Meena Wong: Offering density for transit funding will undermine efforts to address the housing crisis

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      Vancouver city council may forego hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue earmarked for urgently needed affordable housing. 

      When Vancouver finally gets some form of rapid transit on Broadway, the city will collect a mind-boggling sum of taxes from new real estate developments along the corridor. Current rules say the city must use these taxes for social services like affordable housing. 

      Last month, Green party councillor Adriane Carr asked for council’s commitment to keep the money for housing. But Mayor Gregor Robertson and te Vision councillors struck down her motion, keeping the door open for Vancouver to funnel the money into transit. 

      There’s no need for the city to let go of this crucial revenue source. The revenue generated can be used to create affordable housing to reduce the critical chronic housing shortage in Vancouver.

      The federal government recently agreed to fund 50 percent of the capital costs for new transit developments. The TransLink Mayors’ Council was absolutely right in 2014 when it told the provincial government to earmark $250 million in carbon tax revenues for transit expansion—and I would add, transit affordability. That’s just common sense.

      In Hong Kong, where I grew up, real estate development helps fund the mass transit system. Some people criticize the Hong Kong for the “development-funded transit” model, touted by real estate developers from New York to Vancouver. But if you look more closely, Hong Kong’s approach is more complicated. People there understand that businesses benefit greatly from increased foot traffic around stations, so they are able to fund new transit lines partly by taxing these businesses or through leases. That’s an idea we could borrow without impacting our ability to fund affordable housing. And let’s recall that because the Hong Kong government invests heavily in housing, almost half of the homes are affordable public housing for rent or for ownership. 

      Why would Vancouver look at diverting city money toward transit at time when housing affordability and homelessness have reached a crisis point of historic proportions? 

      One reason is that the real estate industry wants city hall to subsidize condo towers along Vancouver transit corridors. The Urban Development Institute has been lobbying to divert tax revenue away from affordable housing and toward transit stations, increasing surrounding land values and making condo development more profitable. In the last election, Vision Vancouver took more than $1.9 million from corporations, including more than $1 million from the real estate industry. 

      I often wonder if realtors also worry that social housing may reduce those same land values. However, take a look at Hong Kong: real estate is one of the most profitable sectors and yet almost half of its housing was government built. 

      When I was COPE’s mayoral candidate in 2014, I proposed that we use these development levies and contributions, along with a vacant property tax and robust housing authority, to eventually build 800 of units of real affordable housing. This would have meant that 30 percent of a person or family's income would go toward housing, not the current 50 percent to 80 percent each year (as called for in the COPE-led City Council’s 2005 Homeless Action Plan). This would have allowed the city to seriously tackle homelessness. 

      If Mayor Robertson forsakes these development taxes, he will not only tie his own hands, but impair the hands of future councils to turn the tide of housing affordability in Vancouver. 

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