B.C. Premier David Eby speaks during a news conference on housing in Vancouver on Feb. 20.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
In mid-2022, when David Eby was cruising toward an easy victory in the NDP leadership race in B.C. – and set to become the province’s next premier – housing was his primary policy focus.
His main idea was provincial intervention in housing, to push cities to loosen their overly strict zoning rules to allow for more construction.
Mr. Eby, however, also advocated for using government’s heft, from land to financing, to build “housing for the middle class on public land, using public resources.” It was a more expansive view of affordable housing, a political euphemism that generally means homes for lower-income Canadians.
The bulk of Mr. Eby’s housing ideas were legislated late last year and centred on policies to force cities in British Columbia to permit a lot more housing density. B.C. is where housing costs first spiralled out of control and the province’s new policies go the furthest in Canada in trying to rein in higher prices with a detailed plan to allow for more supply.
What was missing was Mr. Eby’s renewed role for government. It appeared in mid-February, dubbed BC Builds, rental housing for the middle class. A one-bedroom under BC Builds would be available to a household earning as much as $132,000 a year. A two-bedroom would be open to households earning a maximum of $192,000. (Low-income housing focuses on household incomes at well below $100,000.)
The goal is to use government financing and grants, along with land owned by cities or other organizations, to reduce costs. BC Builds also hopes to work quickly, to move from concept to construction in as little time as a year. B.C. allocated $2-billion for loans. On Tuesday, the federal government offered $2-billion of financing. B.C. will also spend $950-million in grants to ensure 20 per cent of units offer below-market rents.
This is a smart program. Research has shown how government investments can finance housing that’s more affordable than the private sector.
But there’s a limit to what governments can accomplish. On Tuesday, B.C. and Ottawa said BC Builds could produce 10,000 homes over five years.
That’s welcome – but the average annual number of new homes built in B.C. in recent years is about 40,000. BC Builds could boost that by 5 per cent. It’s important, yet it shows how vast the housing market is, and the importance of private-sector development.
That’s why changing rules around zoning is crucial. Allowing for, as B.C. will, eight-storey apartment buildings 800 metres from a SkyTrain station in the Vancouver region is an essential step. B.C. estimates such changes could help increase annual construction by roughly 20,000 homes a year.
Looser zoning is key for private market housing and it’s the same for affordable housing, which needs density to make the construction math work. Forcing an affordable project through rezoning adds time and unnecessary costs.
While BC Builds won’t alone solve the problems in housing, it addresses an important opportunity. There’s plenty of underutilized public land. Sites of projects BC Builds is working on include land owned by cities, towns and Indigenous groups. One project, on the Sunshine Coast, would use civic land in Gibsons. The developer is a non-profit and the rental building would be run by an affordable housing group.
Ottawa this month highlighted the potential of government land for housing. It is an idea this space argued for two years ago. In mid-February, Housing Minister Sean Fraser talked about “enormous opportunities to remove the cost of land” by using government properties to partner with builders. Government could maintain ownership and lease the land.
It’s a shift from the past, when governments sold off land and lost control over what happened. There’s a glaring example in Vancouver, called Little Mountain. In 2008, the provincial government, then led by the centre-right B.C. Liberals, sold it in a sweetheart deal to a developer that was supposed to build more than 500 social housing units and 1,400 condos. Sixteen years later, barely anything at all has been built.
BC Builds is a promising initiative. Amid a housing market run amok, there is a window for a bigger role for government in housing. Opening zoning rules to allow the private sector to build is key. But government money can also help get a new kind of affordable housing built for middle-income Canadians.