BC Rental Project

The Vancouver City Council fails to vote for more rental housing as they delay things once again. We are simply digging Vancouver into a deeper and deeper crisis with incompetence and inaction. Read the full article here: https://vancouversun.com//dan-fumano-postpone-and-delay-va

Rental Housing Providers In Vancouver Are Being Taxed Out Of The City City Of Vancouver Spending Is Out Of Control In the last 5 years property taxes in Vancouver have risen 27.6%. That is almost three times the rate of inflation. To make matters worse, the City of Vancouver has projected a 6% property tax increase each year for the next 5 years. Add this all up and it means that by 2025 Vancouver rental providers will have had a property tax increase of 71% in just 10 y...ears. This tax burden is quickly making providing rental homes in Vancouver untenable. On top of these monstrous property tax increases, in the last 5 years, water taxes have risen 38.2%, sewer taxes have risen 66.6% and solid waste taxes 33%. All these taxes are well above the allowable (CPI) rent increases and this makes providing rental housing less viable each year. The big question for those trying to provide rental homes in Vancouver is where are all these taxes going? Permit wait times and the development process still remain painfully slow and it can take 7 years to complete a rental building. The government waste going on at the City of Vancouver is scary: Operating revenues have risen 32.8% or 3 times the rate of inflation in the last 5 years. Capital expenditures have risen 204.4% or 18.4 times the rate of inflation in the last 5 years. The city budget has ballooned to a projected 1.62 Billion dollars in 2020. It is hard to see the increased services residents are getting for these monstrous expenditures. The city looks to be deteriorating, and all the big problems; housing, homelessness, affordability, public garbage and livability are getting much worse. Why is taxation and spending increasing so rapidly while the major problems in the city are only getting worse?

Look at this note from I received from Kenneth Chan (below) about our rental market. Because of a short term drop in demand for Vancouver rental homes due to Covid-19, we are getting a window in to what a healthy rental market could look like in our region. As a rental advocate I have been working for years to get more rental built so the local rental market will be healthy once again. We have had enough of 10 or more renters fighting over every unit and driving up prices.... At a 1% vacancy rate renters have been scared about losing their places because it is so hard to find another rental. There is a lot of misinformation out there about how tinkering with regulation can solve the rental crisis, but the reality is if we don’t have enough rentals being built the rental crisis just keeps getting worse every year. Too many people, not enough units. But due to Covid-19, there is now a more balanced supply and demand and that means more units available offering more options for renters. We need to get government to wake up and start incentivizing more rental construction. We need more rentals built now so that when the rental demand comes back, with students returning and continued incoming migration from Canada and the rest of the world, we can keep a healthy rental market. - Adrian Crook AN EMAIL NOTE FROM THE DAILY HIVE URBANIZED EDITOR - Kenneth Chan: Something unheard of is happening to Metro Vancouver's rental housing market. There are now hundreds of online listings offering weeks and even months of free rent. This is what happens when supply catches up with demand, albeit the reasons at the moment are due to COVID-19's suppression of market forces. And there is now not only greater availability but a downward pressure in rents. But these temporary conditions aren't an excuse to slow down our pace with new rental housing. For decades, Metro Vancouver has had structural issues with housing affordability, and this won't be wiped clean by a pandemic. We also know it takes years to review, approve, and build rental housing, and by the time a recently proposed project reaches completion, we'll be back at square one with the same rental housing affordability issues.

Some Good News! - Thanks to all the BC Rental Project supporters who helped advocate for the BC temporary rent supplement extension. "The provincial government will be extending its temporary rental supplement (TRS), aiming to provide additional relief to renters and landlords during the COVID-19 pandemic. The program was first announced in March and was initially planned to be a three-month supplement. Households would be given up to $500 a month towards rent, building on ad...ditional federal and provincial programs that had been announced at the time. Now, the program will continue until the end of August 2020." The full article can be read here: https://dailyhive.com//bc-gov-extend-temporary-rental-supp

BC Rental Project Poll - Should the provincial government extend the BC Temporary Rental Supplement Program past June to help renters dealing with financial stress from Covid - 19?