Mayor responds after Poilievre slams Vancouver City Hall for housing woes (VIDEO)

There seems to be a bit of a political feud brewing between Carleton Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre and Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart when it comes to housing in the city.

Poilievre is emerging as a frontrunner for the federal Conservative leadership race, and he recently set his sights on Vancouver voters in his quest to become the next prime minister.

On Monday, Poilievre put out a video that suggested “big city gatekeepers—like Vancouver City Hall—are destroying the homeownership dreams of working-class youth.”

“Enough,” his tweet continued. “If they want more federal money, these big-city politicians will need to approve more home building.”

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The video that Poilievre put out was simply called $5 million. In the video, Poilievre can be seen in a Vancouver neighbourhood where he stands in front of a house that doesn’t look like it should be worth that much money. He says to solve the crisis, “we need to get local gatekeepers” out of the way.

Based on a C.D. Howe Institute study, Poilievre is saying that city taxes and other charges add a total of $644,000 to every unit of housing in Vancouver. According to Zolo, current real estate trends suggest that the average cost of a house in Vancouver is $1.450 million.

The 2020 study states, “Vancouver’s housing costs are by far the highest above the cost of construction in Canada, resulting in an extra cost of $644,000 for the average new house. In other major cities – Abbotsford, Victoria, Kelowna, Regina, Calgary, Toronto, and Ottawa-Gatineau – homebuyers paid an average of $230,000 extra on a new house because of limits on supply.”

The study offers a few recommendations on how to minimize upfront charges on housing construction being passed onto buyers.

Stewart refutes Poilievre’s claims and in a statement to Daily Hive Urbanized, explained why he thinks Poilievre is just wrong.

“The MP from Carleton cites a flawed study that assumes any housing costs beyond construction are the result of policies imposed by local governments, ignoring things like developer profits, high land costs, and speculative demand.”

Poilievre and Stewart have one thing in common: they’re both vying for top political positions in their respective domains. Poilievre is aiming for the top position at the federal level, and Stewart at the municipal level.

“Delivering affordable housing requires zoning reform, speeding up construction, and fighting speculation,” Stewart’s statement continued.

“That’s why I created a City Manager’s Permitting Task Force to cut red tape and speed up permitting. I tripled the Empty Homes Tax which will generate double the revenues for affordable housing this year.”

While many agree with the video, they disagree with the proposed solution.

My worry is that @PierrePoilievre is describing the problem correctly (financialization of housing) but offering a wrong solution (letting the free market fix it).#vanre #cdnpoli https://t.co/r75aKZivbh

— Rohana Rezel (@rohanarezel) April 11, 2022

Another local real estate expert also thinks that Poilievre’s claims are too simplistic.

Tom Davidoff is the director of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, and also a professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business.

“It is true that if the charges are so high as to chase away deals that would have happened without the fees, then that does contribute to rising prices, indirectly. Given the line out the door at City Hall for approvals, not plausible that fees are a key driver of price growth. The key is that when fees make a deal less profitable, that reduction in profitability means developers bid less for land,” Davidoff told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“On fees charged by municipalities being passed through into prices dollar for dollar. This is wrong. A lot of the incidence of those fees falls on land owners rather than buyers,” he added.

Stewart went on to say that his team approved a record number of rental and social housing projects over the last year.

“And just a few months ago, Council passed Making HOME, my plan to help first-time buyers by building 10,000 middle-class homes.”

Regardless of whether or not the study and Poilievre’s video paint the full picture about why housing is so expensive in Vancouver, he has hit a nerve. Between the various platforms the video was shared on, it has racked up nearly 600,000 views.