Housing Affordability; COSN Votes 2021

*Over the course of the next week leading into the Federal Election, Q101 will be showcasing the five local candidates’ thoughts and positions on proof of vaccination, support for health care and aging in place, the affordable housing crisis, and climate change.

As the housing market continues to boom across the country, many Canadians are questioning whether they will be able to afford a home in the future. Multiple candidates in COSN have mentioned hearing about affordability issues across the riding.

Today, the five candidates were asked about their party’s plan to help tackle the affordable housing crisis in Canada.

*Candidates are listed in alphabetical order

Dan Albas (Conservative) Incumbent

Many people don’t believe that young people today have the same opportunities that previous generations have had, that’s why I’ve tabled legislation to help students with student loan debt through working and giving them incentives. But we need to do more.

Three months ago we had a vote in the house of commons on a simple motion on how we can fight for people to get into that first home. Justin Trudeau voted against it. One of the measures in it was a ban on foreign ownership of properties that they weren’t going to live in. Now it’s part of his platform, it just shows how disingenuous, that you can vote against something and then say you are going to take steps to help people when you’ve been in power for six years and you’ve made promises that weren’t kept.

We want to ban foreign ownership of properties, reduce the about of buyers, see how that works. We also want to make changes to the stress test. Work with the mortgage industry to offer first-time homebuyers instead of just a five-year term, extend that to a seven-year term so that people can get into the market. We also need to see more purpose-built rental housing, we will make sure there are incentives. If you don’t have a thriving rental market, where are people going to live? Right now we now the issue of housing is a lack of supply, a lack of supply of rentals, and homes to purchase.

Sarah Eves (Liberal)

Affordable housing is a huge issue. I have children one that is 20, one is 23 that would like to own a house one day, and that is not as easy as you might think with the current conditions.

The Liberals are working on tackling it on multiple levels, one will be building or retrofitting two million homes, which will create more supply. But they`re also looking at tackling some of the real estate issues like blind bidding, as well as working with rent to home concepts in order to really address the issue on multiple levels and get that housing affordability back under control.

Kathryn McDonald (People’s Party)

I think one of the bigger things is reducing taxes, being able to put more money into Canadians pockets. Saving money. I think that would be a start there with repealing some of these taxes that we have.

Joan Phillip (NDP)

We want to build affordable housing. I understand that the Conservatives said they would build housing, but they didn’t say it would be affordable.

We need to close up those loopholes that allow investors to just simply flip homes, which drives up the prices of homes, and they`re out of reach.

My mom raised us seven children owning her own home, now two incomes cant buy a house, it`s ridiculous.

Brennan Wauters (Green)

Young people need places, people who work need places, and they all have difficulties getting the stability they need to work properly, to organize their lives properly to get ahead. I think that is a gigantic problem.

Policy-wise the Green Party is asking right away for an emergency fund to slow things down and stop evictions. And as part of that, the policy plans in because we are the only party for a guaranteed livable income. We want to put resources in the homes of people that need them so that they can better strategies and get ahead.

The other part of the equation that is important to me is the idea of infrastructure energy retrofits. We do need to be building more housing, but we also need to be making what we have better and available to people so we can increase the selection of housing. We need to look at alternative ideas, whether we convert warehoused to apartment buildings, we need to start considering how we can make this happen faster and for a greater number of people.

If people are secure they tend to make better choices, and I think the housing crisis is really problematic because it doesn’t allow people to make those long-term commitments and long-term plans.