Opinion: Wrong election outcome may undo BC’s housing solutions

Opinion: Wrong election outcome may undo BC’s housing affordability plans

Christine Boyle (Submitted)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Christine Boyle, who is a Vancouver City Councillor. She is running in Vancouver-Little Mountain with the BC NDP.

I call Vancouver home. I grew up here, as did many of my friends.

I love it here. But for decades — that’s decades, plural — housing in this city has felt like a constant stream of bad news.

We aren’t alone. It’s bad news from coast to coast. Because the housing crisis isn’t just a Vancouver, or BC, phenomenon. It’s across Canada. And what we have come to know across Canada is that it’s not just about rising costs.

It’s about renovictions. A feeling of precarity. And friends you grew up with moving away.

It shouldn’t be this way. And frankly, with enough political will, it doesn’t have to be this way.

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I ran for office in Vancouver to take action on our housing crisis: to ensure that my home remains a city for young people, for seniors, for families, for artists and for workers.

And what I’ve seen as a City Councillor is that the housing status quo isn’t working. While I have the greatest respect for the hard work of municipal staff and policymakers, we need major change — and fast.

That’s why I decided to seek provincial office with David Eby’s BC NDP. When this team sees a problem, we aren’t afraid to do what it takes to solve it — even if housing speculators and corporate landlords don’t like it.

Thanks to our nation-leading housing reforms, we are starting to turn the corner in this province.

Let’s take a look at the facts:

Our municipal zoning reforms are eliminating the red tape that chokes out new housing. They will enable the construction of 300,000 homes middle-class people can afford, and create options for families and seniors in every neighbourhood.
While we’re dealing with high interest rates and construction costs, we’re one of the nation’s leaders in housing starts — building many more homes per capita than Ontario, the nation’s largest province and financial capital.
We’re protecting existing affordable housing through the Rental Protection Fund, and we’ve added tens of thousands of new rental homes for people through the speculation tax and tough new restrictions on short-term rentals.
We’ve implemented strong new protections for renters, including cracking down on bad faith evictions, and capping rent increases, saving people hundreds of dollars every year.

Thanks to these actions, we’re starting to beat back the housing crisis. Housing starts are way above the five-year average. In July 2024, the asking rent for condos and apartments in BC was down 2% year-over-year.

While we’re not yet where we need to be, there’s an action plan in place that is starting to make a difference. We just need to finish the job.

But it will all be undone if the wrong party wins the October election.

John Rustad was asked directly about David Eby’s action plan. He said, “I would repeal all of that,” and effectively cancel hundreds of thousands of homes for people. And Kevin Falcon is planning the same.

Eby will fight for the homes we need, even if he has to take on established interests — like speculators and those who benefit from high housing prices. Eby will choose people over the powerful — every time.

With Rustad, a career politician with a 20-year record of protecting the status quo on housing, you’ll get exactly what we’ve gotten for 20 years: red tape choking out building homes, profiteers making reams of money off our housing crisis, and our friends and family moving away. And with Kevin Falcon, you’d get the exact same thing.

By ripping up our housing plan, they’ll hand our market over to speculators.

And slam the door on you.

That would be a disaster. It would send housing costs skyrocketing even further. It would destroy people’s futures.

We can’t afford the risk.

I love BC. We need to make sure our beautiful province is a place we can all continue to call home.

Families should be able to afford to live in every city in this province. Grandparents should be able to live near their grandchildren. Workers should be able to spend time with their friends and loved ones, instead of being stuck in the car during a long commute. Everyone deserves a good home and a community they can feel part of.

Eby will do what it takes to get us there. He has picked his side: the side of young families who want a home for their children, of grandparents who want to retire surrounded by those who love them, of renters and hard-working people across Vancouver and across BC.

And Rustad has picked his side: the side of the speculators who profit from our housing shortage, the side of the status quo.

October 19 is Election Day. Your vote is your own. But when you cast your vote, think hard about whose government would be on your side.

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