Make way for missing-middle housing in B.C.

When Emma and Ian Guns were looking for their first home in Vancouver in 2001, the only thing they could afford was a dilapidated tear-down on West King Edward near Queen Elizabeth Park.

Emma, in her late 20s at the time, had just been hired by the University of British Columbia as a medical researcher. Ian, in his early 30s, was working as a camera technician in the movie industry. They bought the two-storey home, built in 1938, for $362,000. Emma’s family in England thought it was an outrageous price.

The couple, juggling the demands of caring for two kids under two and their full-time jobs, got to work making the house a home, first addressing structural issues to make it livable and then, over the next decade, remodelling parts of the home.

“(Ian) is really handy and I can paint and swing a hammer so we worked on the house ourselves,” Emma said. “It’s the only way we could afford to do it at the time because we were at the early stage of our careers.”