B.C. Election: NDP and Conservatives are far apart on how to address the housing crisis

Here’s a deeper look at a few of the key housing issues and where the leading parties stand

B.C. NDP Leader David Eby wants voters to know that John Rustad and his Conservatives would repeal almost all of the NDP’s big moves on housing. And Rustad and the Conservatives want voters to know the same thing.

Both the NDP and Conservatives seem eager to highlight how far apart they are on these issues. A recent NDP press release declared: “Rustad opposes nearly every measure David Eby has taken to tackle housing costs.” Rustad has, similarly, said he intends to scrap almost all the NDP’s reforms.

The NDP’s vision includes a larger and more active role for government and non-profits in housing while also enabling the private sector to build more homes by forcing municipalities to accept denser housing like townhouses and fourplexes in single-family neighbourhoods.

The Conservatives say they want to “significantly unleash” the private sector with a more market-focused solution for housing, while allowing municipalities to retain low-density neighbourhoods exclusively for single-detached houses if they choose.

Here’s a deeper look at a few key housing issues and where the leading parties stand.

Rental Protection Fund 

While the rental protection fund hasn’t received as much media coverage as short-term rental regulations or missing-middle zoning, it’s another area where the NDP and Conservatives are at odds.

Rental Protection Fund CEO Katie Maslechko said she hopes whichever party forms government after the election will see the program’s value and continue, or even expand, its funding.

“It’s an incredibly efficient and effective investment in housing — you cannot build new for anywhere close to this. This leverages at least three-to-one, if not five- or 10-to-one in terms of when these investments are made,” said Maslechko, who was previously director of development for the private-sector real estate firm Beedie.

“No matter where you are on the political spectrum, what should matter is this frees up low-cost capital for those private-sector owners who are selling these assets…. They can reinvest into new supply.”

Rustad said he’s skeptical about the RPF’s value, and if the Conservatives form government, the program “is going to get scrapped.”

“There’s a place for non-profits in housing…. But I just look at it and I think we have a huge problem in B.C. that the private sector is not building the rental units we need,” Rustad said. “I just don’t see that happening with what government’s trying to do. They’re actually competing and actually preventing the private sector from building what’s needed in B.C.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Rustad said.

NDP leaders herald the RPF as a success. At this month’s Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon made a point of giving “a shout-out to Katie and our entire Rental Protection Fund team.”

“It’s way cheaper to protect our existing housing stock,” Kahlon told a crowd of hundreds of mayors and city councillors. “Fifty three per cent is the number I want you guys to remember: 53 per cent of all purpose-built rental buildings that were sold this year (in B.C.) were bought by the Rental Protection Fund. That is a massive number of housing (units) that went on to the market and was protected, and put into the non-market space.”

The Greens are critical of some of the NDP’s housing moves, but are “totally supportive” of the RPF, said Adam Olsen, one of two Green MLAs this past term. The Greens want to boost RPF funding, he said, “because we don’t believe $500 million is enough.”

One big believer in the RPF’s value is Sonya DeVost. The 78-year-old widow had lived in her apartment in Langley for 12 years when she learned last year that the building was up for sale.

For six months, she feared she could lose her home, either through rent hikes, renoviction or redevelopment.

The fear kept her awake at night, and aggravated her health conditions, she said. “It’s amazing what stress will do.”

When she learned earlier this year that the building had been bought with money from the RPF and would be operated as non-profit housing by New Vista Housing Society, she said, “It was like I had been given my life back… At least I know I have a home now.”

She wishes other vulnerable B.C. renters could know the same relief, she said. An apartment building down the street from her home, with many elderly tenants, was recently sold and is slated for redevelopment.

“And those people feel like they’re in hell because they don’t know what’s going on. Where do they go?”

Green party leader Sonia Furstenau is concerned about the rise of what she calls “financialized housing.”

“We’ve allowed for housing to become a commodity in this province, and we’ve had an unwillingness from either the federal or provincial governments to really respond appropriately,” Furstenau said at UBCM.

Single-family detached zoning 

As in much of North America, much of the residential land in B.C. cities is zoned for single-family detached houses or duplexes. Under the new zoning mandated by the province, property owners can still build single-detached houses if they want but, in most cases, city halls can no longer zone whole neighbourhoods exclusively for that housing type.

This kind of medium-density housing is often called “missing middle” because much of the land in our cities is zoned for either low-density detached houses or high-density towers, with little in between.

The NDP says these changes will enable housing that is more attainable — and appealing — for more people.

The changes have been welcomed by some experts and home builders.

But some municipal leaders have pushed back at what they see as the province intruding into zoning, traditionally the role of local government.

When Rustad spoke at last week’s UBCM conference to a convention centre packed with hundreds of mayors and councillors, he received his biggest round of applause when he promised to repeal Bill 44.

“We need to make sure that we support local governments and local democracy, not take it away and have it run out of Victoria,” he said.

Rustad said he wants to work with municipalities to encourage them to zone for more density, and that the province would provide infrastructure funding.

But if any municipalities don’t want more density — if they choose to keep residential areas exclusively for single-detached houses — “then that’s up to them, that’s their option,” Rustad said. “Obviously, we want to see densification happening in communities, we’ve got a housing crisis… But ultimately, it’s their say. I wouldn’t override.”

Short-term rental regulations 

Rustad says the provincial regulation of short-term rentals was “a mistake… It’s up to local governments, the province should not be overriding that.”

The Greens supported regulating short-term rentals, Olsen said, “and we were arguing the government needed to move much quicker.”

The roles of the public and private sectors 

The NDP says their approach to housing means boosting both public and private sectors: investing more in non-profit housing — including initiatives like the RPF — and making it easier for the private sector to build more homes more quickly by reducing requirements for site-by-site rezonings.

Rustad, meanwhile, has stressed the need for a more market-oriented solution to housing.

“Government is a source of the problems with housing,”  Rustad said at UBCM. “We need to get government out of the way to be able to build housing.”

At UBCM, Eby said: “We believe that the housing market, on its own, will not provide the housing British Columbians need if you just leave the housing market to itself. That’s the position John Rustad’s advocating.”

Reliance on the market, Eby said, would mean families looking for homes need to compete with investors looking for a quick-flip profit or to run a full-time Airbnb.

“This really illustrates the choices in front of voters in the upcoming election,” Eby said.

Rustad has blasted the NDP as “a hard-core socialist government” making life hard for the private sector.

Chris Gardner, president of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of B.C., said he hears the frustrations of members of his group, which includes the non-union construction industry. Gardner said members tell him “it’s never been harder to build a business, and they wake up every day thinking the deck is stacked against them.”

During the NDP’s seven years in power, the housing crisis has not improved appreciably, said Gardner, who previously served as principal secretary to B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark. He believes it’s time to “press the reset button on how we’re approaching some of these problems,” with a change in government.

Some of the province’s recent moves have been welcomed by the private sector.

While not endorsing one party or another, Urban Development Institute CEO Anne McMullin said her organization has long advocated for housing reforms that speed up approvals, reduce construction costs and increase supply. Some of the province’s “key changes,” such as increasing density near transit and updating municipal official community plans, are “critical steps” toward those goals, she said.

The upzoning “is critical in making housing more attainable in the long run,” the op-ed argues. “While it is fair to consider that municipalities should be able to manage their land usage, the truth is that many have failed to do so efficiently for years in the context of housing. That’s how we got to this point.”

Half of B.C. renters make less than $64,000 before tax, said B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association CEO Jill Atkey, “and the market is not and cannot build for those households.”

Atkey, who emphasized that her association and her comments are non-partisan, said: “So what we need to see from any government elected is a more intentional focus on households whose needs are not met by the market.”

Asked what a Conservative government might mean for B.C.’s Indigenous Housing Fund’s future, Rustad said he wants to work with First Nations on advancing “economic reconciliation,” and criticized the federal government as “an absentee landlord… not doing what’s right for Indigenous people.”

Rustad said he wants to work with First Nations leaders to provide addiction treatment facilities that include housing, adding: “We’ll be announcing more of that when we announce our housing policy.”

Alex Hemingway, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think tank, said he believes the NDP has “been going in the right direction on most dimensions of the housing crisis, whether that’s building more non-market or addressing the zoning side of things…. But it’s not gone far enough.”

He worries about the Conservatives’ proposals to repeal zoning reform, among other concerns, he said. A “free-market party” should support allowing the market to build more housing options, he said. “But they’re happy to have highly restrictive red tape at city halls that has been blocking and continues to block badly needed housing creation.”

The Greens, meanwhile, have criticized the NDP for not investing enough in social housing and for focusing more on supporting middle-income housing built by the private sector.

“This is a vote-gathering scheme rather than a thoughtful housing response,” Olsen said. “Our responsibility is to look after the most vulnerable people who can’t afford to be in the market. And my question to government has been: Where is that housing being built, at that scale it needs to be built at?”

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