New Taxes and Higher Density Aren’t Fixing Vancouver’s Housing Problem

That didn’t work because they came at price points that most Vancouverites couldn’t afford, so beginning in 2016 the city and the province of British Columbia introduced a series of punitive taxes targeted at non-resident investors: A 15 percent foreign buyers’ tax, a 1 percent empty homes tax, and a 2 percent speculation and vacancy tax. However, other kinds of housing—notably more family-friendly townhouse and purpose-built rental projects—aren’t meeting annual quotas set out in the 2017 Housing Vancouver strategy, which promised to build 72,000 new homes in the next 10 years. As for the building progress that has been made, the Vancouver Sun recently reported that some developers are exploiting loopholes—such as claiming social housing status for a whole building when only a few units are actually affordable housing—to keep “social housing” rents high.

Source: www.citylab.com