Housing & homelessness

The federal government’s potential leap towards housing affordability

Aug 24, 2023
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This is an excerpt from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ annual Alternative Federal Budget chapter on housing. It outlines what an ambitious federal government could achieve on housing affordability in its 2024 budget. For a growing number of Canadians, the housing market is broken. In 2021, an estimated 1.5 million Canadian households lived in… View Article

Housing lessons from Singapore

Aug 10, 2023
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Could Singapore, a city-state of 5.5 million across the ocean in Asia, hold the key to BC’s housing future? On a recent trade mission to Asia, Premier Eby was introduced to Singapore and its successes in providing affordable housing for its citizens. With a promised BC Builds program in development, Singapore shows what a more… View Article

That 70s show: The evolution of income inequality in Canada

Jul 13, 2023
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  This brief looks at the evolution of inequality going back to 1976. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s Canadian Income Survey, it reviews changes in the distribution of income by decile (groupings of ten percent of households ranked by income from lowest to highest income), and asks a hypothetical question: what would today’s incomes look like… View Article
David Eby at a press conference standing in front of a podium labeled "More Homes for People"

BC’s Housing Supply Act could help break housing gridlock

Jun 15, 2023
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As the housing crisis continues apace, the BC government is moving ahead with implementation of the Housing Supply Act, passed in November. This is good news because the housing shortage in this province is as severe as ever. Ultra-low vacancy rates have taken hold in the province’s most expensive regions like Vancouver and Victoria, forcing… View Article

BC budget does the right thing by prioritizing investment over austerity

Mar 1, 2023
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BC’s first budget under Premier David Eby includes substantial funding increases in housing, health care, income supports and cost of living tax credits, as well as allocating a record level of investment towards capital infrastructure. This not only represents much-needed progress towards meeting some of the big challenges facing our province but also prudently continues… View Article

To break housing gridlock, we need to democratize unrepresentative public hearings

Feb 22, 2023
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Housing policy has a democracy problem. Amid a housing crisis, highly unrepresentative public hearing processes contribute to land-use decisions that fail to reflect the perspectives and interests of all affected residents. But the right reforms can help deepen democracy and break housing gridlock. At the municipal level, decisions about providing new housing are typically made… View Article

Still so far from home: An update on BC’s 114,000 homes promise

Feb 10, 2023
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There is a huge opportunity for the BC government, under new leadership, to address housing affordability by making major investments in non-market housing. A growing number of commentators have recognized that the market alone cannot solve BC’s housing problem, particularly for low- to middle-income households. Major investments in non-market housing could include a much larger… View Article

David Eby’s chance to change the game on housing

Jan 12, 2023
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With a new premier at the helm, the BC government has an opportunity to shift its housing policy into high gear. One of the most effective approaches the province could take would be to massively increase public investment in non-market housing. Whether Premier Eby, along with new housing minister Ravi Kahlon, seizes this opportunity will… View Article
"Housing now" protest

Five reasons supply matters to the housing crisis

Sep 14, 2022
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The housing crisis in BC is a multi-headed beast, requiring an all-hands-on-deck effort to make homes affordable and available to everyone as a human right.  Most of my work on housing policy to date has focused on financing a massive expansion of public and non-market housing, using progressive taxes to tamp down on speculation and… View Article