TL;DR

The BC NDP Housing Platform - link

We rate the NDP platform best overall as they have brought in some meaningful zoning mandates and shown a willingness to bear the tiresome whining from (some) municipalities. 

That said, they have allowed cities significant leeway in implementing these policies which takes away from their effectiveness, and their transit-oriented areas, the only policy that explicitly requires allowing apartment buildings, is quite limited in geographic scope. Residents of BC are right to be frustrated that the NDP have only this year, toward the end of their second term in government, enacted meaningful legislation to address housing supply.

The NDP has otherwise admirably shown a willingness to throw everything and the kitchen sink at addressing the housing crisis.

The BC Conservatives Housing Platform - link

The Conservative platform makes some aggressive and important commitments on removing barriers, permitting delays and limiting fees. It ultimately comes up short for us due to their commitment to repeal mandatory multiplex zoning in cities and John Rustad’s appeals early in the campaign to the “local control” which has largely created our housing crisis. It is unclear, beyond zoning for triplexes & 4-plexes, exactly how much of the recent reforms the Conservatives would repeal; they have said they will not repeal legislation requiring cities to allow apartments near rapid transit, but that legislation relies on mandatory housing targets to be effective.

The fastest permitting in the world will not add housing if all that can legally be built in a city is what is already there. It is difficult to take criticisms of the NDP’s slowness to act seriously when the Conservatives are simultaneously promising to roll back the clock on some of the most meaningful reforms in Canada.

The BC Greens Housing Platform - link

The Green platform hinges on directing a large amount of building capacity to the non-profit sector, 26,000 homes/year, which is around half of BC's total annual housing starts in recent years. It is not clear from their plan how they intend to make this work, beyond “partnering with municipalities.” They also promise counterproductive property transfer taxes on REITs (real estate investment trusts), who provide funding in the current housing system that helps get more housing built, keeping rents lower than they would be otherwise.

Much More after the jump...

Our Rubric

What we are looking for, in rough order of priority.

• Zoning Mandates

Mandatory minimum zoning, especially for apartments (both rental & condos) is a proven approach to delivering better housing affordability in growing cities. “Minimum zoning” does not outlaw low-density housing like single-family detached houses, it simply requires cities to allow homeowners & builders to build more dense housing types, such as triplexes, 4-plexes and apartment buildings. It is impossible to build enough housing if it is broadly illegal to build additional housing. Having a “surplus” of land zoned for denser housing allows the housing market to respond to demand, as opposed to a years-long political process of rezoning to allow for more housing after rents and prices have already gone up.

• Commitment to Increasing Housing Supply

Getting cities to remove barriers to housing is going to be a game of whac-a-mole every step of the way. Parties need to demonstrate that they are in this for the long haul, even when city councils inevitably complain, exaggerate the impact of every move, and try every tactic to avoid doing their part.

• Limits on Development Fees

“Growth pays for Growth” has become a popular mantra among local governments that don’t want to raise property taxes. Most of the government charges driving up the cost of housing today did not even exist decades ago, and in recent years have risen dramatically in excess of inflation. While young people today are still paying interest on the debt incurred to build community centres in the 1970s, they are also being asked to pay, up-front, for all the new infrastructure residents will need over their lifetimes; a dramatic change in the social contract. These charges also ignore that dense housing is cheaper to service and maintain in the long run than sprawl.

• Mandatory Housing Targets

Targets, such as requiring cities to provide sufficient zoned capacity to meet growth projections, could be helpful if done well. In practice, targets have not worked out well; for example, California has had an evolving system of requiring housing plans and most Californian cities have an atrociously bad record of actually permitting housing.

• Streamlining Housing Approvals

Homebuilding today is mired in overlapping, sometimes contradictory, requirements and delays, mostly at the municipal level. Time is money; making housing affordable requires a more efficient permitting process.

What About…

Homelessness / Below Market Housing

While, fundamentally, Homelessness is a Housing Problem, we encourage readers to check out this platform comparison from the BCNPHA (BC Non-Profit Housing Association).

Tax Cuts

While throwing more money at housing will help get more built to some extent, the effectiveness of this strategy is constrained by zoning and other barriers.

Rapid Transit, Highway Expansions and New Cities

Opening up more land for (dense) development and linking it to existing centres via better transit can help increase housing supply, but at much greater cost than building denser housing in low-density areas much closer to job centres.

Detailed Comparison

1. Zoning Mandates

BC NDP - Recently Enacted Laws & Policies:

+ Bill 47 - Transit Oriented Areas (TOAs) legislation requires that cities not block rezoning applications to build apartment buildings near major transit stations because of height or density (as measured by floor space ratio) if they fall within Provincial minimums, which range from 20 storeys closest to Skytrain stations down to 4 storeys near some bus exchanges. Land owners can still build smaller buildings if they wish. City councils can still reject applications for reasons other than density and can still approve buildings larger than the minimums if they wish. Bill 47 does not require cities to proactively rezone transit-oriented areas according to these minimums, but housing target legislation does require them to zone for calculated growth which is likely to include transit-oriented areas eventually.
Importantly, municipal parking minimums are also not permitted under the transit-oriented area legislation (though applicants can still build as much parking as they wish).

The simple genius of the TOA regulation is that it applies to all residential-zoned land in proximity to the designated stations, regardless of how exclusionary they are currently. In the past, cities have gone out of their way to intensify apartments along busy arterial roads and redevelop existing apartment areas in order to spare wealthier single-family detached areas from any change. Contrary to the alleged purpose of zoning, this has moved more people closer to nuisances and hazards, and exacerbated displacement.

+ Bill 44 - “Small Scale Multi-Unit Housing” (SSMUH) legislation requires most municipalities, with population above 5,000, to allow 3-plexes or 4-plexes in most areas zoned for single-family houses and duplexes, and 6-plexes near frequent public transit. Municipalities have significant leeway in how to implement this zoning, e.g. most Metro Vancouver cities, other than Burnaby, have chosen to limit the size of buildings significantly below provincial guidelines, and cities can set fees arbitrarily with very little oversight from the Province (thus far). The estimate that SSMUH and TOAs will together deliver about 300,000 additional homes, net of homes demolished, assumed that cities would match Provincial guidelines.

The NDP’s election platform does not have specific new commitments on zoning mandates. It does mention “working with municipalities” to allow additional density for non-profit and public housing.

BC Conservatives:

+ Transit Oriented Areas (TOAs) - The Conservatives have indicated that they will keep the TOA requirements in place, with what appear to be minor amendments mandating allowances for commercial space like grocery stores. It is unclear whether they would keep some of the housing target legislation that will help make the TOA laws more effective.

- Removing the Multiplex Mandate - The Conservatives have promised to repeal the SSMUH law, allowing cities to once again outlaw triplexes. Their platform states that municipalities must zone ⅔ (two-thirds) of their land for multiplexes to be eligible for their proposed new infrastructure fund; which is not a strong constraint and allows cities to continue unabated in exempting their wealthiest, most exclusionary neighbourhoods from accommodating any growth, as Vancouver has done for decades.

- Will Not Back Supportive Housing Against Neighbourhood Opposition - While zoning, since its inception, has always been about excluding some people from neighbourhoods, it is formally supposed to be about “regulating the use, not the user.” That is, it should not matter for whom housing is built, only what type of buildings, residential or commercial, duplex or apartment, can be built in a zone. In practice, it is extraordinarily likely that wealthier neighbourhoods will successfully organize against supportive housing, concentrating such buildings in particular neighbourhoods. People in need of supportive housing may come from any neighbourhood, and this will tend to pull them away from their community and support networks.

BC Greens:

+ Transit-Oriented Areas (TOAs) and Multiplexes - The Greens have not indicated that they would remove either of these zoning mandates. Their platform emphasizes non-market housing; it is unclear to what extent they would support and reinforce these mandates.

+ Zoning for Non-Market Housing - The Greens promise to “implement province-wide upzoning initiatives to end exclusionary zoning for non-market housing.”

2. Commitment to Increasing Housing Supply

The NDP has, so far, demonstrated their willingness to move forward with zoning mandates and various other supply-side and demand-side policies. At the same time, their policies in reality leave a great deal of discretion in the hands of municipalities; we would like to see firm expectations implemented more quickly. We believe, based on the government’s actions and statements so far, that they will take at least the minimum further actions required to make their policies effective over the long term.

The Conservatives have many good proposals for streamlining permitting and controlling costs, but they have publicly sympathized with NIMBY sentiments and have been somewhat inconsistent on what mandates on municipal governments they would repeal. There is an inherent free-rider problem with municipalities; they can enjoy the benefits of growth in nearby municipalities while opting out of that growth themselves. Regional governments ultimately must mandate the sharing of growth as decades of experience have definitively demonstrated that municipal governments will not act responsibly for the benefit of the regional population. The public expects the provincial government to address our housing crisis.

The Greens have appeared quite skeptical of private housing development and it is far from clear that their ambition of creating a non-market housing industry half the size of the (current) total industry, roughly a ten times increase of the current non-profit housing sector in an unstated number of years and with smaller subsidies per unit, would be successful. For these reasons we are not confident that a Green government would keep the homebuilding industry growing overall.

3. Limits on Development Fees

Background: The NDP government introduced fixed “Amenity Cost Charges” (ACCs) as a way for municipalities to reduce reliance on negotiated “Community Amenity Contributions” (CACs) while still being able to raise funds from new housing development for purposes like building parks and community centres. ACCs should be a big improvement over CACs because they remove the incentive for cities to withhold zoning in order to extract more fees and, while there are not many specific limitations on what they can be used for, cities have to attribute them to amenities they intend to build (e.g. community centres, park acquisitions, etc.) ahead of time and fixed, transparent rates. Cities have become accustomed to extracting as much money from rezonings as they believe the market will bear, which ultimately has a ratchet effect on the cost of land: cities stop rezoning when they cannot extract as much money as they did last time, shutting off the supply of land for apartment buildings until prices rise.

BC NDP (Platform)

+ Waive Provincial Property Taxes for New Rental Buildings - this would help defray municipal fees and give secure rental a needed boost in viability.

+ Municipal Infrastructure Fund - Annual funding is unspecified but will be tied to housing starts (and rewarding results is better than rewarding plans). Given their very visible promises for tax cuts, we look skeptically at the feasibility of such significant but not very visible spending commitments from both the NDP and Conservatives.

BC Conservatives 

+ Restrict DCCs - Allow Development Cost Charges/Levies (DCCs/DCLs) to be paid upon project completion, reducing financing costs, and disallow rates in excess of actual costs of growth.

+ Municipal Infrastructure Fund, $1 billion per year - This fund seems to have few strings attached, requiring only that cities allow multiplexes on ⅔ of land to be eligible, though grants may be competitive based on the amount of housing enabled. This may or may not partly make up for a lack of mandatory housing targets. Given their very visible promises for tax cuts, we look skeptically at the feasibility of such significant but not very visible spending commitments from both the NDP and Conservatives.

+ Introduce Tax Incentives for Multi-Unit Residential Buildings - They would prefer this to be through an agreement with the Federal Government and likely involves allowing accelerated depreciation of buildings for tax purposes and/or delaying the realization of capital gains when capital is re-invested into rental housing.

BC Greens

+ Municipal Infrastructure Fund $650 million per year - This fund seems to have few strings attached. On the other hand, the BC Greens commitment is perhaps less likely to be sidelined by other spending priorities than the other parties’ infrastructure plans.

+ $1.5 billion annual fund for non-market housing - While we are skeptical that this would deliver the 26,000 annual new non-market homes the platform promises, at least any time soon, it would certainly help defray some local development fees.

- Extra Property Transfer Tax for REITs - Property transfer taxes are generally unfair, although perhaps progressive “mansion tax” transfer taxes are more justifiable. Property transfer tax on REITs, who buy residential land and buildings for the purpose of providing rental housing, would be an especially regressive tax on badly-needed rental housing.

- Vacancy Control on Rental Apartments - Vacancy control would prevent landlords from raising rents to market rates between tenancies, as is currently allowed. This is generally considered to be a strong deterrent to building new rental housing as landlords’ as it caps potential future revenues without capping future costs. Jurisdictions that have vacancy control generally exclude newer apartments or have loopholes that allow raising rents due to major renovations, or both.

4. Mandatory Housing Targets

Housing needs assessments and growth targets have been used in other jurisdictions, notably in California, for many years with little evidence of effectiveness. As such, we are putting little weight on these.

The NDP introduced mandatory 5-year housing targets for municipalities on the so-called “naughty list,” now totalling 30 cities. Each city’s target is based on several local measures of housing need such as estimated homelessness, number of households in extreme core housing need, and historical growth. The requirements are actually set 25% below this calculated 5-year housing need, which is itself much too low as it fails to consider unmet demand from sources such as those displaced outside of the city. The City of Vancouver’s minimum (75%) 5-year target is 28,900 housing completions, which would require them to permit about as many homes for the next 2 years that they have in the past year (it can take more than 2 years for a permit to result in a completion, and the targets are evaluated based on completions).

The government also introduced 20-year housing needs assessments. These include a “demand buffer” intended to account for some of the otherwise unmet demand for housing. Going forward, cities will be required to zone to meet 20 years of housing need as part of their official development plan updates, generally required every 5 years. The details of what counts as “zoned capacity” for meeting these housing needs are important and at this point not well-established.

It is not totally clear whether the Conservatives would repeal the legislation establishing targets. John Rustad previously stated he would repeal most of the NDP’s supply-oriented regulations, and has only specifically contradicted that with regard to the Transit-Oriented Areas, so we assume the targets will also be repealed in the name of “local control.”

The Greens have not said that they would repeal targets. Their platform commits them to “partner with municipalities to meet housing development targets…” [emphasis added].

5. Streamlining Housing Approvals

BC NDP:

+ General commitment to cutting red tape

+ Funding for standardized blueprints and factory-built / prefabricated housing - standardized designs could be “pre-approved” by municipalities to make the permitting process more efficient.

+ Replacing CACs and requiring proactive zoning - described elsewhere.

BC Conservatives:

+ Maximum Approval Times - Require municipalities to approve or reject rezoning and development permits within 6 months and building permits within 3 months, or the Province will issue permits.

+ Presumption of Compliance for Building Professionals - Force municipalities to presume that the work of regulated professions complies with permitting requirements.

+ Eliminate Step Code & Net Zero Requirements - It might not be good for carbon emissions or future heating bills, but eliminating BC’s Step Code requirements would make it at least somewhat cheaper to build housing. We might prefer to see an equalization of requirements between larger and smaller housing types, and more consideration that energy use per square meter of floor space is not a fair measure for occupants of smaller homes. At least one study funded by BC Housing estimated that the cost impacts of the Step Code are dramatically less than what the Conservative platform suggests.

+ Eliminate Inclusionary Zoning, possibly - Under the heading of “End over-regulation” the Conservatives promise to stop cities from “forcing builders to give away brand new homes,” which sounds like inclusionary zoning although it is difficult to discern exactly what is intended. Inclusionary Zoning, where a portion of homes in new housing developments, often only larger ones, must be rented at below market rates, is generally an ineffective tool that increases market housing prices well delivering few below market homes that are poorly-targeted at those most in need. For example, in Vancouver, builders generally avoid building 6-storey apartment buildings that would require 20% of homes to be rented significantly below market; they build 5-storey apartments or, more often, don’t bother with rental at all and build smaller homes like duplexes, both of which carry no inclusionary zoning requirements. 20% of zero is zero. Social housing is a societal responsibility that must be funded from general revenues.

BC Greens:

+ Funding for development of prefabricated housing - standardized designs could be “pre-approved” by municipalities to make the permitting process more efficient.