Op Ed: In the face of a housing crisis, doing the minimum is not good enough
–John Horgan, MLA Juan de Fuca
Christy Clark and her government have dismissed, mocked and outright ignored the housing crisis facing this province.
Last year, Housing Minister Rich Coleman called the Lower Mainland’s housing prices “actually pretty reasonable” just days after a report found Vancouver to be the second least affordable city in the world.
Premier Clark suggested that those who can’t afford housing in Vancouver should move to Prince Rupert and Fort St. John.
Just two months ago, when asked about the province’s lack of support for affordable housing, Minister Coleman told a reporter: “I guess some people just have to get up and whine every day.”
At the same time, in the legislature this spring, the B.C. Liberals mocked the suggestion that vacant homes were a problem in Vancouver, dismissed calls to tax speculators driving up home prices, and ridiculed academic studies into the housing crisis.
But today, after months of public outcry, Christy Clark is desperately trying to look like she’s taking action on the market she let spiral out of control. She’s even recalling the legislature for a summer session. On the agenda? A vacancy tax designed to tackle the very same problem she and her colleagues mocked and dismissed just a few months ago.
Unfortunately for those struggling to find an affordable place to live, the premier hasn’t had a sudden change of heart. She’s just doing the bare minimum to make the bad headlines go away – but not enough to anger the real estate donors who pay the B.C. Liberal Party’s bills.
New Democrats are calling for real action on affordability.
I want to see a speculation tax on offshore investors using B.C. homes as safety deposit boxes, a task force to investigate money laundering and tax fraud in the real estate marketplace, and better protections for renters.
This is about homes, families, and the future of our province. Doing the bare minimum is nowhere near good enough.
John Horgan is the leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party and MLA for the constituency of Juan de Fuca in British Columbia. This piece first appeared in John Horgan’s newsletter and is reprinted with permission.
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The housing crisis is related to ridiculous real estate prices, people can’t rent their places out for less than their overhead, and most people can’t afford to pay that. It’s the same formula used right across Canada, other parts of Canada are cheaper to rent, because real estate is cheaper…
The only solution to any housing crisis is the government puts more money into creating subsidized housing units .
The answer given to every question by the NDP is more government hand outs. I don’t feel like giving my tax money to subsidized housing for people that could move elsewhere, which is originally why I moved to Sooke, not because I liked the Colwood crawl.
It doesn’t matter which party is in place; Liberals, NDP, etc…they’ll all say anything to get into power and then do nothing when they are there except deliver lip service and character attacks as the official opposition against the one that is in office. It’s all just a game.
with all the housing construction going on in sooke and victoria, i would say the bigger issue is the the lack of “Road Construction”. Build a condo building and in this day there are a minimum of 2 people driving per 1 condo. its insane out there. Roads should be the priority not more housing construction. build homes in nanaimo or something.
the people that think they deserve housing should pull their heads out of their asses and go look for work in the morning…………and lets go to drug testing.before welfare payments
for families with a number of children, the child benefit now is so rewarding that if you have three kids you get over 1500 tax free every month – ludicrous and no incentive to work, and with this sort of money coming in families at this point should no longer be considered for social housing as this is one very generous program – having several programs for families now would be highly unfair to working people and single people that need help too – $6500 per year per child is so rich that it makes it realistic to not work and have a decent size brood!