St. Catharines councillor wants Region to ponder vacant home tax
When hundreds of people are homeless in the region, Greg Miller says residential properties in Niagara should not be sitting empty.
The St. Catharines city councillor representing Merritton Ward hopes to ask Niagara Region to take steps to change that.
Miller plans to introduce a motion at tonight’s city council meeting to endorse establishing a vacant home tax and call upon the Region to implement one.
“The money it will raise is almost secondary. I just think it shouldn’t happen that you have houses sitting vacant when you have a vacancy rate that’s around one per cent and rental rates that are, frankly, unaffordable for many people who work here,” he said.
“It will ideally help solve that problem by adding a lot more stock to the rental market.”
Miller said he hopes the tax will encourage property owners to rent out vacant homes, while also collecting additional income for social housing projects.
“Ultimately, all we’re really asking is for them (the Region) to look into it and get behind it, and they can craft it anyway they want through consultation and research,” he said.
St. Catharines, he added, “won’t have to get into the weeds of the details on it.”
“We’re hopefully just going to endorse the concept of it.” If the tax is eventually implemented, Miller said Niagara would be the first municipality in Ontario to have one.
“It requires being a little bit bold, but it’s a great opportunity for St. Catharines and for Niagara Region to show countrywide leadership on this.”
He said British Columbia is the only other area in Canada that has a similar tax.
“The entire province of British Columbia has a version of it. They’ve adopted it on a provincial scale,” he said.
Although he said a similar tax has been considered in Toronto, the city decided against implementing one.
While Miller hopes the motion finds support among city and regional councillors, he is expecting some opposition.
“There’s a powerful group of people who own property who might be against it, or just might be against any sort of changes,” he said.
Nevertheless, he said, he hopes at least his fellow St. Catharines city councillors will support the initiative.
“We know better than anyone the challenges this community is going through in terms of housing, in terms of soaring rental rates and unaffordable real estate.”
Miller said the idea of a vacant property tax was on his mind before he opted to run for city council last year.
“This something that was always on my radar. This is something we have the power over as a municipality and it can have a meaningful impact.”
He said Niagara could also benefit from a vacancy tax for commercial and industrial properties, rather than offering tax rebates.
“To me, it’s backwards because you’re incentivizing people to leave them vacant,” he said. “We want to see commercial and industrial properties used.”
The council meeting starts at 6 p.m. at St. Catharines city hall.