The Squamish Nation’s Impossibly Simple Solution to Vancouver’s Housing Crisis

If, in late 2024, you walked the shoreline in Vancouver beach to beach, through the laid-back and well-off Kitsilano neighbourhood and past the museums in Vanier Park, you’d arrive at a construction site where eleven residential towers rose from new foundations. This cluster of high-­rises and skyscrapers—squeezed between the bridge and the water, neighbouring parks, and single-family homes—looks like a second downtown packed into just four blocks. It feels distinct from the rest of the city.

That’s because this site is not part of Vancouver. The development, Sen̓áḵw, which roughly translates to “the place inside the head of False Creek,” is a reserve that belongs to the Squamish Nation (Sḵwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw), who have lived in North America since long before the arrival of Europeans. With 250 to 300 of its 6,000 rental apartments reserved for Squamish families, Sen̓áḵw’s construction represents an incredible moment of return: No Squamish had lived on this land since 1913, when residents were forced out and the provincial government burned the original Sen̓áḵw village behind them. After a decades-long court case, the Squamish reclaimed these 10.5 acres in the early 2000s.

No one else can build like this in Vancouver—or almost anywhere in North America. In San Francisco, Boston, and other parts of Vancouver, zoning regulations have historically limited the height and density of new buildings, often to single-family homes with a yard. Reserves like Sen̓áḵw, though, are not bound by these regulations.

The return of Sen̓áḵw is a meaningful act of reconciliation and recompense. It also shows how broken the housing market is in cities like Vancouver. It embodies how the desire for a place to live, especially among younger generations, has been blocked by cities’ policies and choices. The demand for housing in Vancouver was overwhelming; the need for homes was, and is, desperate. An annual report on housing affordability ranks Vancouver as the third most expensive city in the world.

The high price of housing is a clear signal that the city doesn’t have enough homes. The rising of Sen̓áḵw’s towers shows how powerfully people and resources can be mobilized to solve that shortage—­if towns and cities stop sabotaging themselves and let people build as ambitiously as the Squamish Nation.

Paítsmuk, a Squamish Nation Elder who also goes by the name David Jacobs, grew up in Homulchesan (Xwemelch’stn), a reserve roughly six miles from Sen̓áḵw, in the 1950s. He did not have plumbing, running water, or electricity until he was forced to attend a residential boarding school by the government. Like thousands of Indigenous Canadians, he was separated from family so he would assimilate.

“They took away my language,” Paítsmuḵ says. “In our longhouse, we had to relearn.” Despite the forced isolation—policies the Catholic Church and Canadian government have since apologized for as “cultural genocide” and “evil”—Paítsmuḵ grew up hearing stories of Sen̓áḵw from family, including his father’s grand-uncle, August Jack Khahtsahlano, who had watched Sen̓áḵw burn in 1913.

In the 1860s, Sen̓áḵw was both a village and gathering place, situated by seasonal salmon runs and bounties of duck, elk, and cedar trees. Vancouver did not yet exist, but the British had built a small mill town and timber sites nearby, amid the homelands of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh. Despite their minor presence, the British claimed enormous swaths of land—all of it, really—reserving just 0.3 percent of British Columbia for First Nations. The village of Sen̓áḵw and eighty-two surrounding acres became Kitsilano Indian Reserve No. 6, named after Paítsmuḵ’s ancestor Khatsahlano. In 1886, when the transcontinental railroad arrived, the mill town incorporated as Vancouver and grew quickly.

Even though the British had designated Sen̓áḵw a reserve, many colonizers still coveted the land. A Canadian railway company laid tracks across the reserve, then built another line a decade later, all without the permission of Squamish residents. Then, in 1913, the provincial government offered Sen̓áḵw residents money to leave.

“They were walking around with envelopes with money in [them],” says Paítsmuḵ. “A lot of people didn’t understand.” According to contemporary reports, the province’s attorney general told villagers that if they refused, they would “get nothing at all for your land, not one cent.”

“Once they accepted that, they said . . . ‘You have to leave,’” says Paítsmuḵ. “The government brought a barge up to the beach . . . They weren’t on the barge very long [before] they were burning their houses down.”

After a period of bureaucratic delay, the Canadian government made the sale official, and Sen̓áḵw and Kitsilano Indian Reserve No. 6 ceased to exist. That land became the approach to the Burrard Bridge; it became a wharf and marina; it became national defence buildings, city streets, and rental homes; it became, ultimately, the forty acres of Vanier Park and its multiple museums. Despite having sold a large, prime piece of land, the Squamish Nation lacked funds for its members and for reserves like Homulchesan, where Paítsmuḵ grew up without essentials like plumbing.

In the 1960s, Paítsmuḵ joined Nexwsxwníw̓ntm ta Úxwumixw, the Squamish Nation Council. Early in his tenure, he says, an elder member said that there was “something fishy” about the land deal. They asked a legal adviser to investigate.

“The lawyer came back in a bit, and he said, ‘I think we have something here,’” Paítsmuḵ recalls.

The Squamish never signed a treaty with Britain, but per British law, which stayed in force after Canadian independence, the Crown oversaw the reserves that they forced Native people onto and had a duty to represent Indigenous interests. This “honour of the Crown” principle is patronizing but legally binding.

The lawyer’s research revealed a history of the Crown failing its legal obligations to the Squamish, as British and Canadian groups acquired Sen̓áḵw through subterfuge and at below-market prices. The Canadian railway company had built its tracks across the reserve without paying reasonable compensation and without the permission of Indian Affairs, the government body meant to represent First Nations’ best interest on behalf of the Crown. In 1913, when families boarded the barge and left Sen̓áḵw, they did so in response to coercion by the provincial government, which intentionally did not alert Indian Affairs, making the sale illegitimate. It was not until decades later, after years of legal limbo, of fending off bad-faith attempts to purchase the reserve, of the government legally appropriating parcels (undervaluing them each time), that the Squamish and Indian Affairs agreed to accept the sale.

After hearing this legal history, Paítsmuḵ and the Squamish Council decided to sue the Canadian government. In 1977, the council initiated the Omnibus Trust Action, a series of legal claims. The land of Sen̓áḵw was gone, but they hoped to receive compensation.

The housing crises afflicting so many prosperous cities are the result of a fundamental tension. To homeowners, their house or apartment is a place they chose, at great cost, and where they’ve raised their children, learned their neighbours’ names, and organized block parties. It’s also a financial asset and nest egg. They’re incentivized to block the construction of new housing, which might change the neighbourhood they love and, by boosting supply, reduce the price of their home and most valuable investment.

For everyone else, though, the homeowners’ neighbourhood is a place with access to jobs, social capital, and other opportunities that cluster in big cities due to agglomeration. Living there is a springboard to economic mobility and prosperity. Because of the high demand for homes, the restrictions on new housing, and the access to economic opportunities, owning real estate in these neighbourhoods is like living next to a magic, money-producing obelisk. The lucky few who are in range of its power get wealthier. But from society’s perspective, shouldn’t we build more homes next to the wealth-spawning obelisk? Shouldn’t we help more families contribute to and benefit from all the prosperity that cities enable?

Cities struggling with high housing costs, like New York, Vancouver, and Seattle, have not banned new homes. But according to economist and housing expert Daryl Fairweather, they’ve drastically limited their construction in two main ways.

One is single­-family zoning: Many towns and cities, including metropolises like San Francisco, ban apartment buildings and even duplexes from most residential neighbourhoods. Along with other restrictions, like parking requirements and setbacks (minimum yardage between the street and your building), this suburban-sprawl mandate prevents developers from building denser developments that would increase the supply of housing.

And the other is the approvals process: If a proposed building follows zoning codes, the developer can just build it, right? Nope. Most municipalities allow neighbours to weigh in and require a vote by a planning board or commission. The approval process can stretch on and on, and the delays and uncertainty deter new projects and construction.

Even when governors and mayors promise to build more homes, they are foiled by local politicians’ responsiveness to current homeowners. The potential future residents who need the new housing—the college grad who wants to job hunt in the city, the family with a housing voucher striving for a middle-class life—aren’t around to vote for the city council and advocate for duplexes and high-rises. So instead of denser developments and affordable­-enough housing, cities build an insignificant number of large luxury homes that meet zoning codes.

The technical name for this behaviour is rent seeking. Somewhat confusingly, the term originally referred to, among other things, landowners charging tenants and workers rent. Beginning in the 1960s, economists began using it to describe any unproductive behaviour that extracts value from productive parts of the economy. If homeowners use their political power to prevent the construction of housing—thereby making their property more valuable—that’s rent seeking.

Some residents who object to high-rises counter that cities should instead build affordable housing and subsidize rent. The problem is that if zoning codes ban all dense housing, and if neighbours veto high-rises, then each subsidized unit will be incredibly expensive. If we truly care about affordability, says Fairweather, it’s important to up-zone neighbourhoods, to allow them to be denser, which will grow the city’s economy and produce more wealth that can be used to subsidize housing and be redistributed to vulnerable people.

“You can’t really stop the economy from growing . . . or wealthy people from buying homes,” she says. “The only thing we can do is try to build an abundance of housing so that the most vulnerable people aren’t competed out of their housing.”

But that’s not what Vancouver’s residents chose to do. And so, as the Squamish Nation’s lawsuit navigated Canadian courts in the 1980s and 1990s, Vancouverites’ rent-seeking behaviour created the affordability crisis that would make Sen̓áḵw’s towers so badly needed.

At court, the Squamish had to play by British and Canadian rules. The First Nations had no tradition of property titles. But the law required them to document their property interests and prove they had been wronged by a system they’d had no say in developing.

According to Alexandra Flynn, a law professor who previously represented other First Nations at the law firm Ratcliff LLP, which represented the Squamish Nation, this is one of the most challenging aspects of Indigenous land cases: assembling mountains of evidence to prove a century or more of land use. Since most First Nations have an oral tradition, their law firm had to track down maps and documents from archives and hire anthropologists to record oral accounts of Sen̓áḵw.

“The evidence that was produced for the court case came from a lot of our old people, and our old people don’t lie,” says Paítsmuḵ. “This is what happened. This is who it happened to.”

But the lawyers and researchers did not come cheap. Paítsmuḵ’s colleague on the council, his cousin Squamish Nation hereditary Chief Gilbert “Gibby” Jacob, recalls the moment when they informed their people how much they’d need to spend. That money could go to programs and services. Pursuing the lawsuit was a huge risk. They asked the community: Should they proceed?

“People just said, go, go,” says Chief Jacob. “Go fight whoever you gotta fight.”

The research and motions took years. But the delays had two unexpected benefits.

First, when Canada amended its constitution in 1982, it “recognize[d] and affirm[ed]” First Nations’ treaty rights. Over the next decade, courts pointed to the amendment to clarify that the Crown (i.e., the national government) had a fiduciary duty to manage reserves in Indigenous people’s best interest.

Then, in 1989, the railroad company tried to sell the 10.5 acres of Sen̓áḵw it once used for rail lines. The land was multiple city blocks, all undeveloped, along the water, with skyline views. A dream listing for any real estate agent. And an opportunity for the Squamish Nation. They sued for its return.

Paítsmuḵ and Chief Jacob spent many days in court. What Chief Jacob remembers most is staff wheeling in all the evidence each day. “There were over 10,000 documents,” he says. “ I was sitting there thinking . . . ‘Thank God the white people don’t throw out anything. We’re using their own paper against them.’”

As the case progressed, Paítsmuḵ felt they “had the government on the ropes.” They’d proven that Sen̓áḵw’s sale and acquisition had been illegal and against their interests. In 2000, after more than two decades in court, the government agreed to a $92.5 million settlement to compensate the Squamish, and a judge separately ruled that the Squamish should get back those 10.5 acres of Sen̓áḵw.

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When the court case concluded, Sxwíxwtn Wilson Williams was a young man in a prominent Squamish family. He remembers hearing every house’s phone ringing because everyone wanted to share the news. “It was like a shock wave,” he says. “I just remember the pride . . . the happiness.”

The Squamish leadership had long ago decided that they’d never sell the land. But how should they use it? Many people wanted to simply rebuild their village, says Williams, who began serving on the Squamish Council in 2013. But an elder councillor transformed the conversation, he says, by repeating an Indigenous saying that’s believed to have originated in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Constitution, and that has a long history in Squamish teachings and culture: Always prepare for the next seven generations.

As they discussed and debated, they faced a unique economic situation: All the local zoning codes and land-use regulations did not apply to the reserve. Since Sen̓áḵw was liberated from zoning, the rent-seeking behaviour by Vancouver homeowners was an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

When the council studied the land’s potential—with the intent of generating as much income and employment as possible for Nation members, including future generations—the signal from Vancouver’s housing market was clear: Building residences had the most potential to generate long-term income.

The development came with plenty of challenges. Since it’s illegal under Indigenous law to seize reserve land, the Squamish could not use the land of Sen̓áḵw as collateral to get loans. But they received a $1.4 billion low-interest loan from a national government fund meant to create new rental units. Sen̓áḵw needed to connect to Vancouver’s streets, sewage, and electric grid, so they negotiated a services agreement with the city, which did not demand any changes to the Sen̓áḵw plan.

It was a remarkable turnaround. A century ago, Squamish leaders pleaded for the government to protect the specks of land they’d not yet taken. Now Canadian leaders were praising their “government-to-government” relations with the Squamish, while prominent developers were vying to partner with them.

“I’m always a half glass full [guy] . . . I felt that there were always good intentions on both sides,” says Williams. “In this spirit of reconciliation today, the city of Vancouver [has] really seen the light, in like, ‘Hey, this is your village, we want to help you be back there.’”

As Sen̓áḵw’s towers rise, 50 percent of the workers are Indigenous, with 15 percent Squamish representation, according to 2024 data. Many received training in trades such as hoist operation, construction safety, and mechanical design. Once the buildings are finished, Sen̓áḵw’s revenue is forecast as upward of $10 billion over the coming decades, which will help the Squamish Nation build public housing on other reserves, assist homeless members, and achieve financial sustainability. Williams feels proud he’s helping complete a project that his parents’ generation started and that will benefit seven generations.

When all eleven towers are finished, in 2032 or 2033, Sen̓áḵw’s 6,000 units will equal how much rental housing Vancouver normally builds in a year. It’s a meaningful contribution. By itself, though, the development will only slow the growth of housing costs in Vancouver. Sen̓áḵw is unique; it can’t solve Vancouver’s housing shortages or be a universal model. But it does offer lessons.

Sen̓áḵw’s scale and size show the resources ready to be marshalled to solve the housing shortage. Just four blocks of Vancouver were returned to the Squamish, and therefore freed from zoning restrictions, and the result will be 6,000 new homes. Loosening zoning codes across entire cities would not look as dramatic as Sen̓áḵw—a sprinkling of new duplexes among single-family homes, the occasional sprouting of a high-rise. But all together, they’d transform people’s lives.

Vancouver has started to move in the direction of balance: In 2023, the provincial government of British Columbia voted to end single-family zoning, and Vancouver’s city council started allowing multiplexes with up to eight units.

The housing crisis is a story of economic incentives but also of empathy. “I wish that communities had the mentality that it is their responsibility to grow, because we know there’s going to be future generations that are going to need housing,” Fairweather tells me. “I [wish] that people cared more about future residents.”

Excerpted from Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life by Alex Mayyasi. Copyright © National Public Radio, Inc. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.