Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged that Vancouver’s housing supply crunch is a key factor in the lack of affordability at a closed-door round-table discussion June 17 – and said that he’s prepared to take the blame for pushing densification, according to one of 27 attendees.
Housing expert Melanie Reuter, director of research at the Real Estate Investment Network, told the Real Estate Therapist radio show June 18 that Trudeau was highly engaged and extremely supportive of the wide array of suggested measures to tackle the affordability issue, including increasing density.
Reuter said the Prime Minister told local leaders that, if they are concerned about burning bridges with voters by increasing residential density in neighbourhoods, he was prepared to be “the heavy” by making density mandatory, so that the local leaders would not get blamed for changes.
Reuter said, “In that room, single-family dwelling was a dirty word… The problem is that rezoning and densification lives within the municipal boundaries not at the federal level. And municipal politician don’t have a lot of teeth, unfortunately – what’s happening in their communities really isn’t their fault. When the original zoning came in, it was a lot of single-family [housing]. The politicians now see the need for densification, but there’s a lot of NIMBYism everywhere. If they tried to force densification to allow for a variety of housing stock, they would get voted out of their position. The residents just don’t want it.
“It was really interesting, because Trudeau said, I don't mind being 'the heavy', maybe I can work with municipal governments, the mayors, the urban planners, and it can be my fault. So the mayors can say they ‘don’t want’ densification but that their hands are tied because the federal government is strongly encouraging densification so they can tell voters – ‘you’re right, but what can I do, it’s not my fault.’”
Reuter added that during the discussion, several ideas for taxing overseas investors were put forward, such as taxing worldwide income rather than Canadian income and changing investor visa requirements so that investors are obliged to add to housing supply.
She said, “I encouraged the Prime Minister to stay out of the business of rent control… If you make real estate investment unprofitable for investors, a lot of the rental housing supply will go away.”
Reuter said that Trudeau’s announcement Thursday along with Premier Christy Clark that $640 million will be invested into phase one of local transit improvements, including preconstruction work for the Surrey LRT, was “absolutely the way to go.”
“People will move out into the Valley if they can get there. If you build it, they will come – so we’ll see a lot more development and densification out in the Valley if transit is improved.”
