Premier David Eby is defending a B.C. housing development under scrutiny for charging rents considered unaffordable.
Reporting from The Globe and Mail has revealed that a subsidized rental building in Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood is charging rents of $2,600 per month for a studio and $4,200 per month for a two-bedroom unit. These figures are above the average rent rates for the area, according to Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation. It pegs the average rent for a bachelor unit at $1,441 and a two-bed room unit at $2,606 as of October 2023.
The 68-unit rental building was announced in 2021 as a partnership between a private development company, the City of Vancouver and the province through BC Builds and its Housing Hub division designed to create "new rental housing for middle-income people in BC."
Under the terms of the agreement, the provincial government supported the private development company through a $31.8-million loan guarantee subject to interest payments.
Speaking at an unrelated event in Nelson on Monday, Eby said the subsidy cost taxpayers nothing and the developer was able to turn the guarantee into affordable housing units. Under the terms of the agreement, 20 per cent of the units (14) will go toward households earning less than $80,000 per year. The other 54 units would be targeted at-or-below-market level rents restricted to middle-income households within the provincial middle-income limits.
"We have to do this kind of creative stuff," Eby said. "We can't pay for all the housing we need right (now) across the province. We actually need to leverage the private sector as well."
Eby said he will be "thrilled" when those 14 families move into the units, and said 77,000 individuals with families have moved into housing his government has helped to build across B.C.
He also pushed back against the larger narrative that this project is evidence of his government's failing housing policy. He says coverage of the story is conflating provincial social housing policy with the Housing Hub division that exists to facilitate construction of rental housing.
Critics have seized on these figures as evidence of government's failure to deliver on its promise to deliver affordable housing as the initial release announcing the project touted in as "(another) affordable rental housing building" when Eby was still the housing minister.
B.C. Greens Leader Sonia Furstenau is among those critics.
“The BC Greens aren’t surprised that the BC NDP’s housing bills (passed in 2023 and 2024) have failed to produce affordable housing — it’s exactly what we argued for dozens of hours in the legislature last fall," she said. "To actually deliver affordable housing, we need a government that will invest in non-market solutions, including co-op and non-profit housing. Anything else is just more of the same.”
The project has also received criticism from B.C. United Leader Kevin Falcon, who has linked it to Eby's previous role as minister responsible for housing.
Pointing to various controversies at B.C. Housing, Falcon said government officials, "none of whom have any private sector background in the housing industry," have mismanaged public funds without public accountability while failing to encourage the development of new rental in the marketplace.
"(Today), we see the results. We have got the most unaffordable rents in the entire country."
