Since virtually every BCer considers themselves qualified to fix the housing crisis, the Task Force was given plenty of recommendations to choose from. If nothing else, the three members are to be commended for whittling all of these down to just twenty-three. Some of the more seriously considered suggestions, as we’ve written about, were potentially catastrophic for future rental housing developments. Thankfully, most of these, like ‘vacancy control’, were passed over for this round. Daniel Greenhalgh, ENM co-founder, reminds us diligence is still needed to keep them from rearing their heads again in the future.
“Just because this report failed to recommend the scariest of the proposals, vacancy control, that doesn’t mean we’re forever clear of that idea, or other ideas that are designed to artificially freeze the value of rental units,” says Greenhalgh.
So here are some of the things they did suggest:
While many of these suggestions may improve the financial security and quality of life for both tenants and landlords, we believe that any attempt to fund these measures through levying more taxes or fees on developers or homeowners will undercut the best weapon we have for addressing the affordability crisis – that of increasing the rental supply.
“We’ve already seen so many new fees with this government,” says Greenhalgh. “It’s just a death by a thousand cuts. In this one or two year window, there have been so many new market shifts. It’s a new challenge everyday. The whole market is getting squeezed, investors in rental properties are being scared away - and I think further shifts in the regulatory framework, no matter how small, will ultimately result in less and less people being able to afford their own homes.”
We’ll continue to monitor the efforts by the Horgan government to implement these recommendations and the effect this will have on our goals of building more purpose-built rental projects.
