy, space and a nice vegetable garden in the yard but it means I spend at least two hours on bike or bus each day commuting instead of with my family.
As long as UBC’s definition of affordable housing is slightly below west side of Vancouver market rates, most staff will be shut out.
- I.P., Staff, Faculty of Arts, September 27, 2011 at 11:59 pm
When I moved to UBC, the faculty housing assistance was not sufficient for me to enter the housing market. The assistance options have improved slightly since then, but are only available within the first seven years, and I am no longer eligible. Meanwhile, the housing prices in Vancouver have become prohibitive, having doubled to tripled over this relatively short time. The UBC Village Gate Homes rentals on campus are very nice, and are extremely convenient, even though the rental rates are not really subsidized.
- A.F, Associate Professor, Science, October 3, 2011 at 3:32 pm
We know several faculty whose behaviour changed dramatically once they moved off-campus. Owing to traffic and the loss of efficiency in terms of writing, they started coming in only 2 days a week. Gradually, they started avoiding students and meetings, the opposite of what they were doing for years when they lived on campus. The incentives became too strong. The situation also creates perverse incentives towards devoting more and more time to consulting and non-scholarly activities, or accepting visiting positions elsewhere, as soon as April comes along. Gradually, faculty who stay at UBC will find themselves becoming helicopter professors, dropping in for classes and crucial duties, and rushing off to earn money or do their long commute home. In sum, there are many benefits that are externalities and not integrated into the pure monetary equation.
- Yves Tiberghien & Darrin Lehman, October 2, 2011 at 6:04 pm
In our own case, we would like to move to a larger 3 bedroom unit on campus. But there are none available, for almost three years now.
Rent, currently charged by UBC Properties is around 15-20% lower then market. Why not making it 40% lower, allowing families to live on campus and promote sustainability by reducing commutes for 4 people a day!
- Eugene Barsky, Library, October 1, 2011 at 12:24 am
Many of my colleagues who are since quite some time at UBC could buy into the market to relatively low prices and enjoy (nominal) windfall profits with which they leverage all kind of expenditures. People like me who only recently came to UBC are in a different situation and usually can’t afford buying a house, and yes, looking for locational options is always in our mind.
- Kurt Huebner, September 30, 2011 at 10:43 am
I was disappointed when I tried to obtain rental accommodation on campus, because of the no-pets policy. There was not a single building on campus that would allow me to have my cat in the dwelling. This policy probably prevents many people from being able to live on campus, and I strongly suggest that it be changed. Pets are important in many people’s lives.
- Selina Fast, administrative-support staff, September 30, 2011 at 10:30 am
I now finally have a house that I can afford…in Squamish.
- JKS, Faculty Dept of Medicine, September 30, 2011 at 10:09 am
Arriving to UBC 2 years ago from the US we found the dip in the US market while price increase in Vancouver to be much more difficult that we initially thought.
We were very frustrated from UBC policies that seem to encourage selling on-campus housing to retirees rather than to faculty. It seems that the current administration is thinking more about the short term profit than the longer term effect on UBC. I am hoping that this will change.
We finally bought a nice house in east van. With the size of our mortgage, I will not retire before I’m 85.
- Eldad Haber, September 29, 2011 at 11:50 pm
When I arrived at UBC from Stanford, the whole “University Town” plan was just starting. Given my experience with Stanford (similarly blessed with a large amount of extraordinarily valuable land in a very expensive real estate market), it was painfully obvious the plan was not in the long-term best interests of UBC. I do not fault the folks who pushed the “University Town” through, as UBC was desperately short of money, and they executed very well on a plan to convert UBC’s land wealth into endowment dollars. The failure, though, was a lack of long-term strategic vision, to see that buildable land at UBC was more vital to the University’s future, and faster appreciating, than financial assets in an endowment.
- Alan Hu, September 29, 2011 at 11:21 pm
As many previous contributors noted, the cost of housing in greater Vancouver will very likely continue to rise.
- Marcel Franz, Professor of Physics, September 29, 2011 at 2:32 pm
My frustration has grown since 2004, until I just decided to lose any hope that UBC Trust would care about people working on campus and any hope to ever own a place. There is only so far some one can go with the mounting frustration of seeing high end condos built on campus everywhere out of reach of a family of 4. Even the condos built for faculty/staff were unaffordable. Townhouses built for faculty/staff are now back on the market at more than a million dollars. I look at other options in other cities every year.
- B. Pfeiffer, Faculty of Education, September 29, 2011 at 1:47 pm
At my salary, I would not have moved here if I had young kids at home because I would not have been able to provide them the same “home” facilities as I had in Ontario. Since my kids are all old now, moving to a condo made sense and made it possible financially but if I had a younger family, the discussion would have dramatically changed.
There is a psychological factor that makes many professors bitter and angry with UBC. When a professor feels that after 20 years of service to UBC he/she is unable to buy a unit on campus but others who have nothing to do with UBC are; it is very demoralizing. I have been hearing that on a regular basis since joining UBC.
- Dr. T. Aboulnasr, Dean of Applied Science, September 27, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Six years ago I … told the Provost at the time (Lorne Whitehead) that I was worried about UBC retaining many of the outstanding colleagues that had been hired over the past several years, and that I was particularly worried about Vancouver’s expensive housing market and the minimal assistance offered by the University (i.e., little more than covering closing costs).
Owing to an even higher Vancouver real estate market, my worry is still there. Many colleagues that we’ve hired over the past decade are highly marketable and moveable.
- Darrin Lehman, September 27, 2011 at 3:52 pm
During the recruitment process housing or the lack of affordable housing is the number one issue. It is common to every single conversation that I had with all our candidates regardless of rank.
- Vanessa Auld, Assoc Dean of Science, September 27, 2011 at 3:51 pm
In my experience, the affordability of housing comes up at some point in almost every faculty negotiation (recruitment and retention). In a couple of instances, housing was arguably the major reason a faculty member chose not to join UBC, or chose to leave.
- Simon Peacock, Dean of Science, September 27, 2011 at 3:51 pm
We have lost candidates due to the difference in housing costs with many other locations.
- Rachel Kuske, Head, Dept of Mathematics, September 27, 2011 at 3:51 pm
In Vancouver, for a newcomer like me, it is very hard to accumulate enough funds for a reasonable mortgage within a reasonable amount of time not to be out-passed by the price increase. In the UBC area, I heard that two-bedroom units are currently worth about $0.7 million or more. … As a family of four, we found that it is very hard to find a townhouse unit or three-bedroom apartment, rented or owned, unless paying a very high price.
- Y.K., Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science, September 27, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Housing issues comprised the main reason that we lost an excellent prospective faculty member, Y. M., who we had made an offer to in computational applied math a couple of years ago. He liked the department a lot, but was not able to afford to get a place to live where he and his wife would be happy raising a family. They were priced out of the market. He went to U Minnesota instead. We lost out.
As I had written to the BoG a few years ago, we almost lost another collegue to housing issues (D.C.). Somehow that catastrophe was averted at the last moment by the head’s work. I think you will find many such stories among recent hires (last 10 yrs) who left us due to the real estate woes, or candidates we wanted to attract who took a look at the housing prices and voted with their feet.
- Leah Keshet, Professor, Faculty of Science, September 27, 2011 at 3:50 pm
First a theorem: Due to a large influx of immigrants who desire to live in Vancouver, the housing price in Vancouver will grow beyond the reach of a new faculty with regular salary. This will soon become an obstacle for UBC to hire new faculty.
- T.T., Professor, Faculty of Science, September 27, 2011 at 3:50 pm
After 16 years at UBC, I’m still living in 540 square feet.
- K.B., Professor, Faculty of Science, September 27, 2011 at 3:32 pm
2003 arrive UBC. 2004 look for a house. Kid #1 arrives; decide to rent for a bit longer and save $ for better place than we could afford at that time.
2004-2008 cost of acceptable house to purchase increases faster than our ability to pay. Period of frustration at that time.
2008 investigate positions elsewhere. Obtain great offers. Nearly leave. Stay at UBC after competitive retention raise is offered.
2009 combination of slight dip in prices, low interest rates, improved housing assistance program and increased salary mean we start looking again
2010 buy house (nice place near Fraser street). Notably just barely within the “seven years at UBC” time limit on the housing assistance program.
- Daniel Coombs, Associate Professor, Mathematics, September 27, 2011 at 3:44 pm
Have people given up living on west side? Lots of talk about university housing with little mention of effecting a push for cheaper housing near, but off, campus.
Fear not, UBC, you will get cheap housing, but if you want accommodations for your employees and faculty you need to lobby the City to match the employment of the city/university to the housing stock.
The commute to campus can be brutal.
I used to work at UBC and I performed the commute from central Burnaby for about a year. Worst fucking thing I have ever done in my life. I’d rather take the tube through Bank station every morning.
The colleague of Nando de Freitas that left is Arnaud Doucet, who was a Canada Research Chair, the most prestigious type of professor.
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~arnaud/
The other Canada Research Chair in Nando’s group is Kevin Murphy, who has gone to Google and is probably not coming back.
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/
The comment from L. Van Waerbeke basically gets it right:
“In a country where the housing market is artificially pumped up because mortgages are in fine insured by tax payers (through CHMC), and interest rates are abusively low, companies must take action to protect the interests of their employees so they can access housing. The problem is particularly acute in Vancouver which has been in the top 3 most unaffordable cities in the world for the past few years. Until the government takes action to correct this absurdity, if it ever does, UBC should indeed do its best to make housing accessible to staff/faculty/students.”
Maybe he reads VREAA.
“I live in East Vancouver and I could drive out to Tsawwassen in less time than it takes for me to creep west in my morning bumper-to-bumper convoy of the damned.”
lol, that must be brutal. I go against rush hour from just outside d/t to burnaby. If I had to fight through the city or come in from the suburbs, that would be a complete dealbreaker. I will never ever ever waste 2 hours of my day, everyday, in s**t traffic.
Hmmm. Endowment lands. Forest. Affordable/Commutable/Green Faculty Housing crisis…
It’s been a long time since the RedJackets hoisted a ‘Bug’ from the LionsGate (or, sadly, hosted LadyGodiva)… but if they could do that then, perhaps, just perhaps…
Solution?
http://tinyurl.com/5uzxk2c
“UBC. Cutting edge research. Ewok living.
Tuum est.”
I think these days many of the pranks out of UBC-E are in the Cloud. A constant push for productivity improvements via IT and an increasingly austere “no fun City” mandate from City Hall and the Chancellor’s office.
Well, to channel the spirit of bubba from VCI, the galls of these professors to expect everything handed to them on a silver platter! What they expect UBC to deliver them a nice new first home that’s better than their parents/older collegues ever had for free? If these people who each can make over 1.5x the average family income in Vancouver can’t save enough to buy a proper home then maybe the fault is their expectation and lack of work ethics. Why can’t they be hard working like their older collegues who own and actually save some money and buy? Geez….
People, you forget that you can ‘Sail & Ski’ on the same day! Whaddauwant?
Also of note is UBC’s ridiculous entry requirements, as inflated as Vancouver’s housing markets and, dare I say, by the same people. Oddly, UBC and Vancouver share a similar degree of mediocrity with an equally pumped-up version of their own excellence. Please excuse the schadenfreude I am feeling at this very minute…
I didn’t study at UBC but I disagree. You don’t know what a shitty university is. UBC is an institution that Canadians can be genuinely proud of. I would say the same of SFU as well.
Matt I went to UBC and I am sending my daughter there. It’s a good school but it its entry requirements are as high as the best US schools while its cachet and research programs fall far short comparatively. Kinda like Vancouver itself.
Also, UBC is on a peninsula stuck well outside the city’s natural boundaries. How could anyone expect a reasonable commute? Cry me a river…
Then what all the million dollar condos setting on endowment landing doing?
The University doesn’t care about research, so the students don’t care either.
Try sitting on the coffee shop and listen to students’ conversations, compare them to say, University of Washington in Seattle. No one here cares about what is happening in the world around them. Cos majority of them will be working in Telus call centers or at RBC as tellers.
“How could anyone expect a reasonable commute?”
Because people genuinely want a reasonable commute. Look, UBC employs a lot of people and the vast majority of them are priced out of the market within 10km of the campus. There are blocks and blocks of developable land just yearning for housing faculty and employees alike — perhaps not in single-family bungalows like their forefathers — but unfortunately said people currently living in the low-density housing close to the university will, I’m guessing, be somewhat loath to rezone. Maybe I’m wrong but all I hear in those comments is a bunch of bitching and no organized voice with the impetus to elicit a paradigm shift in the city’s housing policy.
Meh. Until then, get out your bus pass and enjoy the ride.
Maybe this is already part of the discussion and I missed it. I think that this comes back to the discrepancy between income and housing prices. If this is such a “world class” city (I hate saying that) and a place where the wealthy and affluent come to soak up culture and buy yoga pants, then shouldn’t incomes reflect it across the board? Why are these professors whining about the cost of housing? Why aren’t they complaining about their crappy pay instead? If UBC wants to keep the good people they don’t just need to create housing, they need to increase their pay. You’re training good doctors, lawyers, engineers at UBC, they’re going to stay for the amazing pay they get when they’re done, and they’ll buy the expensive houses and drink expensive coffee and wear expensive yoga pants. But, no, the pay for those jobs in Vancouver is no better than in cheaper areas of the country.
If Vancouver truly was world class, if these house prices really were reflective of what they’re worth and not a speculative bubble, then incomes would/should reflect that.
min entry for SFH in UBC is about 2M. You will need almost 400K to support the mortgage.
Working is for suckers. UBC Professors can’t figure out this simple math, we should sent them to make my lattes.
“Working is for suckers” – this is one of the worst and most ignored side-effects of the bubble.
bubbly, people have been wanting not to work for as long as I, and my parents, can remember. A housing bubble is simply the plat du jour.
jesse, that is really not the issue here. Work used to be the way to afford a nice middle class life style and sometimes even a road to riches. It often made sense to work. Now, working really is just for suckers. “Smart” people simply “invest” with a zero down mortgage,
Not looking after your community seems a common theme everywhere in BC these days. Selling out to the highest bidder in the short term rather than creating long term sustainable solutions. I was reading recently about the abundant mining apllications in the province – 9 of them in various places, all bringing in workers that are being hired and trained in China with the local government providing incentives including free land to build housing for workers and of course our raw resources and the bulk of profits are shipped directly overseas. How can say Tumbler Ridge think this project is in the communities long term interests? Just like UBC, the focus is cash now, consequences be damned. There are too many communities to mention making similiar decisions. This is not going to end well for BC.
Isn’t this just one more example of moral hazard?
“Not looking after your community seems a common theme everywhere in BC these days.”
Agreed. When was the last time you heard anyone talk about the DES? Before the Olympics it was all about the poor impoverished drug addicts and prostitutes, now it’s all about RE and poor impoverished working Joes.
Vreaa,
Did you catch this article?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/beware-the-housing-wealth-effect/article2192372/
More RE bearish articles hitting the MSM. Definitely a sign that the top of the bubble is behind us…
I just wanted to post that going to UBC is not the be-all and end all. And actually, the “best” don’t all end up going to university there: I was the top student in my classes (awards and scholarships to prove it) and I couldn’t afford to go there. (I was accepted at UBC, UVic, and SFU, as well). Instead, I attended community college. I’m glad I did. In fact, I don’t actually know of anyone who graduated from UBC that I work with: we are all community collegers. To all those people complaining about how they know so and so who attended UBC and now are working at Starbucks: just because you had the money to go there, doesn’t necessarily guarantee you anything out in the real world, because even if you got A’s at UBC, or had great profs, in the real world you are competing against others who couldn’t afford to go to UBC whose education was JUST as good.
In some lines of work, if you don’t have a university degree it’s most likely you won’t be able to do the work well. Sorry but that’s the truth.
“You get out what you put in.”
Higher education costs are another bubble. Hey, they’re everywhere!
From ‘Getting In’, by Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker:
“As a hypothetical example, take the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two schools a lot of students choose between,” Krueger said. “One is Ivy, one is a state school. Penn is much more highly selective. If you compare the students who go to those two schools, the ones who go to Penn have higher incomes. But let’s look at those who got into both types of schools, some of whom chose Penn and some of whom chose Penn State. Within that set it doesn’t seem to matter whether you go to the more selective school. Now, you would think that the more ambitious student is the one who would choose to go to Penn, and the ones choosing to go to Penn State might be a little less confident in their abilities or have a little lower family income, and both of those factors would point to people doing worse later on. But they don’t.”
Our company will not hire anyone as a developer/software engineer who don’t have at least an university degree. A lot of other software companies have similar policies.
What are the commute times like now? When I graduated from UBC in 1999, I spent about 25-30 minutes driving from Champlain Heights. I thought that was very reasonable at the time. There was also not much condo development.
“There was not a single building on campus that would allow me to have my cat in the dwelling. This policy probably prevents many people from being able to live on campus….”
LOL.
I see that the discussion has not change much here and the same guys are still around. It certainly means the bubble is in full swing in Wetcouver.
When we left Vancouver more than a year ago for San Diego, we thought would keep an eye and if the bubble pops we will come back and buy smth as most our friends and family live there.
Well, I have to confess that we don’t even bother to check any more how RE stats are doing there. Life if so good here and we don’t even plan coming back anymore. Some other family members are planing to make the move too.
Today went to the Solana beach with the kid for some surfing lessons. It is still summer here. Has the never ending depressing rain season started there?
See you in August
I can believe that there are still idiots out there who think Wetcouver is the best place on earth. They certainly have not been elsewhere.
I live in the Del Mar and evth (schools, infrastructure, traffic, food, wine, gas, etc) is so much cheaper. BC is a complete rip off. Public schools were terrible.
But the most blatant rip off is the gas prices. Only in Wetcouver can you drive thru the city, come across 20 different gas stations and they have all the exact same price to the cent. This is so criminal and I wonder why no lawyer has not yet made a case to sue gas companies for fixing the prices. It is so easy to prove it. Here there is up to 20 % difference in gas prices from one pump to another on the same day.
From where I am, I see Wetcouver in the same manner I used to see Fort St-Johns when I used to live up there.
But I do wish that the bubble pops for all the hard working bears, but for us it is all history now. Good buy Wetcouver.
Hello? Do your research on a city before accepting a position.
No sympathy.
So someone who moved here to start as faculty in, say, 2004 to start their career, coming out of something like a post-doc that pretty much precludes amassing savings (i.e. they’re starting at zero), should have anticipated prices increasing at a rate of something like 7% year over year for many years? Hmm.
You follow ‘the dime’ for the love ‘o the subject/art, AG – not The digs’. Administration knows this. One day the town will wake up, and the ‘teachers’ won’t be there.
S**t, for that matter, neither will the Boyz&Girlzvwho who deal with the recycling.
Ronnie & Maggie wanted a market society – and they got it.
In practice, it don’t work so well.
Dang, this is full of poetry. The best, which I am entitling “Tsawwassen Be Damned,” by “SR” :
I live in East Vancouver
and I could drive out to Tsawwassen
in less time than it takes for me
to creep west in my morning
bumper
to
bumper
convoy of the damned.
Hey, E.G., great find. We like your arrangement…. we’ll post it in the ‘Vancouver RE-Verse [Found Poems]‘ category, with due credit.
Cool! Thanks. This whole thing is replete with material.
Also… looks to be good for erasure poetry. Which is apt when you think of the erasure of equity that seems to be unfolding.