Reviewing the BC NDP’s Big Housing Hurry

Ravi Kahlon became the minister in charge of solving a massive problem: the housing crisis in expensive B.C.

The file was previously handled by David Eby, who was not shy to express his disappointment with local councils slow to approve housing or use provincial powers to overrule Penticton city council’s decision to close a homeless shelter.

When Eby left the post to become premier in November 2022, he appointed Kahlon as his successor a month later.

Together, the duo have been aggressively tackling the crisis with a complex set of solutions — and experts say no other province is doing more on housing than B.C.

“I get the weekly Sunday call from him to say ‘Have you done enough?’ and I always chuckle,” Kahlon told The Tyee. “As someone who grew up with immigrant parents, that pressure of never feeling you’ve done enough is natural. But that being said, it was a real push.”

It was action that the federal government was pleased to see.

“B.C. is leading the country when it comes to housing policy and it’s really encouraging to see the level of ambition they’re demonstrating — not just to play at the margins, but to solve the housing crisis,” said Liberal Housing Minister Sean Fraser in an April interview with the real estate news site Storeys.

“We have the same level of ambition, nationally, within the federal government, and it would be most welcome if other provinces would look to the leadership of Ravi Kahlon and David Eby.”

Look inside the Liberals’ Budget 2024 and you will find a number of ideas inspired by what B.C. has done.

A Canada Builds program to finance the construction of middle-income homes and offering up public land? That came from BC Builds, launched in 2023.

A Canada Rental Protection Fund to help non-profits buy up old buildings? B.C. launched its Rental Protection Fund a year earlier.

A Housing Design Catalogue of standardized homes that can be fast-tracked by city halls? Just as the federal government wrapped up consultation on the catalogue, B.C. published its own Standardized Housing Designs Catalogue in September 2024.

“They are writing the playbook and publishing it in real time,” Fraser added. “If the entire country were as aggressive and ambitious on housing as the provincial government of British Columbia, we would be able to restore a level of affordability when it comes to housing in this country that hasn’t existed for decades.”

The BC NDP approach has been multi-pronged, from cracking down on activity that treats homes as investments to protecting the old stock of affordable housing to creating income-targeted homes where the need is.

The work is cut out for the BC NDP to persuade voters to stick to their housing plan, as the BC Conservatives have a very different idea of solutions.

Party leader John Rustad has called the BC NDP’s housing actions “a very authoritarian approach by, quite frankly, a hard-core socialist government” and has vowed to scrap at least some of his rival’s interventionist policies.

Instead, Rustad’s party presents a typical conservative philosophy. As he said during the televised debate, “government is getting in the way” of “unleashing” the private sector’s ability to build.

The election on Oct. 19 is a race that pollsters say is too close to call. If the BC Conservatives are elected to power, the province could be in for a reboot on housing.

Looking back at the flurry of housing policies

The BC NDP have been active on housing since they formed government in 2017, thanks to a coalition with the Greens.

When Eby stepped into the role as premier and Kahlon as housing minister, the government refreshed its “Homes for B.C.” strategy with a plan called “Homes for People,” announced in April 2023.

In the months since, there has been a flurry of policy interventions.

Because a number of top housing scholars in the province have been consulted by the BC NDP during its past two terms in government, The Tyee decided to interview two experts who have been studying the province from afar for their assessments.

One of them, Carolyn Whitzman, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and author of Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis, agrees that B.C. has become the “most effective” of provinces on housing.

If she were to give the BC NDP a letter grade, it would be a B plus.

“Housing for three decades was neglected by all three levels of government,” said Whitzman. “I’m not a BC NDP partisan or a Liberal partisan, but five or seven years isn’t going to fix 30 to 50 years of really bad policy.”

Whitzman is referring to a slowdown in federal spending that culminated in the government’s exit from the housing file altogether in the 1990s.

“In the 1970s, we were creating more new homes than we are today,” she said, citing federal data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. “The populations have doubled in the meantime and the household sizes have gotten smaller.”

One of the “hallmarks” of the BC NDP government has been the speed at which it acted, Whitzman says.

“It seemed for a while that every single week — and the election hadn’t even started yet — there was not just a new announcement but new legislation.”

On zoning: The BC NDP introduced Bill 44, which requires that all municipalities allow up to four units on single-family lots and up to six units if those lots are near public transit. This flexing of provincial power, a page taken from the actions of governments like those of California and New Zealand, caused city halls to scramble to readjust their plans.

On what might go on those lots: The government published a catalogue of standardized but customizable designs for multiplexes and townhomes. It’s intended to make it easier for homeowners looking to redevelop their properties and for municipalities to fast-track the designs.

On densifying transit hubs: Bill 47 requires that municipalities allow projects of between eight and 12 storeys near bus exchanges and between eight and 20 storeys near SkyTrain stations.

On planning for the future: The province made it a legislated requirement for municipalities to submit “housing needs” reports of how they’re going to add units to support people of different incomes. These targets need to be incorporated into their official community plans, which are completed every five years, with a vision of where they need to be in 20 years to address the scale and spectrum of need.

On public hearings: The province has prohibited them for residential rezonings that are already permitted under its community plans.

On flipping: The province introduced the Residential Property (Short-Term Holding) Profit Tax to discourage speculation. It is essentially a flipping tax on homes resold within two years after the initial purchase, with more tax paid the quicker it is resold.

On transparency of land ownership: The government has created a registry that requires companies, trusts and partnerships to list their major shareholders.

On short-term rentals: The province has been cracking down on platforms like Airbnb, requiring that hosts live on the property as their primary residence and increasing fines that local governments can set for rule breakers. In August, there was a 5.2 per cent drop in market rents compared with last year, which the BC NDP has taken credit for.

On preventing bad-faith evictions: The province required more strenuous requirements for landlords who wish to take back a unit for their personal use. Landlords must provide three months of notice and they must occupy the unit for at least a year, up from a previous requirement of half a year.

On creating new affordable housing: The province launched its signature BC Builds program. It has a database of underused public and non-profit land where housing could be built. Anyone willing to build rentals that charge no more than one-third of a household’s income can apply for low-cost financing that the province has access to.

On saving old apartments: To prevent individuals and companies from buying up old rental buildings for investment, the province created the Rental Protection Fund to help non-profits buy them instead. It has resulted in an “unprecedented” shift in the market, according to Mark Goodman, a longtime broker of rental buildings. More than half of such buildings in the province have been financed by the fund.

On a new model of home ownership: The province’s newest program is a special kind of loan on home purchases in certain buildings. To help first-time buyers, the province will chip in 40 per cent of the financing in exchange for 40 per cent of the profits whenever they sell. The first example of this kind of program is on the Heather Lands, a project being developed by Vancouver’s three host nations.

On stairs: There was a change to the building code, lowering the requirement of emergency staircases from two to one in buildings under six storeys, which the province said would allow for better configurations of units to provide more homes.

No silver bullet

“On one hand, it’s not surprising. This is what the province has always done,” said Alison Smith, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

She recently authored three policy briefs on the history of the B.C. government’s role in housing.

The province has a long legacy of housing innovation since the 1970s. When the federal government dumped the responsibility in the 1990s by cutting spending on low-cost housing, public housing and co-ops, B.C. continued to uphold the role.

This persisted regardless of the party in power, though different governments had different ideas of who should receive supports. Smith gives the example of the BC Liberal housing plan in 2006 under Premier Gordon Campbell, which had a focus on homelessness and home ownership.

As for the BC NDP in their recent terms, Smith says they’ve done an effective job reminding the public that housing is a “system” with no silver bullet.

“There are different types of housing, there are different types of households, there are different needs,” she said. “That’s why very long-winded, multi-part and sub-part policies are a good sign, because it’s showing that there’s an understanding of the complexity of the situation.”

A perennial crisis

There are a few reasons why Whitzman at the School of Cities didn’t give the BC NDP an A grade on their housing actions.

Provincial income assistance rates are far too low, she says, considering the high cost of housing in B.C.

There is also a reliance on what she calls “regressive” taxes for new development to pay for new infrastructure in a neighbourhood. Instead, a different option could be a progressive property tax on existing residents. “You could be sitting on a completely unrenovated place, your wealth has doubled, and that’s not taxed,” she said.

That being said, there is still a limit on what provinces can do on such a costly problem like housing.

Private and non-profit partnerships are necessary for this reason, says Smith the political scientist, and why it’s important for the federal government, with its deeper pockets, to meaningfully contribute.

She notes that the B.C. Rental Protection Fund offers grants while the federal program offers a mix of loans and grants, and “it’s frustrating to see that from the level of government with more resources to invest.”

One policy that renter advocates and the BC General Employees’ Union support is vacancy control, so that a landlord can’t increase rents when a tenant moves out.

While the BC NDP have rejected the provincewide use of this tool, they have allowed it to be used in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

A sad truth: there has always been a housing crisis in Canada.

According to scholarship, renters on the low end of the market have always struggled to find and afford homes.

The reason it’s being called a crisis now is that the problem has climbed up the income ladder.

“It tends to reach the political consciousness when it affects the middle class,” said Smith.

That’s why a team effort is necessary.

“The way the powers are divided in our Constitution, and the way the provinces and municipalities are set up, there’s no single level [responsible] — all the players are involved,” she said.

Selling the housing story

It’s not easy to run on such a wonky platform, not when some voters might be looking for immediate relief.

In Vancouver, the epicentre of the province’s housing crisis, costs are still high: an average one-bedroom unit rents for $2,649; an average condo apartment costs around $750,000; and an average detached house over $2 million.

Rustad of the BC Conservatives might have his plans to “unleash” the market and scrap the zoning reforms, but he knows he needs something sweet for voters. One of his campaign promises is a tax cut called a “Rustad rebate” on housing costs, aiming to save the average person $265 in 2026 and increasing to between $1,600 and $1,700 by 2029.

Over the course of the campaign, Kahlon the former housing minister has become convinced that voters are beginning to buy in to the need for the kinds of policies that his party has introduced.

“I felt a real change,” he said. “Now we have a lot more people, seniors in particular, who are saying, ‘Yeah, I’m worried about my kids. I’m worried about how they’ll be able to afford a home.’”

Housing is not an easy file for politicians to handle, especially when the returns are elusive, said Smith the political scientist.

“A lot of evidence suggests it’s well worth the investment in the long run,” said Smith, “but maybe you probably won’t be in politics by the time those returns are seen, or those returns might go to the local or federal level, whether it’s through savings in health care or policing.”

That’s why news of the 5.2 per cent dip in market rents, announced during the election campaign, was a godsend to the party. Kahlon is taking it as a sign that his party’s housing plans are paying off.

“When you run in politics, you always want to take on big challenges and you want to always find big solutions,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been able to do that.”

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