‘Billionaire Bash’ calls for tax on rich to house B.C.’s poor
No wealthy Point Grey property owners were harmed during the “May Day Billionaire Bash” rally Saturday afternoon in Vancouver, but a papier-mâché effigy was damaged beyond repair.
About 80 people turned up for the Vancouver May Day Collective event in Locarno Park where, surrounded by a concentration of multimillion-dollar homes, activists spoke from the bed of a rented pickup truck about their concerns regarding wealth inequality in B.C.
They argued that excessive land wealth accumulated by property owners in the tony neighbourhood symbolized a failure by all levels of government to adequately tax B.C.’s top earners, while many others struggle to afford housing, food and other basic necessities.
People from groups such as the Alliance Against Displacement, Vancouver Tenants Union, Socialist Alternative, Teaching Support Staff Union and Mining Justice Alliance all called for a change to tax systems.
They chanted: “From Toronto to B.C., f — the bourgeoisie” and “Working class under attack, what do we do? Fight back!”
Marchers then followed the rental truck — loaded with a PA system blasting music by Rage Against the Machine — up Belmont Avenue.
As they made their way past parked Range Rovers and luxury sports cars, locals peeked over hedges and through curtains to see who was causing such a racket.
At the corner of Bellevue and Belmont — which organizers called the entryway to “Billionaire’s Row” — they banged on pots and pans.
An organizer brought the crowd to 4707 Belmont Ave., a 28,794 square-foot home overlooking Spanish Banks assessed at $65.47 million for 2019.
It was the second-highest assessed home in B.C., after Lululemon founder Chip Wilson’s $73.12-million, 15,694 sq. ft. home on Point Grey Road. They visited 10 homes collectively worth about $433 million.
The “Billionaire Bash” wrapped up after a few hours with a barbecue, where activists smashed a piñata of Rich Uncle Pennybags, the mascot for the Monopoly board game, spilling fake cash and candy onto the grass.
Alex Hemingway, public finance policy analyst for the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, explained that land wealth is a major source of inequality in B.C.
He pointed to the more than $1-trillion increase in property wealth in B.C. since 2007 ($1.861 trillion in 2018, up from $808 billion in 2007, according to B. C. Assessment). Meantime, B.C.’s population was up only 16.3 per cent to 4.992 million in 2018, from 4.291 million in 2007.
“It’s one thing when people pay their mortgage or make improvements to buildings, but most of that increase in property wealth is an increase in the land (value),” said Hemingway.
“Land wealth is created by all of us — it’s created by a growing city around us, it’s created by public investment in services and infrastructure. Because we all created it together, it should be much more equally shared among us, so I think a good way to start sharing that wealth is by focusing on the really extremely-valued properties — a good place to start taxing back that wealth.”
Hemingway said the recently-introduced speculation, empty-homes and school taxes have seemed to have slow down housing costs, along with the federal mortgage stress-test.
But his group has long called for a progressive tax on homes assessed at more than $1 million.
“When you do that you can actually bring in an incredible amount of revenue that could be used to build the housing we need in this city, and also ease the scarcity of housing,” Hemingway said.
Rocco Trigueros, on the steering community of the Vancouver Tenants Union, said he would like to see those progressive tax dollars used to build public housing.
“Not using developers to build houses is the answer,” he said. “Public housing is the government taking full responsibility at the three levels — federal, provincial and local — to make sure that housing is affordable and a human right.”
Trigueros said tenants are fed up with evictions and the scarcity of rental units in B.C., and how slowly the government is responding to the shortage of affordable housing.