A tradesperson uses a lift while painting the outside of a rental housing building being developed by the University of British Columbia Properties Trust, in Vancouver, on Aug. 16.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
British Columbia is planning to start its own program to build housing for middle-income residents, a response to the escalating housing crisis in the province and a rare move for a government because they tend to focus on affordable housing for lower-income residents.
Provinces in Canada, including B.C., usually fund subsidized housing that includes some non-subsidized units to help create a better social mix and revenue stream. The province already has a $3.3-billion fund dedicated to helping finance new housing, but it has been geared to projects built by non-profits, First Nations and municipalities, where typically about two-thirds of apartments are subsidized and a third are rented at close to market rates.
But Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon, at a convention last week of city councillors and mayors, referred repeatedly to an impending provincial plan to move into developing housing that is aimed directly at middle-income households.
“We’re still landing on what the mechanism will look like. The plans are still being finalized,” said Mr. Kahlon in an interview with The Globe and Mail at the end of one of the two sessions on housing that drew hundreds of anxious attendees at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention. He did not provide details of what is planned, saying that he didn’t want to pre-empt a future formal announcement.
“The government needs to step into a space beyond housing for low-income earners,” he said at another point at the convention.
Mr. Kahlon repeatedly invited city officials at the two sessions to help his ministry compile a list of available properties for a land bank. He said they’ve already started researching what vacant or under-utilized land is available that’s owned by the province, Crown corporations and cities.
“If you’ve got vacant land, please do reach out to us,” he urged the officials.
Mr. Kahlon’s promise of that initiative and promises of action on several other housing hotspots were greeted with keen interest by the hundreds of mayors, councillors and regional directors who painted vivid pictures of the extreme level of housing stress in their cities when they had their chance to speak at the housing sessions.
They listed a myriad of housing problems they are facing, from basic supply shortages and problems with the proliferation of vacation rentals to concerns about safety and crime related to supportive-housing projects.
Castlegar chief administrative officer Chris Barlow said the city is so desperate to get new housing that they are thinking of building it themselves, because it’s been so hard to convince developers to come to a smaller city when they’ve got work piled up in bigger cities.
“We are almost at the point of paying developers to develop,” he said.
Prince George councillor Cori Ramsay said her council has estimated they need 1,000 additional homes a year to absorb the new population in their rapidly growing city. They’ve only ever managed 780 at the most in previous years and now construction is slowing down because of high financing and construction costs.
She, like some other city officials, said the city is doing everything it can to encourage more home-building – speeding up permitting times, legalizing secondary suites and cutting development-cost charges, even though that then leaves the city with less money for the sewer, water, and roads needed for the new housing.
“We’re doing everything we can in Prince George to build fast,” she said.
New Denver councillor Danika Hammond said something needs to change because half the houses in her small east Kootenay town “go dark” during the winter, as owners leave their vacation homes vacant. In the meantime, residents who live there year-round are stuck in trailers on the edge of town because that’s all that’s available.
And councillors in suburban cities like Coquitlam and Langley said that although they’re churning out massive amounts of housing, they’re starting to see backlash from residents who say services like hospitals and schools are not keeping up with the growth.
The provincial plan to start building housing for middle-income earners is the latest in a series of announcements about new programs and legislation aimed at trying to deal with problems at every level of the housing system and to create massive amounts of new housing.
The hope is that building a lot will lower costs – or at least slow down the increase – for buyers and renters, as well as taking away some of the incentive landlords now have to kick out long-term tenants paying lower rents in order to bring in new higher-paying ones.
Faced with the kinds of stories that emerged at the municipal convention last week, along with the knowledge that B.C. has seen an unprecedented surge in population the last two years, Premier David Eby has been driving hard on the housing file since he took over leadership of the government last year.
At the beginning of the week, Mr. Eby announced a new program to provide about 3,000 homeowners with forgivable loans of up to $40,000 apiece to build basement suites or laneway homes.
For months, he has been talking about the legislation the province plans to bring in this fall to legalize townhomes, multiplex projects and secondary suites in every residential zone in the province, as well as bring in new regulations to deal with problems created by short-term rentals.
In the spring, Mr. Eby also announced a new half-billion-dollar fund to help non-profit housing groups buy private apartment buildings that come onto the market.
Finance Minister Katrine Conroy said during the convention that the province is expanding the areas where a speculation tax will be charged on homes owned by non-residents of that region.
Mr. Kahlon said the province is also looking at changes to the Residential Tenancy Act to deal with increasing concerns from both landlords and tenants. Tenants are filing more complaints than ever with the Residential Tenancy Branch, as evictions soar.