Actually, affordability can be achieved in Vancouver, but no politician has yet stepped forward to embrace the obvious method - which is to apply PROPERTY tax rates on houses that would reflect the annual INCOME TAX needed to explain an ability to buy such a house.

In other words, if you are the doctor and lawyer couple working in Vancouver and earning together 600,000 per year, and your income tax to Ottawa and Victoria is 220,000 per year, fine, your house property tax is set at 12,000 a year. 

However if you are the 21 year old student who mysteriously owns a three million dollar house in Vancouver and neither you nor the family member who "gave" you the house has at lest a ten year working history in Canada with substantial income taxes paid to Ottawa, then YOUR property tax rate is 220,000 per year, matching the tax levels of the local working family's income taxes needed to live there.

Implement that system and house prices in Vancouver drop by half within five years.