The Trudeau Liberals, in last summer’s election, promised to use Ottawa’s heft to intervene in Canada’s out of control housing market. But like other levels of government in recent weeks – looking at you, Premier Doug Ford; looking at you, City of Vancouver – the Liberals retreated from previous promises. Thursday’s budget offered only a timid fraction of the urgent change that’s needed.
Consider the central housing policy in the Liberal election platform: “tackle NIMBYism” and reform restrictive civic zoning.
The acronym “not in my backyard” has for decades defined housing across Canada, and the Western world. Too much of the land in cities is reserved for detached homes, with city councils going to the wall to defend that status quo.
The Liberals promised change. They talked about using $4-billion to push cities to add density. Instead, in their first postelection budget, that $4-billion morphed into a plan that’s “designed to be flexible to the needs and realities of cities.”
Call it: Never do today what you can leave to somebody else to do tomorrow. It’s the opposite of urgency – $4-billion is budgeted in sum but in the current fiscal year it’s $150-million – 3.8 per cent of the total. This is branded the housing “accelerator.” It’s a pretty good punchline.
That slow motion unfortunately fits the prevailing theme. While the past year has finally seen a shift in thinking on housing policy, it’s been slow, and too often lacking in ambition. Some jurisdictions have moved decisively, such as New Zealand. In response to prices that are surging wildly higher, as they are in Canada, New Zealand is overriding local zoning rules to require more density, across all big cities. The move has bipartisan federal political backing. It’s a model Canada should follow.
The Trudeau Liberals are content to tinker around the edges. There’s a ban on foreign buyers for two years, which is a reasonable idea, but is unlikely to have a major impact on the national real estate market. The budget also offers more taxpayer money to subsidize new buyers in an already incredibly overheated market. It’s fuel on an inflation fire.
The budget said the right things – “the biggest issue is supply” and “Canada is facing a housing shortage” – but wilted when it came to policy.
Political backbone is required. No one is really offering it.
The demand mania in housing is a problem. The far bigger problem is lack of supply
Housing is scarce in Canada. So is the political courage to do something about it
Look at Ontario. Mr. Ford commissioned a big housing report that landed in February. It proposed real change – starting with, in cities, four units of housing where only one has ever been permitted. But facing an election and a backlash from angry mayors, Mr. Ford folded. His new housing legislation ignored most of his own report’s proposals.
Soon after, Mr. Ford confirmed the housing model he really believes in. As he rejected density in cities, his housing minister, Steve Clark, advocated for sprawl. Last fall, Hamilton’s city council boldly rejected a plan to expand its urban boundary. Instead, it aimed to add more housing within city limits. Density, not sprawl. But Mr. Clark last week called this “anti-growth and anti-housing ideology.” He wants to overturn Hamilton’s decision. Will this be the slogan for Mr. Ford’s election campaign: Sprawl good, density bad.
Look at Vancouver – the epicentre of Canada’s haywire housing market. A new city council in late 2018 decided to punt on doing something about housing: With its first move, it embarked on a four-year study of a new city plan. A near-finished draft landed this week. The Vancouver Plan would be better named Vancouver Ideas. There are lots of good ideas, such as new density across the city. But everything is hedged. There’s talk of “evolve our low density” and “respecting the local character of our neighbourhoods.” And even if council passes the plan intact in June, ahead of a fall election, it is only a blueprint. It is “illustrative” and “not rezoning.”
It’s taken almost four years to get to this.
Welcome to the reality of Canadian housing policy in 2022, even after prices have gone ballistic. The more things change, the more policy doesn’t.
Good ideas rise up and are rejected, or winnowed, or exiled to some distant future. Canadians who own real estate in established neighbourhoods win; everyone else loses. And so does the country, because housing policy is economic policy. Things can’t be allowed to go on like this. And yet, somehow, they do. Tomorrow, tomorrow, we’ll have more housing tomorrow. It’s always a four-year study away.
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