Mayor Stewart: Stick to your 3% empty homes tax! - TIM LOUIS

UPDATE: I’ve created a petition to help keep up the momentum. Please sign and share it!

Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart was on CBC radio’s Early Edition with Stephen Quinn Tuesday morning. While he has moved forward on several of his campaign promises, including creating a renters advocacy office and pushing for more medium- and high-density rental housing, he indicated that he may be abandoning his promise to raise the empty home tax to 3% from the current 1%.

When it started on January 1, 2017, the empty home tax was intended to put pressure on property owners to rent their homes, rather than leaving them empty. With Vancouver’s vacancy rate currently hovering around 1%, affordable rentals are desperately needed especially by families and people with low incomes.

The tax wasn’t intended to be a revenue producer, but it generated $38 million in its first year, some of which the city is using to build affordable housing — although the jury is still out on how affordable it really is. For many of the new “affordable” rental units, you need an income of $80,000+ a year.

Since the tax was put in, the province added its 1% speculation or empty homes tax, and the federal government might be adding another 1% tax. Mayor Stewart says these changing circumstances are why he might hold back on his promise.

But if the city tripled its own empty homes tax, it would see an additional $80 million or so that could go towards building truly affordable housing without waiting for more money from the province or the feds. It was therefore very disappointing to hear the mayor backtracking on his election promise.

One of the mayor’s concerns is his fear that an increase in the empty homes tax will put downward pressure on housing prices. Presumably the only homes that would experience this decline would be empty homes. I, for one, do not believe it would be a bad thing at all if the worth of empty homes decreased in value. In fact, it would be a welcome development.

COPE’s Councillor Jean Swanson and housing advocate Justin Fung were also interviewed. Councillor Jean Swanson urged the mayor to hold firm on his election promise. A five-decade advocate for genuine affordable housing for the thousands of people who now find themselves living on the street, she is my favourite city councillor.

The mayor is consulting with economists to see what the next step is in this regard, but if he does do an about-face, let’s hope Councillor Swanson, or one of her courageous fellow councillors, brings forth a motion to increase the empty homes tax to 3%, as promised, and use all of the funds generated to construct rental housing that people can actually afford to live in.

Daily atmospheric CO₂ [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]

Latest daily total (Oct. 30 2019): 409.15 ppm

One year ago (Oct. 30 2018): 406.79 ppm