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The first in waiting would use public land and money for middle-class homes
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July 20, 2022 • 1 day ago • 4 minutes read • 76 comments David Eby gets a standing ovation when he announced his bid for NDP leader at an event in Vancouver Tuesday night. Photo by Francis Georgian/PNG
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With David Eby poised to become British Columbia’s 37th premier, his central promise is to use public dollars to create more “missing middle” housing.
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Eby announced her candidacy for BC NDP leader Tuesday night and, still unopposed and backed by 48 of the NDP’s 57 MLAs, is in a comfortable position to succeed Premier John Horgan.
Drawing on his record as housing minister of pushing councils to approve more affordable and supportive housing, Eby said the NDP government, just five years into power, has missed an opportunity to create housing for middle-income families.
“Government now, in my view, needs to be building housing for the middle class, making sure housing is available for our province to grow,” Eby told Postmedia News on Tuesday.
“We can’t just leave it to the private sector. We can work in partnership with them, we can work in partnership with First Nations. But building middle-class housing on public land, using public resources … that’s the opportunity I see that we haven’t fully developed.”
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Eby said the province has so far focused on housing the poorest of the poor and the homeless.
“But we’re not going to be able to solve this problem unless we’re sure there’s more housing available overall,” he said. “Because the people who have more income are pushing the poorest of the poor onto the streets and we’re seeing it all over the province.”
The government must work with the private sector to increase the housing stock in both urban and rural communities, he said.
Eby would like to see more creative options to make housing possible, such as rent-to-own programs, long-term rentals and more affordable rentals. Eby has stepped down as attorney-general and housing minister to run for the leadership and Horgan has appointed Murray Rankin to take on those posts in addition to his cabinet post heading the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation.
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Alex Hemingway, senior economist at the BC branch of the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, supports Eby’s vision to increase the province’s housing supply and says it’s long overdue.
“I think the backlog of needs and the housing shortage is so bad that we need all the new housing we can get,” he said.
British Columbians are paying the price as a result of several decades of underspending on housing, Hemingway said, compared to the 1970s and 1990s, when there was a heavy government focus on building co-op housing at or below of the market
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Can taxpayers afford the vision Eby is envisioning? Hemingway says yes.
The government can build below-market housing in a way that is self-sustaining and self-financing, he said. The government can borrow at lower interest rates than the private sector and generate reasonable rental income that allows it to break even rather than profit.
“We know that housing and land wealth is a massive source of inequality in this province, and so taking more of that land out of for-profit ownership … means we’re creating housing that is will ensure they are more affordable.”
BC Liberal finance critic Peter Milobar said Eby’s promise of below-market housing would “probably cost taxpayers a fortune.” Based on the government’s failure to control real estate prices over the past five years, Milobar has little confidence that Eby can deliver on the promise.
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“They’ve had five years to try to do all kinds of actions and they’ve done absolutely nothing,” he said. “Now, when it suits him politically, he’s trying to change that narrative.”
During his campaign speech Tuesday night, Eby cited his privileged upbringing in Kitchener as motivation to make life more equitable for British Columbians.
“Every child in our province, every parent, every grandparent, every person, deserves the kind of opportunity, safety and security that I enjoyed with my family growing up,” he said.
While much of this depends on individual families, “a lot also relates to the decisions we make in government, our priorities where we put our limited public resources.”
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Eby said the rapidly rising costs of housing, food and fuel are hurting almost everyone in B.C., making it difficult for people to “feel like they have a stable home, when they’re not sure if they’re going to make it end of the month”. .”
“We can build affordable housing on public land for the middle class, for the people who run our province and for those seniors on whose shoulders we stand,” he said.
kderosa@postmedia.com
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