Transportation and lack of affordable housing consistently rank as the top two concerns for Vancouver businesses and average citizens, so a new National Housing Strategy sketched out in the 2017 Budget is likely to get a lot of attention.
But Jock Finlayson, executive vice-president and chief policy officer for the Business Council of BC, says he’s not sure the strategy will do much to address Vancouver’s particular concerns with housing affordability.
Budget 2017 announces an $11 billion national housing strategy – $1 billion a year over 11 years to try “to build, renew and repair Canada's stock of affordable housing.”
The government is committing to a federal-provincial partnership to address the particular housing needs of each province. A National Housing Fund will provide municipalities and other organizations with low-cost loans to repair and build new purpose-built rental housing.
“That’s $1 billion a year for 11 years,” Finlayson said. “B.C. might get $110 million of that per year, so I put it to you: What is $110 million of incremental federal funding for a national housing strategy actually going to do that addresses any concerns that people have about affordability in the B.C. market? My answer is that it will do very little.
“The magnitude of the funding simply isn’t sufficient to have much of an impact, and it’s not the job of the national government to be addressing these localized challenges.”
He said the biggest concern for employers with respect to housing is not home ownership, but the lack of affordable renting housing. About a third of workers don’t own homes – they rent.
“If government has money to pour into this area, it probably should go into to incenting the development of purpose-built rental housing aimed the middle income households," Finlayson said. "And I don’t know if that’s the focus here because they don’t really give us much detail.”
Other housing related policies in the 2017 budget include:
• making federal land and buildings available to develop affordable housing;
• $2.1 billion over 11 years for the Homelessness Partnering Strategy; and
• $300 million over 11 for northern housing; and
• $225 million over 11 years for housing for First Nations living off reserve.
