When I lived in Vancouver in 2007, teaching and managing a housing research project at the University of British Columbia, I had several interesting accommodation experiences.
The first one was terrible: a chronically ill middle-aged couple with a dog who was dying of cancer. They slept with the dog and spent all day in their pyjamas with the curtains drawn. In Vancouver’s dark winter, that was too depressing. I had to escape.
Living with Tessie
Then I had a couple of months living with Tessie. What a change that was! A brilliant and bubbly Phillipina women who worked in the insurance industry as a senior manager. She was searching for an apartment and had a gaggle of female friends who worked in the real estate industry. Tessie was, herself, a qualified realtor.
So our conversations over dinner and glasses of wine always turned to the design of apartments. She and her friends knew everything about what was on offer in Vancouver and the weaknesses of different developers’ designs. Tessie said that lack of interior storage was a widespread problem. Especially in some of the housing we were about to study.
It might seem like a small thing..
How right she was! It might seem like a small thing but people moving to inner city apartments from houses in the suburbs always have problems with storage! Seasonal items (like fans and blankets, space heaters, blankets and quilts) take up a lot of space. (I know because I’ve spent the day sorting just those items in our new storage room as winter tightens its grip on our mountain locale.)
Bulky items
Residents also need places to store bicycles, exercise equipment, toys, ski equipment, golf clubs and all the paraphernalia that goes with a home office. That new printer may be compact but it still needs somewhere to sit. And that paper needs to be stored somewhere. Those tax files you need to keep for at least five years… I could go on.
And the modern Vancouver kitchen has lots of gadgets that need to be packed away: bread makers, blenders, grills, toaster ovens. Not all of them can stay on the counter top.
So the humble storage question was asked in our POE study and responded to with strong comments by apartment residents. Tessie was right. Her friends knew what they were talking about. In-suite storage certainly WAS a problem.
Window privacy
Floor-to-ceiling windows are all the rage in Vancouver apartments. But what about the things that have to be stored under the BED? Ikea makes those nifty boxes for just that purpose. But do we want the whole neighbourhood to see what’s stored there?
After a long search, Tessie found a new apartment with adequate storage and the other amenities she sought. And I had to move again. And this time it was to the location of my dreams: Southwest False Creek. But that’s another story.
For more information
For detailed information about the False Creek North post-occupancy study, please go to another part of this website: