On Friday July 22, 2016 MP Joyce Murray hosted a policy café on the future of housing within Canada and Vancouver Quadra, joined by over 60 members of the community. This group of stakeholders offered a variety of opinions and expertise about the current crisis in Vancouver’s Housing market.

 

The following central questions were posed at the beginning of our discussion:

 

1. What are the roles or responsibilities of the government and citizens in ensuring access to housing in Canadian communities and why?
2. What approach to housing will ensure that the future Vancouver (25 years from now) is even more livable than today?
3. What should be the top 3 housing policy goals of senior governments for neighbourhoods like ours? Below are the key themes and ideas that arose from our discussion: The Federal Government’s Role

 

Below are the key themes and ideas that arose from our discussion:

The Federal Government’s Role

• The government should endorse and protect the essential human right to housing for Canadians
• There needs to be better enforcement of current policies that are in place in Vancouver, such as ensuring legitimacy of income and housing taxes, overseen on a federal level
• Inter-governmental coordination (across federal, provincial, and municipal levels) must be improved regarding decision-making and policy development; a united force is necessary to implement change
• The federal government needs to oversee the enforcement of bylaws on a municipal level, such as those surrounding empty homes in Vancouver
• There was strong consensus that stricter regulation of foreign buyers at a federal level is necessary through taxes or some suggested a ban on non-resident purchasing of homes

 

Affordable Housing Strategy

 

• Cities should focus on developing rent-controlled neighborhoods for the middle class, especially available in urban centers and emerging neighbourhoods
• There should be more co-op housing available to families working in the area
• More affordable “no frills” apartments should be developed, lacking nonessential modern amenities like a dishwasher and on-site laundry units
• There should be a subsidy or tax exemption created for low-cost apartment buildings to prevent their rent price increases influenced by the city’s skyrocketing housing costs
• Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) should be restored for conservation and restoration of homes, such that families are able to afford older houses that they are willing to repair and renovate
• Definition of “middle class family” doesn’t accommodate challenges to making ends meet in cities like Vancouver and Toronto where cost of housing is very high
• Teardowns should be prevented by creating tax incentives for renovations and the “greening” of existing homes, as well as through streamlining renovation permits
• Co-ownership and subdivision should be explored on larger properties, especially near urban centres
• The cost of housing needs to be compatible with local incomes so that working class citizens are not forced to move out of the city
• To accommodate workers living in the suburbs who need to commute to city centres, there should be greater development of public transit or light rail from the suburbs
• A deal brokered with the new title-holders of the Jericho Lands could generate opportunity for developing a new community with affordable housing on a portion of the land
• To decrease population density in city, tax breaks should be offered to companies willing to create offices in small towns and outside of the city centre 

 

Foreign Ownership

 

• Foreign investment should be restricted to businesses only, such that homes are no longer viewed as a commodity

• Taxing empty homes is essential to dissuading offshore buyers from treating properties as merely investments

• Whether Canada should be accepting investments from countries with poor track records surrounding their human rights needs to be seriously considered

• We should put an end to the federal immigrant investor program (Quebec’s) currently in place

 

I would encourage you to lend your voice to this important discussion by checking out the following link:

https://www.letstalkhousing.ca/