Tall Order

Vancouver's Butterfly complex combines luxury condos with affordable housing—and pulls it off

- —Rebecca Gao

VANCOUVER IS A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Its downtown real estate prices have duelled with Toronto’s for the most expensive in Canada, with wealthy buyers casually snapping up one-bedroom condos for $760,000, their current benchmark price. At the same time, housing advocates estimate that Metro Vancouver needs to build roughly 11,000 new affordable units each year to stem the city’s homelessness problem. The Butterfly, opened earlier this year, houses residents at the high and lower ends of the income spectrum—in one extremely tall package.