Vancouver NDP MP Libby Davies has three words to describe her reaction to the Conservative government's 2007 federal budget. Speaking to the Georgia Straight by phone from Ottawa, where she represents what is often described as Canada's poorest postal code, the NDP parliamentarian said: "I was stunned."

Davies said that while the Conservatives gave big business "$9 billion in corporate tax cuts", not a single penny was allotted to address the housing needs of the poor. "It was the most glaring omission of a very basic human right," she said. "It's not a lack of fiscal capacity. It's the lack of political commitment."

A former housing activist on the Downtown Eastside, Davies pointed out that the Conservatives are simply following through with what the Liberals started. In 1993, she recalled, then–Liberal finance minister Paul Martin cut the national housing program.

"We've always supported what we call the one-percent solution, which is an additional one percent of the federal budget for housing," she said. "We need to see at least a couple of billion dollars a year."

Davies noted that while the Vancouver Olympics' housing roundtable identified (in a draft report) the need for at least 3,000 new housing units for low-income residents, nothing in the way of federal support was provided in the budget.

Davies said she also found it "astounding" that Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn't consider housing a priority because "presumably he was getting some pressure from Vancouver and they were expecting to see something, especially given the [2010] Olympics."

Vision Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie said he is disappointed that Mayor Sam Sullivan's trips to Ottawa haven't produced tangible results in support of the city's housing needs. "Sam had been purported to have all this influence in Ottawa," Louie told the Straight. "He has travelled so many times to Ottawa, including for this budget, I understand, and has delivered zero in terms of value for the citizens of Vancouver."

According to Jenny Kwan, the NDP's MLA for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, the province is faced with a housing crisis. Citing a study by the Greater Vancouver Regional District, she said that homelessness has more than doubled since 2002. The 2005 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count estimated there were 2,174 homeless people in the region.

"We are inviting the whole world to come for 2010 and our homeless crisis is only going to escalate," Kwan told the Straight. She noted that it is not only the federal government that has abdicated its responsibility for housing. Kwan recalled that when the B.C. Liberals assumed power in 2001, they took down the province's housing program.

Former banker Tung Chan told the Straight he is pleased with the federal budget. A former NPA city councillor with ties to the Conservatives, Chan said that the budget provided for increases in educational grants and contributions to educational savings, as well as more money for new-immigrant services.

Asked about housing, Chan said that the federal government could have made mortgage interest payments by homeowners tax-deductible. "That will provide some tax relief just like in the [United] States," he said. "Then there's more disposable incomes for families."

Howard Rotberg, a Vancouver-based developer who has worked on affordable housing, pointed out that it's not only social housing that's lacking in the federal budget.

"The new budget continues our neglect of the urgent need in our big cities to replenish the supply of rental housing, particularly affordable rental housing for our lower-income working people," Rotberg told the Straight. "The necessity to provide inducements to the private sector to re-enter this important enterprise has long been recognized south of the border and in certain provinces, like Ontario."

Writing in last summer's newsletter of the Social Planning and Research Council of B.C., Rotberg noted that some government policies make it "unattractive" for landlords to build new rental housing. For instance, a commercial landlord collects GST on commercial rents and is then able to write this off. However, the landlord of a residential rental building cannot write off GST collected, because residential rents are tax-exempt.

Rotberg also wrote that U.S. developers get tax credits, which help fund affordable rental housing. He claimed there's a need for "specialized mutual funds" in Canada to provide debt and equity funding.

Rotberg told the Straight that it is not sustainable to have cities such as Vancouver building millions of square feet of condos every year and zero square feet of rental accommodation.

Owners of leaky condos were also hoping to get something from the budget, and they were likewise disappointed. Carmen Maretic, president of the Consumer Advocacy and Support for Homeowners Society, told the Straight that there seems to be no indication that Harper will fulfill his election-campaign pledge to aid buyers of defective condominium units. And the B.C. Liberals are of no help either, she added.

"I'm very disgusted with the provincial government's scrutiny of the budget," Maretic said. "They are upset there wasn't more money for pine beetle [relief], transportation, and the Olympics. It's appalling that they have made a throne speech in 2001 saying that they would seek assistance for fair compensation for leaky-condo owners, and in 2005 during the election they promised to ask the federal government for money, and again we don't hear them asking. They're breaking their campaign promise to British Columbians, as [are] the Conservatives."

At the very least, Maretic suggested, the federal government should allow these condo owners to write off their repair expenses.