Title: 'You are always welcome': How the Vancouver Special became an iconic and beloved style of home

Publication: The Vancouver Sun (July 2024)

If you know Vancouver, British Columbia, you are well familiar with the "Vancouver Special."

Distinct to Vancouver - much like a Brownstone is to New Yorkers or a Victorian house to San Franciscans - the Vancouver Special is a boxy housing archetype that was the starter home for many new immigrants to East Vancouver during the 1970s and 80s.

For over a year starting in 2023, myself and local journalist Gerald Narciso documented the people who have inhabited a Vancouver Special (both past and present) through the lens of immigration, culture, family, and real estate.

We met some amazing people through this process: a family that have occupied the same Vancouver Special for 50 years; an artist who interprets Vancouver specials as symbols of struggle and triumph; a real-estate agent who grew up in a Vancouver Special and now sells them; and a young family who are wrestling with capitalizing on the increased value or maintaining intergenerational roots as a permanent home. All subjects had a deeply personal connection to a Vancouver Special.

Our story ran in The Vancouver Sun online and The Province in print (front page!). We hope you enjoy these human stories as much as we enjoyed reporting on them.

To read the full story, head here.