NDP TAKES ALL-CARROT APPROACH ON HOUSING
Province to help municipalities collect data, but won’t dictate actions to take
The New Democrats are requiring local governments to collect comprehensive information on housing needs, hoping to improve delivery on the supply side in the years ahead.
“The success of our collective efforts to deliver the right kind of housing will rely on our ability to understand local needs and the type and extent of required housing,” Housing Minister Selina Robinson said last week in tabling the enabling legislation for the surveys.
“This bill will make housing information collection a regular part of local government business (and) ensure they have the information they require when updating foundational land use plans.”
Collections to include information about population growth and distribution, household income, significant economic sectors, current housing units by type, all translated into forecasts of housing needs for the next five years.
The bill, No. 18 on the order paper for the current legislature session, is backstopped by $5 million in provincial funding over three years to assist municipalities to collect the data.
Once the requisite housing needs report is in hand, the bill obliges the municipality to post the contents on the internet and review the findings at a public meeting.
The legislation would also oblige local councils and regional district boards to “consider” the findings when developing regional growth strategies and community plans.
“The idea is to make sure they understand what is happening in their own communities,” Robinson told reporters at the followup press conference on the release of the legislation.
But will it be enough for the province to require local government to “consider” housing needs?
The minister herself has highlighted the so-called “missing middle,” the dearth of housing in many Metro Vancouver municipalities between high-priced residential and entry-level condominiums.
“In my community of Coquitlam it is either singlefamily houses or 600-squarefoot apartments that are available,” she conceded during the news conference.
“For years those were the only two housing forms that were being built. If you want to downsize there is nowhere to go. If you want to upsize there is nowhere to go. That was because decisions were being made in a vacuum.”
Likewise, Premier John Horgan — and Robinson in her capacity as minister responsible for TransLink — have both emphasized the “absolutely critical” need to develop greater housing density around transit stations.
Given those objectives, might not the province have to push a little harder to get local government to increase density in exchange for transit expansion and to address the missing middle and other gaps in the housing stock?
Not at all, insisted Robinson when I put that question to her last week. The New Democrats will go no further than requiring local governments to prepare the survey. Actual moves to address housing needs will remain the purview of local governments.
“They are autonomous and separate,” Robinson told me. “But it (the legislation) also provides them with the opportunity to make the best land-use decisions they can make.”
Granted, the province could make use of the data as well in funding various types of social and rental housing.
“We can also take a look and see what is going on,” said the minister. “And we can direct our resources and identify where it is that we need to be helping communities and make sure they have the form of housing that people can afford.”
But to clarify, the province will impose neither obligations nor targets on local government? “It is up to them,” confirmed Robinson. “Local governments have the autonomy to make land-use decisions.”
All in keeping with the New Democrats’ rejection of the previous government’s approach to dealing with local government on the housing supply.
Where the B.C. Liberals spoke of offering municipalities incentives but also deadlines to get moving on the estimated 100,000 units of housing in the approval pipeline, the New Democrats have determined to play nice with local councils.
“My life experience is that you get a lot more working with people than working against people,” maintains Robinson, herself a veteran of Coquitlam council.
“We certainly see the challenges that existed between the old government and the mayors, and how awful that was. British Columbians didn’t get the things that they needed because we had governments fighting with each other. That doesn’t get us where we want to go.”
We’ll see if the all-carrot, no-stick approach gets the province any further.
As for the problem of councils caving to local pressure on issues like density, Robinson finds encouragement in the “YIMBY” movement, shorthand for “yes in my backyard.”
“We are starting to see a shift,” she told me, referring to an emerging showdown over increased housing density in the Tri-Cities region.
“There’s a real tension in this community around, ‘No more density; we’ve had enough,’ and younger voices. They’re starting to organize, the YIMBY voices.
“The next generation has a role to play. I want to encourage them to get out to their local governments, to get out to the public hearings and make their needs known — that they need this density so that there’s affordability for them. They don’t want to be living in their parents’ basements.”
An encouraging development if sustainable. But I expect it will take more than a youth movement and a well-intentioned survey of housing needs to overcome entrenched interests and foot-dragging bureaucracies in many communities.
British Columbians didn’t get the things that they needed because we had governments fighting with each other.
SELINA ROBINSON, minister of housing