Province announces Homes For People plan
The B.C. government has announced a plan to deliver more homes to people, faster.
More than 100,000 people moved to B.C. in 2021, and another 150,000 people in 2022, the most in 60 years.
Premier David Eby said the Homes For People plan will also increase the supply of middle-income housing, among other benefits.
“If you’ve scrolled through rental listings or seen the prices of homes in your community, you know how tough it is to find an affordable, decent place to live,” Eby said. “Even though our province is currently building more housing than ever before, it’s just not enough to meet the need. This plan will take us to the next level with unprecedented actions to tackle the challenges head on, delivering even more homes for people, faster.”
(Image credit: Province of B.C.)Eby said the project is focused on four priorities – unlocking more homes faster; delivering better, more affordable homes; helping those with the greatest housing need; and creating a housing market for people, not speculators.
He said the actions will include:
- delivering more middle-income small-scale, multi-unit housing that people can afford, including town homes, duplexes and triplexes through zoning changes and proactive partnerships;
- offering forgivable loans for homeowners to build and rent secondary suites below market rates to increase affordable rental supply quickly;
- building thousands more affordable homes for renters, Indigenous Peoples on and off reserve, women and children leaving violence, and building thousands more on-campus student housing units;
- delivering thousands of new homes near public transit, and launching BC Builds to use public land to deliver affordable homes for people;
- introducing a flipping tax to discourage short-term speculation;
- providing an annual income-tested tax credit of up to $400 per year for renters;
- providing more homes and supports for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness;
- streamlining and modernizing permitting to reduce costs and speed up approvals to get homes built faster; and
- strengthening enforcement of short-term rentals.
The NDP government’s 2023 budget provides more than $4 billion over three years for the housing plan and a commitment to invest $12 billion over the next 10 years.
“We are in urgent need of more housing throughout British Columbia, which is why we are taking strong steps through our Homes for People strategy to close the gap between supply and demand,” Ravi Kahlon, Minister of Housing, stated.
Kahlon said the plan unlocks more homes by creating the conditions to encourage faster housing construction and reduce development costs, including changes in regulations and zoning, less red tape, more incentives, and a focus on targeted types of housing.
(Image credit: Province of B.C.)The province expects to deliver a projected 108,000 homes completed or under active construction by 2027-28 with tens of thousands more homes to come through other avenues.
Alongside Homes for People, the government also announced Belonging in BC, a plan to prevent and reduce homelessness. The plan adds 3,900 new supportive housing units and 240 complex-care spaces province wide, and creates multidisciplinary regional response teams designed to rapidly respond to encampments to better support people sheltering outdoors to move inside.
B.C. Green Party MLA Adam Olsen said there are a lot of positive promises in the housing action plan.
I’m pleased that there will be legislation permitting more density zoning, a one-stop shop permitting process, and increased funding for social housing programs. These are good policy choices,” Olsen said.
“At face value, the pilot financial incentive program for secondary suites, the flipping tax, and the promise of better regulation for short-term rentals, are policies that we need to explore. However, the B.C. NDP have not provided enough detail for us to evaluate the impact of these policies.”
To read the Homes for People action plan, visit: https://news.gov.bc.ca/files/Homes_For_People.pdf