Plans for a pilot project that would see taxpayers subsidizing rental landlords have been emphatically halted by City of North Vancouver council.
With a 6-1 vote Monday night (Apr 23), councillors refused a staff recommendation to discuss the idea further at a council housing workshop.
The city is in the midst of studying ways to promote affordable housing, and has worked to assist several non-profit groups find new social housing units. But beyond social housing, the city has few options available to retain its shrinking stock of market rental homes or encourage the construction of new ones. Under the provinces Community Charter, municipalities can offer help to non-profits, but it is illegal for them to provide financial aid to any kind of business.
According to a written report to council, at the UBCM meeting in September 2011 the citys director of finance (Isabel Gordon) took the opportunity to meet with provincial housing ministry staff to present a proposal for legislative changes which could support the development of market rental housing.
Gordons suggestion was to allow local governments to offer tax breaks, grants, fee waivers or loan guarantees to rental developers and landlords.
Staff has concluded, Gordon wrote, that the best approach for the city is to provide incentives which lower the cost of developing, reinvesting in, and operating market rental apartment housing.
Provincial officials expressed interest in running a pilot program in the City of North Vancouver authorized by a special piece of legislation.
But Gordons idea got a resounding no at city council.
I would rather walk barefoot over a mile of broken glass than support this, Coun. Craig Keating said.
What this model says is the province will give us the authority not to collect taxes. But the province is not at the table in terms of giving any other money. That is perverse, that somehow they get to shower themselves with glory about this model project when all they are doing is unloading housing onto local government. Its a model of bad public policy is what the heck it is.
Coun. Guy Heywood was in complete agreement.
It does seem to be quite the effort to say on the one hand The Community Charter prevents us from subsidizing business and then say But were going to work really hard to subvert that prohibition and find a way to subsidize business.
Heywood also criticized the lack of a means test in the proposal.
Whos to say the struggling family thats scraped together a down payment to buy a strata is less deserving of support than an ex-pat family thats looking for temporary accommodation? he asked, and suggested other tools should be explored.
I dont think we can do it by robbing our owning Peters to pay our renting Pauls, he said.
Construction of rental apartment buildings in the Lower Mainland dropped off to almost nothing from the 1980s onwards, when senior government abandoned tax incentives for rental projects. According to an April 20 Metro Vancouver report, there are 6,830 rental homes built before 1980 in North Vancouver City, of which 23 per cent are at risk the properties are more valuable as condominiums than they are as rentals. Forty per cent are at risk over the next decade. In the District of North Vancouver, 70 per cent of the 1,206 aging suites are currently at risk, 83 per cent over the next decade.
Recalling the days of federal and provincial tax schemes for rental housing, Coun. Rod Clark told his colleagues to get used to going it alone.
Those days are gone, he said. The provincial and federal government are no longer at the table with respect to this. Maybe they should be. I too say to hell with the province.
Mayor Darrell Mussatto said he was not predisposed to supporting tax relief.
I think staff have been very creative in the past, he said, and we continue to be very creative trying to find ways to retain and increase our non-market rental housing in the city, and Im very proud of that.
Coun Don Bell was the lone vote in favour of discussing the idea at a workshop.
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