Alex Hemingway
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1alexhemingway.bsky.social
Alex Hemingway
@1alexhemingway.bsky.social
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Senior Economist @bcpolicy.bsky.social. PhD @UBCPoliSci. Former CCPA-BC. Social, economic & environmental justice. Views are my own. https://bcpolicy.ca/
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1alexhemingway.bsky.social
It's plain as day
Image shows vast swaths of Vancouver land with single family homes, with a small area of density downtown. Caption: Vancouver, the image vs Vancouver, realty. Vancouver needs more housing!
July 18, 2025 at 4:54 PM
1alexhemingway.bsky.social
4. It restricts neighborhood choices and segregates apartments to busy, polluted roads.

5. It drives sprawl, long commutes, and air pollution.

6. Its resulting sprawl costs more for public infrastructure.

7. It widens inequalities and hurts economic growth by limiting people’s opportunities.
4. Exclusionary zoning robs people of the option to live in the areas they choose. This is a conscious effort to ensure certain neighborhoods are reserved for the creme de la creme, as one resident of a wealthy Vancouver area put it. Instead, residents of the most new apartments are forced to live on noisy, polluted arterial roads, where building apartments is primarily allowed, harming their health and well-being. 5. When cities like Vancouver block apartments on so much of their land it pushes people out of the city and spurs more car-dependent sprawl in outlying areas. 6. Channeling development into suburban sprawl increases public infrastructure costs. 7. Excluding people from large high-productivity cities by blocking apartments means excluding them from job opportunities and higher wages which hurt economic growth and increases inequality.
April 7, 2025 at 7:06 PM
1alexhemingway.bsky.social
1. It blocks new homes on most of cities’ land.

2. It drives renter displacement and the loss of older, more affordable apartments.

3. It balloons the costs and risks of building new homes, including for non-market housing developers.
1. The apartment ban suppresses the creation of new housing in most residential land in our city. 2. A ban here leads to a displacement here. Why? Because of instead of adding new housing, older apartment buildings get demolished. displacing renters - see, for example, what happened near Metrotown in Burnaby 3. Exclusionary zoning makes housing more expensive as developers have to compete for scarce parcels, driving up land purchase prices. For non-profits trying to build affordable housing, going through the rezoning process itself can be very costly and risky. A rezoning process can easily coast them $500,000 to $1 million, including required pre-development expenditures and fees.
April 7, 2025 at 7:02 PM
1alexhemingway.bsky.social
Congrats to Vancouver's two new city councilors.

Land use policy is the single more powerful lever big city governments have.

Today it's still being used to ban apartments on the vast majority of land with highly destructive effects.

www.sightline.org/2024/10/09/v...
In Vancouver, apartments are still not allowed on more than three quarters of the city's residential land. Here are 7 ways the apartment ban is hurting renters and perpetuating the housing. We could house more people, but zoning doesn't allow this [pointing to an outline of an apartment building].
April 7, 2025 at 6:49 PM
1alexhemingway.bsky.social
And because housing policy is economic policy, I squeezed in the case for ending the apartment ban in cities like Vancouver to unleash more growth, productivity and equality.

Not gonna lie, I'm excited to be back to the business of policy wonkery now in our new shop.
be sustained over time by growing the economy and raising additional revenue with tax measures focused on those at the very top," he said. He also points to steps government can take to unleash economic growth and productivity. "One important example that I've been focused on is taking bigger strides on zoning reform," he said. "Cities like Vancouver can't be allowed to keep blocking apartments on most of their residential land. Restrictive zoning pushes people out of high-productivity cities, excluding them from job opportunities and higher wages, which hurts economic growth and increases inequality."
March 1, 2025 at 1:23 AM
1alexhemingway.bsky.social
Meet our team!

And a peek at upcoming work, including our very first webinar on March 6th with analysis of the 2025 BC budget:

bcpolicy.ca/2025/02/19/r...
We are a progressive public policy research institute that looks at key issues facing BC and proposes bold—yet achievable—policy solutions that centre social, economic, racial and environmental justice in BC. Top left to bottom right: Kevin Millsip, Iglika Ivanova, Alex Hemingway, Véronique Sioufi, Bojan Stanojlovic, Marianela Ramos Capelo, Rav Kambo and Jean Kavanagh. Missing: Sinéad Pollard. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the important work we will be publishing in the upcoming weeks. Wealth Inequality– a look at the state of wealth inequality in Canada and policy recommendations to address the wealth gap between billionaires, landowners and the rest of us by Senior Economist & Public Finance Policy Analyst, Alex Hemingway. Collaborating on Poverty Reduction – Véronique Sioufi, our Racial Equity Researcher and Policy Analyst, in collaboration with the Poverty Reduction Coalition and Living Wage BC will publish a preliminary analysis on where BC is at in its poverty reduction plans ahead of the BC Budget. Watch out for this next week. BC Budget Analysis – BC Budget day is March 4th and Senior Economist Alex Hemingway will be at the lockup in Victoria getting an early look at the budget and speaking to reporters. Expect a breakdown and analysis of the budget from Alex, Véronique and Iglika.
February 21, 2025 at 10:49 PM