David Eby's pragmatic problem-solving approach
David Eby's pragmatic problem-solving approach
Why I'm hoping his government is re-elected on Saturday
What I like about David Eby is that he's pragmatic rather than dogmatic, and that includes being willing to shift course if needed. He's committed to solving problems, rather than downplaying them or waiting passively for things to improve. He's open and frank in his public statements, like his plain-spoken explanation of the Horgan government's decision to continue Site C. And he's perfectly willing to get into a fight, whether it's with the federal government over bail reforms, with municipalities over their reluctance to allow more housing, or with people in his own party over decriminalization and involuntary care (for people with a combination of drug addiction, mental illness, and brain injury).
Housing being scarce and expensive was a big problem in Metro Vancouver even before Covid. The Horgan government started by aiming to limit demand and speculation, with the provincial speculation and vacancy tax, the land ownership transparency registry, and two public inquiries into money laundering.
But as minister responsible for housing after the 2020 election, Eby also looked closely at the supply side, including pro-supply reforms happening in US states like California and Oregon, at the state level. A May 2021 article by Frances Bula quotes Eby: "We're looking at absolutely anything to address the affordable-housing crisis. We're looking at American jurisdictions." But: "It would be a real problem not to work with cities co-operatively first. To say they're failing and force it down their throats skips a step."
By January 2022, in an interview with Kerry Gold, Eby was sounding more impatient: "I'm sure you can hear in my voice that my patience is really worn thin by some of the activities I'm seeing in various municipalities; turning down rental housing to frustrate BC Housing developments ... refusing to approve new rental units in a time of a housing crisis. I could run through many examples from across the province." When Horgan announced his retirement in 2022 and Eby launched his leadership campaign, he argued for an "all hands on deck" approach, with specific ideas that would subsequently be put into practice: more funding for non-market housing; a $500M Rental Housing Acquisition Fund for older, cheaper rental housing, to keep it from being bought up by corporations; a Singapore-style BC Builds program to build middle-income housing on public land; Unexplained Wealth Orders to deal with purchasers suspected of organized crime; urgent reforms to approval processes to make it easier to build housing.
Three days after Eby was sworn in as premier in November 2022, he announced provincial legislation to set enforceable housing targets for municipalities, based on their existing housing needs reports. In the fall of 2023, housing minister Ravi Kahlon brought in a whole raft of housing legislation: Airbnb restrictions, a province-wide multiplex policy, transit-oriented development, standardized multiplex designs, single-stair design. Municipalities had until June 2024 to update their bylaws to accommodate the multiplex and transit-oriented policies.
The housing that we badly need can't be brought into existence overnight. When Covid hit, we suddenly had a lot of people working from home and needing more space, worsening the housing shortage. And the housing shortage basically spilled over from Metro Vancouver to the rest of the province, spreading misery everywhere: smaller centres which previously had more affordable housing, such as Nanaimo or Nelson, are now something like suburbs of Vancouver, with prices and rents to match.
How long is it going to take to fix this? The province estimates that its recent changes will result in an additional 200,000 to 300,000 homes over the next 10 years, on top of business-as-usual. By five years from now, we should be seeing some significant changes. Housing starts in BC are holding up better than Ontario despite high interest rates, and asking rents have been flattening out (in Metro Vancouver they've even been declining). It's still a tough situation, but under Eby, I think we can finally say that BC's headed in the right direction on housing.
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The BC election is on Saturday October 19. Reddit thread.
Globe editorial: Don’t demolish progress on housing policy in B.C.