For many years, the City of Vancouver’s planning department and successive councils have grappled with an urgent, persistent problem: rents and home prices were rising too fast and too high.

Now, they face the opposite scenario, which presents its own host of challenges.

Recent declines in home prices and rents will be welcomed by many. But city planners say the trend, when coupled with increased costs of housing production, threatens to strangle the future supply of homes.

That is why Vancouver’s planning department is proposing a suite of changes, stemming from council’s directions to staff this term, aiming to boost the viability of housing development despite current headwinds. The suggested actions include reducing fees paid by developers to City Hall, softening requirements for be

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