By: Isabella Urbani, Staff Writer
On May 26, the New Democratic Party (NDP) announced their latest housing plan, which focuses on lowering rent and ending renovictions across Canada. Approximately 30% of rental homes are owned by corporate landlords in Canada, who use the guise of renovations to evict renters and subsequently increase rent, so tenants can no longer afford to live there. “Undervalued” homes, which are typically rented by marginalized communities, are the main target for these renovations because tenants often can’t meet new rent increases due to being on fixed incomes or working low income jobs.
The NDP’s last housing plan was in 2021. Then, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said the party would construct 500,000 affordable homes over the next 10 years and would reduce “big money investors” by introducing a 20% tax to home purchasers who weren’t permanent residents or Canadian citizens.
“We’re saying it quite simply now: we need to stop the corporate actors from treating housing as a commodity. Housing is a basic human right. It’s not a commodity and it should not be used as such,” said NDP housing critic and Member of Parliament for Vancouver East, Jenny Kwan, during an interview with The Peak.
As a housing critic, Kwan is responsible for providing feedback to housing plans, and proposing ideas on how to end the housing crisis in Canada, which she said has been going on since the ‘90s.
“The Conservative government and the Liberal government successively began to cut funding for the National Housing Program in Canada — and in [1994], the Liberal government cancelled it altogether. As a result, Canada lost more than half a million units of social housing or co-op housing that would otherwise have been built,” she explained.
Another reason the housing crisis has been an issue in Canada for so long has been real estate investment trusts. Under this protection, real estate agents aren’t paying the corporate tax because “they return all their profit to the investor.” This means people can invest into property without having to “manage” the property. They then make profit on their investment through dividends: a returned portion of the money.
Kwan said, “By not paying the corporate tax rate, Canada lost more than $1.5 billion in taxes that we should have actually collected. And going forward, the parliamentary budget officer also issued a report to say that Canada will lose another $300 million in taxes over the next four years.”
Alongside the NDP’s moratorium — otherwise known as a ban — on corporate landlords renovicting tenants, the party is requesting that the government establishes an “acquisition fund for the non-profit sector.” This would allow non-profits to buy “undervalued” houses that go on sale before they’re bought by corporate landlords. Kwan said the current stock of real estate is so bad that “for every unit of housing built, we lose 15.” Having non-profits in control of these properties would also lower renting prices, which jumped 28% this year alone for one-bedroom apartments in London, Ontario.
Kwan said there’s no legislation outright prohibiting rental evictions. According to Kwan, while rules vary depending on the province or territory, in BC, landlords are allowed to increase rent as inflation rises. This, however, doesn’t stop landlords from hiking the prices on properties that were priced lower than inflation rates, she said.
Singh has been extremely critical of both the Liberal and Conservative party since announcing his party’s latest housing efforts. In the initial news release, Singh called Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre’s “so-called housing plan” a way to make “super-rich investors and big developers even richer.” Singh also criticized Trudeau’s “silence” on the matter on Twitter.
The housing crisis is much more complicated than it seems, Kwan said, “It’s not just about building more [housing] — it’s about building the kind of housing that meets the needs of the community at the affordability level. That’s what we need to do.”
