Erick Villagomez teaches architecture and urban design at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning. His work examines how cities are shaped by often-invisible systems that influence power, equity, and democratic participation. An article by Villagomez published at spacing.ca is worth serious attention. It followed the announcement by Premier Eby and Prime Minister Carney of a welfare plan for developers that involves the purchase of unsold condominiums.

Villagomez posed this question:

If Canada is facing a severe housing shortage, why are there thousands of completed homes available for governments to buy in the first place?

Villagomez continues:

For years, Canadians have been told that housing affordability is primarily a supply problem. There are not enough homes, so governments must make it easier to build them. Municipal approvals should be accelerated. Development charges should be reduced. Regulations should be streamlined. More housing, we were told, would improve affordability. This narrative has shaped housing policy across the country. Government has increasingly aligned itself around one objective: maintaining a continuous pipeline of housing production.

Yet Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. data show thousands of completed condominium units sitting vacant across B.C.,

Governments at the national, provincial, and local levels are simplifying or removing barriers faced by developers. But the industry has little interest in building homes for families in need when greater profits can be made from luxurious high-end condominiums.

Public policy is therefore less about meeting the housing needs of citizens than about keeping the development system running profitably. That segment of the economy is treated as essential because so much private wealth in British Columbia has been accumulated through land speculation, real estate development, and rising property values. With few exceptions, the province’s wealthiest moguls were real estate developers.

Housing policy has become less a public-interest strategy than a wealth-preservation system for people already positioned to profit from scarcity. The result is predictable: governments claim to be addressing the housing crisis while protecting the economic arrangements that helped create it.

Erick Villagomez has written many articles about urban planning, and he quotes Albert Einstein, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

At spacing.ca Villagomez has written a series titled Rising High, Falling Short. It is about the impacts of urban policies and official dedication to housing people in high-rise buildings.

Despite a rich history of architectural innovation, most contemporary high-rises follow a rigid formula dictated by economic efficiency rather than human well-being. While visionary exceptions exist, they remain anomalies—not necessarily because they are flawed, but because they do not align with the financial and regulatory structures that shape modern development. As a result, many residential high-rises fall short when viewed through a broader lens…

Beneath the sleek facades of contemporary high-rises lie a host of challenges: significant carbon emissions embedded in their materials, excessive energy demands throughout their lifespans, and detrimental impacts on the surrounding urban environment—from overshadowing public spaces to creating microclimates that make streets less hospitable. These costs, often invisible in standard financial calculations, distort our perception of high-rises as the inevitable or even optimal solution to urban growth…

Contemporary residential towers excel at one thing in particular: generating wealth for speculators, investors, and developers, along with their associated consultants…

Today, financial lending practices, municipal zoning policies, and development incentives have all been tailored to promote high-rise construction, making alternative models increasingly difficult to envision—especially for those embedded within the system…

Anticipating the inevitable criticisms—that this series is “anti-density” or rooted in NIMBYism—let us be clear: density is not synonymous with high-rises. In fact, when considering factors like access to natural light and open space, high-rises are not even the most spatially efficient form of urban development. Alternative models balance density with environmental sustainability, social cohesion, and long-term livability—many of which have been successfully implemented worldwide…