PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS AND HOUSING

(continued)

The House in Committee of Supply (Section A); D. Routley in the chair.

The committee met at 1:39 p.m.

On Vote 37: ministry operations, $318,559,000 (continued).

S. Sullivan: We have a number of questions from different MLAs. The first issue I did want to bring up is not so much a question. I will deal with this a little bit later. It’s more of an appeal.

[1:40 p.m.]

It gives an example of something I’m going to be talking about a little later. This is regarding the residential tenancy board and the residential tenancy arbitration process.

We just had an urgent request from a woman whose mother is 100 years old. Her son is an Afghan war veteran and has a house that he rents out across from his house. The grandmother is now very frail, so they were going to ask that the tenants leave after three months of notice. They gave two months and also an extra month’s payment. Just three days before the mother and grandmother were going to move in, the residential tenancy arbitration accepted a late filing from the resident. As a result, there’s quite a lot of suffering that’s happening to this family.

I will give you this letter. Perhaps the minister would pass this along and have this looked at. This will be something I’ll be covering a little bit later today as well.

One question that I wanted to put to the minister right away, before I ask some of the other MLAs to speak, comes from Brenda Ilic, who is the head of an organization for manufactured home parks. As an urban guy, I didn’t really realize that the rules are made, basically, for urban issues. The drive for many of these things like rent controls and such are more urban-related. I realize that the manufactured home parks are under some difficult criteria that they have to fulfil. One of the differences between manufactured home parks and regular rental buildings is that when they rent out a pad, they can…. This pad ownership can be assigned to another purchaser.

That means there is no reset. The market rate can’t be reset into the price of that rental. So what happens is…. If a person lives there for 20 years and then moves out, but they assign that pad to another person who comes in to rent, that will maintain a very low rent that was maybe 40 years old. What happens, also, with the manufactured home parks is that if there’s a snowfall…. If, for example, B.C. Hydro has to fix some problem, normally, in an urban situation, B.C. Hydro would do that and not charge. But because this is on private property, now they ask that the owner of the park pay for that.

There are a number of things that are different in manufactured home parks that are very much different than what we would experience in urban tenancies. There is a request that they would have this situation looked at and perhaps separate manufactured home parks from other regular tenancies that we would expect with an urban area.

I’d like to ask the minister: has she heard about this difference in treatment? It is really quite a serious hardship when there’s some expense that comes up for the park, yet they’re only allowed to increase their rent by the cost of living.

[1:45 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: While the residential tenancy branch serves tenants in both of those forms, they’re two separate acts. They’re governed by two separate acts. One is the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act, and the other one is the Residential Tenancy Act. They are very different because they’re different kinds of tenure. As a result, they have different kinds of acts that determine how costs are borne out.

They both have rent control, but with the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act, the landowner can pass through costs to tenants, who are the homeowners, related to operations like utilities, septic costs, and they’ll get a percentage of what those costs are for the park. That’s built into the act. They own the building, and all they rent is the pad. So that’s sort of built in. The acts themselves recognize the difference in that context. They’re quite dissimilar in that respect.

I hope that answers the member’s question. There is one other thing I want to say. We are familiar with these concerns, and they have been raised with staff.

S. Sullivan: Some of the information that I have would indicate that they are liable to some…. They’re kind of like small municipalities in themselves. They have to cover all the costs of any unforeseen problems, like a major snowfall and damage to sewer or water. They have to, then, absorb all of those costs. As far as I am told, they are not able to pass those along.

Can I, then, forward you a contact and have that followed up with?

Hon. S. Robinson: Absolutely. The member can pass along the contact information, and we can make sure that there’s a clear understanding of what the manufactured home park owner is responsible for, what pass-through costs they can include in any rent increase and make sure that they understand the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act so that they can continue to operate in a way that makes the most sense. So certainly pass that along, and we’ll be sure to communicate with the individual.

S. Sullivan: Who would I pass this along to, then?

Hon. S. Robinson: You can pass it along to me.

S. Sullivan: Okay. I would like to pass off to the member for North Vancouver–Seymour.

[1:50 p.m.]

J. Thornthwaite: I have one main question, but it might prompt a follow-up. It’s about recommendation 9, the British Columbia Rental Housing Task Force’s Rental Housing Review: Recommendations and Findings. Recommendation 9 states that in order to increase rental housing stock in British Columbia, the task force is recommending to “increase the availability of currently empty strata housing by eliminating a strata corporation’s ability to ban owners from renting their strata units.”

My question is to the minister. I don’t know if the minister wants me to read them all or do them separately, but they’re all pertaining to this recommendation 9. Why don’t I ask two related questions?

How many strata corporations in the province currently have banning rentals written into their bylaws? How many units are currently vacant within those strata complex developments? How many units are currently held by speculators that you know of? How many units would be available for rent should the legislation pertaining to this recommendation come to fruition?

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the member’s questions. That has been the effort of this ministry, to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to address the housing crisis, which has been pretty significant, and to make sure that we get the right kind of supply available to the people who’ve been desperately looking for housing that they can afford and that meets their needs.

As a result, we did some preliminary work around rental housing, in particular. Then the Premier suggested and assigned one of my colleagues, the member for Vancouver–West End, to chair a task force, to go out, to talk to renters and landlords alike, to hear from those who are in the market and to identify the kinds of things that we might want to look at and consider as we work together with all kinds of stakeholders to make sure that we have the kind of housing that people need.

That’s the work the task force undertook, with a couple of other members, the member for Courtenay-Comox and the member for Saanich North and the Islands. They went out, and they heard from a variety of these folks. They came back with a number of recommendations, and we announced yesterday that we would be looking to address all of them.

This particular one that the member described is one that we have some more work to do on. We said we would address it. That’s why it’s part of phase 3, I think, of our plan to take a look at, to get the kind of numbers that she’s talking about, to talk with the condominium owners associations and to engage with those stakeholders. I think it’s really important that we make sure that their voices are heard as well, and they weren’t part of the structure of the task force. It’s for that reason it’s part of the phase 3 activities.

Staff are going to undertake some further policy work to identify if that’s the right direction to be moving in, in terms of identifying opportunities for more rental stock — which we all agree, I think, is desperately needed, given we have a near zero vacancy rate, certainly in the Lower Mainland and here in the capital region.

It was a recommendation that we look into that, and we said yes, we’re going to do that. We’re going to look into that and see what would be possible and what would make sense.

J. Thornthwaite: On that note, I have some follow-up questions that indicate the possible implications to strata owners in this recommendation No. 9.

Currently 50 percent of the strata corporations in British Columbia are under 50 units, and most of those strata corps are self-managed. Has the province considered the added financial burden this legislation would cause to these strata owners? That’s one.

Has one considered the cost to the strata corporation and its owners to manage the rental housing stock within the complex and the hardship that extra cost would have on seniors and to those on a fixed income, of which there are many?

Third, has one considered the potential legal costs re­quired to implement and enforce the eviction of renters due to non-compliance with any of the other strata bylaws that owners and potential renters would be required to follow?

[1:55 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to express appreciation for the questions that the members asked. They’re good questions, and it’s for that reason that this particular recommendation is part of phase 3.

We have three phased actions that we’re doing. We just announced it yesterday. The key focus for right now is education, collaboration and compliance and enforcement. We’ve already sort of undertaken those actions, moving forward on that to make sure that the rental arrangement between landlord and tenant works better.

But as I said yesterday in the announcement…. There’s more work to be done on a number of the other recommendations, and that includes making sure that we’re consulting with the appropriate stakeholders so that we understand what the implications are and that would be part of the consideration in moving forward on these recommendations.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you to the minister for that an­swer. The questions I’ve been asking actually came from a constituent of mine who is an owner in a strata complex. I’m just going to read you what he said, with regards to the bylaw that they’ve got in their strata that does not allow rentals at this particular point. That’s why he’s concerned about this recommendation No. 9.

“In fact, in many cases, one of the substantive reasons why owners purchased units within our complex was because they did not allow rentals. We have no vacant units. None are owned by speculators, as all 44 units within our complex are owner-occupied, and as a result, there would be no rental units created as a result of this proposed legislation.

“We believe that we are not alone on these facts, in that the majority of strata developments that have this no-rental clause within their bylaws would be in a similar situation to ours, and as a result of this proposed legislative change, or proposed legislative change, there would be little if any impact to the existing rental housing stock in the province.”

His point is that by forcing strata complexes to have rentals, in this particular case, it would have absolutely zero impact on the availability of housing stock in the province. That’s why he wanted me to ask these questions.

I’m wondering if the minister has thought about these implications, of this recommendation No. 9, and if there’s any information that my constituent can help to inform the minister or the minister’s staff on this issue. As I said, I’m representing my constituent. I understand his concerns, and I’m waiting for a response from the minister.

Hon. S. Robinson: Well, I thought I’d provided a response already, which is that this is a process that is part of phase 3, and we’re taking the time to consult with the strata stakeholders, because they have a perspective on this.

They weren’t part of the original task force consultation process. This was a recommendation that came out of that process, and we said: “Okay, well that’s an interesting idea, recommendation. We’re going to take a look and address it by doing some more work, some more policy work, engaging with the strata representatives to understand what the implications would be if we were to move forward on that recommendation.”

I think it’s our responsibility to do that due diligence and to understand what the pros and cons are, what the opportunities and risks are. That’s work we’ve committed to undertake.

P. Milobar: One or two questions for the minister as well. We have a housing area in Kamloops that’s right next to the hospital. It goes back into our government precinct behind the courthouse and that. There’s one set of older housing stock called the Glenfair Seniors Housing. That’s a managed property, low-income housing for seniors.

Then on the front end of an attached property, an adjoining property, is the Ponderosa Place, which is about 100 housing units again, run by a different society and a different group than the Glenfair property. That’s for low-income seniors housing as well.

The Ponderosa Place board and society is trying to engage with B.C. Housing around, basically, taking the same building they’ve built — and they built it around 1996 — with a few modern tweaks to the footprint.

[2:00 p.m.]

They know that they could basically replicate that same building in between the existing Glenfair Housing and the Ponderosa Place housing. It is, apparently, land that is already owned by B.C. Housing. However, they’re a little frustrated at this point because they’re trying to figure out how to navigate their way through. I’ll just read some of what they’ve said. They said: “We’ve been told that B.C. Housing is overwhelmed with the current social housing push, and thus, access to information is hard to get.” They’re seeking help to provide contact names or information.

The other concern they have is that they’ve been told just to watch the B.C. Bid site for any RFPs or RFQs that may come out. I guess the concern they have is that you have two operating societies already on that one mass of land. Would it be more typical for B.C. Housing to go to a full-on RFP or RFQ than trying to work with one of the two existing housing providers that are in that exact spot, to see if they would not be the first to try to expand their housing options, within that area of Kamloops, for seniors housing?

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to thank the member for the query about Glenfair and Ponderosa. Staff have just started conversations around the Glenfair property, taking a look at redevelopment, so it’s very, very early days. They’re just looking at what the possibilities are. There’s absolutely an opportunity to work with Ponderosa as well. So I would encourage the MLA to support them in pursuing that partnership.

The next opportunity for housing funds, out of the community housing fund, is spring of next year, 2020. So you can let the operators know that that’s the opportunity. We’ll be sure to let all the MLAs know when that opportunity is there. You can certainly work with them and help support the opportunity as well, as the MLA representing the area — making sure that they know the opportunity is there. Now is a good time to start that conversation so that when the opportunities become available, they have their ducks in a row, so to speak, and so that they can put in their application for a rebuild in the member’s community.

P. Milobar: Just to clarify, then, should they be making contact through B.C. Housing, through more of a local face, or should they be seeking out more of a provincial B.C. Housing representative to make sure that those talks start early and that they’re in the loop once timelines and things are moving forward?

[2:05 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: The contact is Danna Locke for the Interior. There is a point person for B.C. Housing who does the region and takes a look at any opportunities that are there. We’ve sent out to all the MLAs — I think it just went out this week — about what we’ve been doing at B.C. Housing in terms of all the various opportunities for housing in communities around the province. Danna’s contact information is on that. If the member doesn’t have that, I’d certainly be happy to pass that along and make sure that he has the contact information.

P. Milobar: Thank you for that. We’ll follow up after estimates and make sure that that information gets shared to them.

Switching gears to the accessibility programming for hous­ing adaptations — I know I’d asked the minister a couple questions in supplementary estimates as well — has that money been approved for this coming year? Are applications currently being accepted, or not, for people to be able to make adaptations to their homes for accessibility issues, to be able to stay in their own home environment?

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the member’s question. I was anticipating that, because he asked it during supplementals. Just for the record and for anyone who’s watching the fascinating exercise of estimates, I thought I would just explain what…. [Laughter.] I did get a laugh. That was good.

We call it the HAFI program. It’s the Home Adaptations for Independence program, and it provides financial assistance to help low-income seniors and people with disabilities or loss of ability to fund adaptations to their home so that they can continue to live safely in the comfort of their own home. There continues to be strong demand, I think, as the member has talked about, for this. The applications are open for ’19-20. They reopened April 1, as a new fiscal year. I have to say that it provides all kinds of assistance — for walk-in shower tubs, lever door handles, making life better for people in their own homes.

The Chair: If the members could guard that their cellular devices are on mute. Thank you.

P. Milobar: Last year $5 million, I believe, was in the fund. It was matched federally. Have there been federal dollars put back into this as well, or is it strictly provincial? Have any extra funds been added? What is the full provincial portion? Last year it ran out of money about six months into the year. I think people are hoping that there has been a lift and that it’s not contingent on whether the feds come to the table or not.

[2:10 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Again, I want to thank the member for the question. We know that we took a look over the last number of years, and this program consistently runs out of funds about halfway through the year. So that is a problem. We recognize that.

The applications are open again, with the same amount of funds. But I want to assure the member that this is…. We’re acutely aware of the pressures that arise, and the uptake is always very strong. So we are actually seeking opportunities to bring more resources to the program, given that it consistently runs out. It is a priority, and we’re continuing to do the work to make it more robust so that more people can take advantage of the opportunity.

P. Milobar: Thank you. Well, it’s good to hear that it is running again. It’s a little disappointing to hear that there are not more funds, frankly. It’s something that’s only going to…. As the population ages, demands are only going to increase. I would, at least, hope and put a marker out there then.

Last year we saw about $2 billion in supplemental estimates — we saw an extra $30 million to make sure we had electric cars on the road — get bumped up as finances permitted. So hopefully, this will make the cut, as a prioritization, to make sure there’s top-up money as the fiscal year moves along.

I guess the question…. One final question on this, and I’m assuming the answer is that it’s not part of the same. But I just want to make sure and get confirmation that none of this money is being counted as part of any of the commitments under CleanBC around housing renovations, upgrades or anything like that. This is strictly the stand-alone money for adaptation and accessibility for people in their homes and has nothing to do with any of those other pots that are starting to get announced around CleanBC.

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to assure the member that this is a separate pot and that I do appreciate and agree with the member that, as the population ages and grows, we’re going to see greater demand on this fund. It is a priority to find a way to make sure that we have more opportunities for people to adapt their homes. We know that home is the place that we feel safest and that we need to make sure works for us.

[2:15 p.m.]

As a government, we’re committed to making sure that people are living in homes that meet their needs, and this is another way that we can do that. I want to join with the member in recognizing how important that is. We’re doing our level best to make sure that there are opportunities for people to stay at home as they age.

S. Sullivan: I have a number of questions about specific issues in the budget, but I would like to start with a general critique of the 30-point plan and just ask the minister some general questions.

The 30-point plan. Generally, I think the first 15 points are pretty much about demand suppression, to try to either use taxes or some other technique to suppress demand. We know that, of course, any market consists of supply and demand, and the price is an intersection of those two things. So you can either affect price by demand or by supply.

There are a couple of other categories in the 30-point plan. Some are about rentals. There are a few proposals about how to deal with rental housing. Then there is a category that I would just call special populations, and that is about supply. It is about government, non-profit, etc., building of housing for special populations, whether it be students, elderly people, Aboriginal people, etc.

Then there’s another category that I just call miscellaneous that has to do with, maybe, tourism. There’s a point about transit and some other issues. I hope I’ve remembered them all correctly. There is one item in there that could be about supply, which is the housing hub. That could possibly be…. I will have some questions about the housing hub a little later on.

Basically, this is about demand suppression of the market, about some government supply, and practically nothing about market supply. You would think 80 percent, 90 percent — possibly even more — of all housing is market housing.

Most housing, certainly in Metro Vancouver, is called spec housing. Spec housing means it was created by speculators. Given the discussion and even the naming of the speculation tax, given the fact that almost all of us live in speculative housing, I think, should give some pause, at least, to make sure we understand how the market works.

I understand and I’m sympathetic to the desire to focus on demand. I was an elected mayor, city councillor. I know how unpopular supply is, trying to create supply. When I look at where we went wrong in this region, certainly in the city of Vancouver…. Up until, actually, 1973, Vancouver, for example, had — it was just the decade before — created the West End. There were 250 residential towers created before ’73.

After ’73, there were 20 for that whole decade. I haven’t checked into every one of them, but most of those were approved before ’73. So there was a major shift in urban processes in ’73 that completely suppressed supply. There was a legal case to stop townhouses in the single-family areas. There was a process to stop even the high-density residential on the waterfront. That happened in ’73 as well. We’ve been living in that era since ’73.

[2:20 p.m.]

Many of the processes of the other urban areas, other than Vancouver, have been very affected by the effort to stop the West End and to make sure we never had another West End. That was the intention of the ’72 campaign and the ’73 election.

Given that we’re in that era of suppression of supply, the natural effort by government is to try to deal with that suppression of supply by suppressing demand. So we’re trying to suppress both supply and demand, yet we find Vancouver is a popular destination. In the city of Vancouver in 1973, about 80 percent of our residential base was single-family homes. Today it’s pretty close to 80 percent. It’s almost unchanged. It’s quite remarkable.

The situation in all of those neighbourhoods is that almost all those neighbourhoods have less people living today than they did in the 1970s.

I think of my own block, and Lynn and me. I used to live on the same block, and my house had seven people. It currently has one. Her house had five people. It currently has two. As we go up and down that block, we find there are far less people living today in the single-family neighbourhoods than there were in the 1970s. That’s 80 percent of our land base.

You know, there’s talk about foreign buyers and all these other things, which is a very popular scapegoat, in my mind, for blaming high house prices. But you don’t really have to do too much economic analysis to conclude that there’s probably a supply problem happening here.

In fact, the CMHC last year issued its definitive report. It’s called Examining Escalating House Prices in Large Canadian Metropolitan Centres. That was the title. They had 30 PhD masters economists working for a year. They spent $1½ million, and they came up with a definitive result, a conclusion, of what is going on with Vancouver and other large metropolitan house prices.

They noted that Vancouver had, by far, the worst supply, what the economists call “elasticity.” I think 0.25 is what they said. A normal house price rise should…. If it was, say, at least a one supply, it would create a certain amount of houses. In Vancouver, that same house price rise creates a quarter of the houses that we would normally expect in a healthy market.

Part of that, of course, is geography. We have the ocean on the west, the mountains on the north, the border on the south. Then we have, also, the agricultural land reserve on the east. So we are seriously constrained in terms of geography, but the rest of it is policy issues.

There’s my critique. We have a serious supply problem, a serious supply elasticity problem, and almost all of the minister’s 30 points do not deal with market supply.

I’d like to ask the minister her response to that and maybe add one question about ways that we can help local governments. You know, local governments are in a tough situation. The system is biased against them. The system is designed to stop supply. It was intentionally made that way in the ’70s. Is there some way that we could change the processes to make it easier for local governments to approve supply?

I will give one example of an analysis that has been discussed. Generally, the city councillors are legislative bodies. If you think of political science 101, we have legislative, we have executive, and we have judicial. Those are the three main functions of government.

[2:25 p.m.]

In the 1860s, the British North America Act basically gave cities to provincial governments. Provincial governments are completely responsible. The Baldwin Act and other acts have basically said: “Let’s just put all of the functions of government” — because cities are so small; they’re about 5,000 people, maximum — “into one body, the city council, the legislature.”

So now what we have is very large bodies like the city of Vancouver — over 600,000 people, very complex functions — yet their governance structure is very simple. It’s a city council, a legislative body. It doesn’t have judicial and executive functions that are separate. So we will now have the legislature, the city council, not only making development laws but also deciding, doing judicial decisions, on development. So you will have them actually sitting in judgment on whether a specific development proposal goes forward or not.

My question is a general one. How would the minister respond to this critique that this 30-point plan has almost nothing to do with the average British Columbian, a typical British Columbian, who must rely on the market to produce their housing?

The Chair: Members, the Chair requires a short break. If the committee could be in recess, then, for the next five minutes.

The committee recessed from 2:26 p.m. to 2:41 p.m.

[D. Routley in the chair.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate that the member has read our 30-point plan, which we brought forward just seven months after forming government. I would remind the members, and this member in particular, that we had a significant housing crisis. We still have it. We’re still in the middle of it. In that election, it was in every single household — certainly in the Lower Mainland and in other parts of the province — that we were hearing about that.

Some of that was really due to what I would call inaction. The previous government had lots of opportunity to take steps. They didn’t do, I don’t think, the right steps, and they certainly didn’t do it in a timely fashion. I’m very proud of our 30-point plan in terms of putting together an action plan that would deal with the problem from many different sides.

I want to just correct the record: there were seven demand measures, six fraud-related measures and 17 right supply measures. That includes…. I’ll include right supply and housing security. I’ll lump those in together, because if you’re in housing that’s insecure, where the risk of eviction is always there, then you’re not in the right kind of supply.

People need to have a sense that their housing is secure so that they can get on with living their lives. While we’re talking just about housing, it’s not housing for the sake of talking about housing. We’re not talking about buildings. We’re talking about people, right? It’s for people to live in houses. It’s not for houses to exist for the sake of existing, right? It’s about shelter, and it’s about raising your family, and it’s about aging in place, and it’s about living with grace and dignity and opportunity. If you don’t have a home, if you don’t have that safety and security, then frankly, you don’t really have much of anything else, because it’s just too hard.

We recognized this as an important thing to act on as quickly as we could, and I’m pretty proud of the fact that…. It was a crazy seven months. I think I can share that. I didn’t know that I would survive. But we were committed, because we’d heard just really how desperate people were getting and how desperate the situation was. We knew we needed to act quickly. I’m very proud of the work that I did together with my colleague the Minister of Finance to put those 30 points together.

Having said that — and I’ve made a couple of notes here — I wanted to respond to a comment that the member said around the neighbourhood that he grew up in and how now there’s only one or two people living in those homes. I want to join with him, because I’m in a similar situation.

I moved into Coquitlam in the ’90s. I realized, just last month, it was 25 years ago that we moved into this neighbourhood. It was a neighbourhood that we picked because kids were playing street hockey, and that was something that we wanted for our children. There were lots of children on the street.

Here we are 25 years later, and we’re still…. My husband and I are now empty-nesters, and we are some of the youngest people on the block. We’re overhoused, as my son likes to remind me, because no one has moved on.

When I talk with my neighbours about moving on, like downsizing, what I hear consistently is that there’s no place to downsize to in our community. It just doesn’t exist. You either have a 3,000-to-4,000 square-foot home in my community or a 600-square-foot condo. Those are the two housing choices that exist in my community and, I expect, exist in other communities, certainly around the Metro region. And that, I think, is a very significant problem.

[2:45 p.m.]

What it means is that, as I age, I will need to make accommodations for what is likely to happen in terms of frailty, at some point. I have stairs. My house is two levels, and at some point, I may want to be in a single level. But it also means that families can’t access my house. It’s not available to them. So we have a mismatch in our system.

Really, our focus has been about right supply in the right communities. I want to draw the member’s attention to the fact that we implemented the housing needs assessment so that we can get the right supply, so that local governments have the information in front of them about what kind of housing your community is going to need in the next five years, so that they’re making the right kinds of decisions.

The member was the mayor in Vancouver, and I was a city councillor in Coquitlam — same time frame. So I suspect that these might be some of the choices that were in front of the member when he was mayor.

I would have developers consistently come forward with their plans. I mentioned this yesterday. SkyTrain was coming to Coquitlam. We all knew that was happening, and it put a lot of pressure to develop what I will call speculation housing, in the form of 500- and 600-square-foot condos.

I remember, very specifically, saying to one developer: “Who is going to be living here? It’s 500 square feet.” It’s not going to be the people on my street, and it’s certainly not going to be me. I adore my husband, but I would kill him in 500 square feet. So it was not going to be me, and it was not going to be anybody in my block. It was going to be purchasing. These were purchased.

Interjection.

Hon. S. Robinson: It’s on Hansard.

“Honey, I love you, but….”

The response that came back…. They kept saying: “Well, the market’s demanding it. We are selling these like hotcakes.” We know now that the hotcakes, the sales, were really investor housing. People were seeing investment opportunities and gobbling this housing up. We certainly saw evidence that this was not…. These homes, thousands of them, around SkyTrain, were not and are not being lived in.

I can provide the member with another anecdotal experience that I had volunteering with KidSport, the Red Nose campaign, when you drive people home if they’ve had too much to drink. You drive their car home.

My husband and I were doing this volunteer work. This woman said: “Well, yeah, I live right down by the SkyTrain in Coquitlam.” My husband was driving her car. I was driving our car behind him. She said: “Let’s just go into the underground so you can park my car in the parking stall.” It’s three o’clock in the morning, in December. There were no cars in the underground. Really, no cars.

I said: “Where is everybody? Where are all the cars? It is the middle of the night, and they can’t all be partying.” I really did not believe that. She said: “They’re always empty. My building is half empty.” These were being held for investment purposes.

We have this real disconnect about the decisions that we made — that I made — on council to support the construction of these homes with who we were building for. We weren’t building for families. We weren’t building for downsizers. We were building for people to invest in property. I think that’s how we got here, and it’s a place that I never want to be again.

Bringing on the housing needs assessment is another tool that local governments have in their toolkit to make sure they’re making decisions for the right kind of supply to meet the needs of their communities going into the future.

Now, the other thing that I want to correct the member on is making sure that when we’re investing in transit, we’re requiring that there’s the right kind of housing built along the transit lines. We canvassed this a little bit earlier. That is about getting the right kind of supply into communities, into his community, making sure that there are expectations when we sign agreements, when TransLink signs agreements with these communities — that there’s an understanding that they’re going to deliver on the right kind of housing for the people who need it.

That’s another piece that we’ve done in order to push that supply side of the equation. Again, I want to emphasize: the right kind of supply. Because, God knows, in my community, we do not need any more 500-square-foot condos. It is just not needed.

[2:50 p.m.]

I want to take a moment to reflect on the member’s commentary about our funding, our commitment to fund 37,000 homes over the next ten years, and his comment around — and I’m putting quotations on because they’re his words — “special groups, special populations.”

I don’t make those distinctions about who people are. There are people who need homes, and they need the range of homes. People need to be able to move through the different kinds of housing. So you could have a woman who is fleeing violence, and they need a home. At some point, they will move into secondary housing, and then they’ll move into affordable rental. At some point, they may or may not move into market rental or home ownership or whatever the opportunities are.

We need the full range of housing for all people. There are other cases where someone loses a job, and they’re no longer able to maintain their market housing. They need to be able to access rental housing, because life happens, and things change. We need to make sure that we have the full range of housing for all people for when they need it.

I want to point out…. Frances Bula, when we announced what we were doing around housing supply and we noted our very first tranche of housing — our funding announcement for 4,900 affordable homes for low- and middle-income families and seniors back in November 2018 — said this: “That used to be a lot of what the province funded. That was killed in 2001 when the Liberals were elected.” This is more than a Canadian provincial government has done in two decades.

You know, we have been at this now for about 20 months. The previous government, over their 16 years, funded about 27,000 homes for people who needed help at some point in their life. I’m proud to say, to date, in process or completed, we have 20,000 in 20 months. I’m very proud of our record to make sure and to build the strength of the social housing sector — that there is the right kind of housing for people when they need it. I will continue to work with all of our partners to make sure that we can continue to deliver on the right kind of supply.

I know the member is going to ask me some more about the housing hub, but by way of introduction to the housing hub and the successes that we’ve had, I will share with him how I came to identify a gap in opportunity. Again, I go back to Coquitlam and my time on council. It was very instructive for me. I didn’t know at the time that I would be the Minister of Housing, but I am surprised at how much I had learned as city councillor, identifying where there were gaps and where there were challenges.

We had a co-op in my community in Coquitlam that had been deteriorating. It was, I would say, substandard housing. The leadership of the co-op knew that they were sitting on a prime piece of land for development. It was less than 400 metres from a SkyTrain station. But they didn’t have the wherewithal or the know-how or the strength, actually, to figure out how to use that opportunity to leverage it — the value that was in that land — to create new housing and additional housing, additional co-op housing or affordable housing, or to bring on market housing. There were choices before them.

I sort of ran around a little bit like a chicken with her head cut off trying to find the right people to help them, because I’m not a developer, and learned that there…. We were able to help them hook into B.C. Housing and to others around what would be possible. It showed me that there was a lot of opportunity that we were missing, because what was happening was the market developers were coming in, taking the value out of the land for their purpose, to build strictly market, but the people who could benefit, in terms of an affordability perspective, weren’t able to.

I certainly am prepared to say more. But that was sort of the genesis for the housing hub, which was about bringing people together, making sure that there was an opportunity to leverage an asset to deliver the right kind of housing in communities that people desperately need. I look forward to hearing some more questions about the housing hub. I look forward to answering the member’s questions.

S. Sullivan: Thank you, Minister. I’ll just maybe make a couple of comments about your points. I have heard the minister speak quite often about: “Why do we have these 500- to 600-square-foot homes? That’s not what we need.”

[2:55 p.m.]

Clearly, people are risking a lot of money to build them. I’m sure there are people living in them. I think what you… Another way to say investor housing is rental housing. Any housing that is rental is investor housing. Someone has invested their money and made it available for rental. So we have to be careful when we worry about investor housing.

My understanding and reading of this topic is that the real problem, depending on how you define it, of empty homes is in the high-end homes. That’s where most of the issues are.

You were right, when you went into that parking lot and found no cars. It could be like my building, where my household has no cars. We do not have a car, and many of my neighbours do not. If you go through the West End and you go through the parking lots, you will find cars with licences that are out of date.

A lot of people actually like to keep a car just because of a sentimental thing or they just feel that it’s more secure to have a car. You’ll find that a lot of the people who are renting in the building that she was in are probably actually renters that don’t have a car.

So let’s not go too far into that, because there are anecdotal…. I don’t think it’s wise to make policy based on anecdotes. What we do know is that, in the city of Vancouver, when B.C. Hydro studied this issue, they found that the rate of empty homes had not changed between 2002 and 2015, I believe. So there has not been a serious shift in empty homes.

In fact, the city of Vancouver, I believe, found that…. I think it was 2,500 homes that were empty that are subject to the tax. Most of them are actually urban flats. Important to deal with real figures.

Let’s deal with a real figure that the minister has mentioned: 20,000 homes. Okay. So when I was looking at the budget speech, it was a claim of 17,000 homes. So it looks like that figure has increased by 3,000.

Now, what we’ve done is we’ve tried to keep aware of announcements of successful completions of housing. From what we can figure, there are about 1,600. Well, first of all, there are 13,486 announced. Of those, 1,607, according to announcements, have actually opened, 707 are in development, 700 in land purchase, 267 in pending approval and construction and 255 are under construction, for a grand total of 17,000.

I would like to ask the minister…. I guess, it looks like about 1,600 of these units are actually open, according to government announcements, and most of those are modular units. Could the minister provide an up-to-date tracking for each of these units that were promised?

[3:00 p.m.]

[S. Malcolmson in the chair.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to thank the member for the question. We’ve been keeping close tabs on the activity, and it has been an extremely active file. I’m surprised that our CEO for B.C. Housing is even upright at this point, given how committed, how busy B.C. Housing has been in terms of delivering quite robust and desperately needed attention around the housing file.

I have to say…. I want to plug these folks. They have been outstanding. The people at B.C. Housing have been unbelievable. They have been responsive and creative and innovative. They work so hard every day with communities, with developers, with faith groups, with anybody who is willing to work with us. With local governments, they have been….

Everywhere I go, I hear how great they’ve been to work with. So hats off to the folks on the front lines who are working diligently to deliver on this housing.

What I will share with the member…. This is as of April 15, 2019, which is the latest numbers that we have. I get numbers regularly. They change, because so much activity is happening on this file. I can tell the member that completed, to date, out of various different programs, we have 2,182 homes. Under construction, 4,008 homes. This is under the Building B.C. program. Initiated, 1,914 homes. We have in the pipeline — these are known in the pipeline, and there have been dollars allocated, so they’re in early stages — 10,591 homes. That gives us 18,695.

Then, through the housing hub, which is a different department of B.C. Housing…. Those are our partnership-based projects, working, quite often, with the private sector, but other sectors as well. We have, under construction, 76 homes. Initiated, 335 homes. Those that are in the pipeline that are known and have dollars allocated — that’s 587 homes, for a total of 998 homes. This gets us pretty close to 20,000.

S. Sullivan: Completed 2,100 homes. Can the minister tell me, of those completed, how many were initiated by her government and how many by a previous government?

Hon. S. Robinson: I thank the member for the question. I want to point out that in 2001, when the previous government, the Liberals, took power, they cancelled every project that was in the pipeline from the NDP government. We didn’t take that position.

[3:05 p.m.]

We made a point of reviewing every project, and in fact, we deepened the affordability on it. We delivered more funding to it because some projects were just 10 percent below market, and that was considered social housing. That just wasn’t good enough for us. It wasn’t going to meet people’s needs.

Of the 2,182 homes, 305 were previously in the pipeline. But again, we added dollars to it to actually make them affordable homes.

S. Sullivan: Then I would suspect that about 1,800 of those completed were initiated by the current government, part of the 114,000.

How many of those in the pipeline…? Can you explain what that means, when you say “in the pipeline”? I see construction — 4,000. What was the category of 1,900? You said there was….

Hon. S. Robinson: That means that the project has been initiated. It’s been approved in some way, with design, permitting, pre-construction phase. It’s also in early days, but the details are more laid out. So we’re using these categories as a way to track and monitor the progress of various projects.

S. Sullivan: Going through the government announcements, what we found was 1,600. Obviously, there must have been some completions and some work that was done that was not announced. Or maybe we missed the press release.

How many of these projects are currently awaiting a building permit, awaiting city…?

Hon. S. Robinson: At this point, what I can say to the member is that those that are initiated and that have been identified…. They’re in the pipeline. They’ve been identified. We’ve attached dollars to them. They’re at various stages. Some are awaiting permit. Others are…. We’re still finishing off the design work. They’re all at various stages.

At this point, I can’t speak to specific building permit — how many. Again, I want to remind the member that this is across the province. Projects are on the go. Depending on which local government we’re working with will depend on how quickly it moves through the system.

S. Sullivan: What has been the average cost per unit of projects completed? We have the completed 2,100. What has been the average cost?

Hon. S. Robinson: What the member may not appreciate is that we have nine different programs which have different kinds of building forms. If the member is asking specifically around the modular, then that’s sort of one kind of answer. But we also have stick-built, and we have concrete — and in different regions of the province. Building in the Lower Mainland is not quite the same as building in Haida Gwaii in terms of average cost. So it’s not a measure that we track in terms of the global.

[3:10 p.m.]

If he has a specific project in mind or a specific housing form in mind or a specific fund that he wants to speak to, then we can give him more specific details. But a global response to that across all of the programs and all the various forms and all of the communities is not a fair assessment of what the costs are.

S. Sullivan: Yes, I would like to break that down into some finer detail. The minister gave me very good numbers. Thank you. That was very helpful. Can I get a copy of those so that I could actually then ask more specific questions about these projects?

Hon. S. Robinson: Well, the numbers are in Hansard. The member is more than welcome to pull them out of Hansard and work with the numbers that I’ve delivered. They’re there.

S. Sullivan: But if I wanted to ask specific questions about specific projects, obviously, you have a detailed breakdown. You were able to give me 1,914 in process. I’m wondering if the minister could allow me to take a look at that. Then I could ask some questions about the details of those.

Hon. S. Robinson: Well, I could certainly read into the record the different kinds of funds, and the member is more than welcome to ask us questions. The funds are public. It’s on the B.C. Housing website around all the various funds that people can tap into and the kinds of housing that we build. It’s available for public consumption.

We have the affordable rental housing program. We have the rapid response to homelessness. We have a deepening affordability program, the community housing fund, the supportive housing fund, the women’s transition housing fund, the Indigenous housing fund. We have student housing, of course, that we’re building, as well, to help alleviate some of the challenges. Then, of course, we have the housing hub.

There are various projects, various funds and kinds of housing that we announced. It’s part of the plan. The details are in it. They are certainly available on the B.C. Housing website to understand what’s going on. As well, the list of projects is also listed on the website. The member does have access to that information.

S. Sullivan: The numbers that I have are quite different from the minister’s. Obviously, my data is not up to date. So even the completed of 2,100 — it would be very helpful for me to know which those are. Then I could ask some more detailed questions about it.

Hon. S. Robinson: Certainly. I can certainly share that with the member. I want to just stand corrected that the projects within each fund are on the website.

In the affordable rental housing fund, we have completed 71 units. In the rapid response to homelessness, completed are 1,376. In deepening affordability, that’s the 305. That’s the number that I had mentioned earlier that had been started by the previous government. We actually brought in more funding in order to make these homes truly affordable. The supportive housing fund, 358. In the women’s transition housing fund, 72 are complete. That gets us to 2,182. Those are the numbers that are completed.

I also want to point out, and I know that the member is fully aware, that the processing time varies from community to community. I also want to let him know that this was as of April 15, 2019, and these numbers change. So keeping on top of it, I appreciate, is going to be a challenge, because we are moving very quickly. There are some announcements happening over the next couple of weeks. I think there’s even one tomorrow. So the numbers are continually evolving and changing, because we are working diligently and quickly with all of our partners to deliver the kind of housing that people need in communities right across the province.

S. Sullivan: Okay. It looks like the rapid response to homelessness is really the lion’s share — 1,300 units. These are the temporary modular housing units. There was, I believe, a promise of 2,500 units of rapid modular housing in 2017. It looks like 1,300 of them have actually opened, and that’s two years into the program. What is the minister’s timeline for opening all of them, 100 percent of them?

[3:15 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to correct the member. It was 2,000 units that we committed to in September 2017. I’m very proud of the fact that so many communities jumped at the chance to work with us, to deliver on housing for those who are most vulnerable and most at risk in communities.

We’ve seen this homelessness crisis grow and evolve over the last decade and a half and balloon to proportions that we never expected to see, that I don’t think any of us ever expected to see. So we moved very quickly to deliver on housing that comes with wraparound services, making sure that people are supported in their housing. We want to make sure people are successful, that their health care needs are met, that there are opportunities for them to learn life skills and find a way to get back to their life, get back to the dreams that they once had. And making sure that they have a safe place to be has been a key factor.

Of the 2,000, 1,376 are now open. We have 437 that are under construction and 251 that are in the pipeline. The dollars are allocated. Oftentimes, just to let the member know, because of the construction method, it can move very quickly.

The challenge, I have to say, admittedly, is oftentimes about finding the land. That’s always the challenge. The member had talked about the challenges with land. It needs to be serviceable land. There needs to be servicing. And it needs to make sense. It needs to be near transit and be near shops. These are people who don’t have cars, for sure, so it needs to be in a walkable place.

Specifics for finding land have been a challenge at times, but I have to say how proud I am to be working with 22 different local governments who came forward with land, identified land. There have been people in the private sector who have come forward with their land, as well, and said: “You know, we’re doing to be developing here. We’re not ready for another five years, so you can use it temporarily. Here you go. Let’s at least get these people started on a journey to healing and to health.” That, I think, has also been outstanding, in terms of people understanding how desperate these folks are and how important it is that we work together to deliver the kinds of homes and services that people need.

That work is continuing. I expect most of these will be open in the months ahead. Like I said to the member, it feels like every week there’s another one and another one and another one and another one. These numbers keep changing on a weekly basis.

Just so the member understands sort of what the scope is that we’re dealing with…. We have these 2,000 from 2017 that we announced. We’re rolling those out. So 606 in the city of Vancouver alone that are open. We had so much demand and so much success that as part of Budget 2018, we allocated 2,500 more, over ten years, of permanent supportive housing so that communities can continue to access the supports and the opportunities for this kind of housing going forward. Then again, in 2019, we announced an additional 200 for this year alone. That would bring us a total of 4,700 of these supportive homes with wraparound services.

We know that there’s desperate need, and communities are seeing the impacts of what it means for everybody when you house those who are homeless, when we house those that need services, that need supports. Not only do those people benefit, but the entire community benefits. People feel better knowing that those who are most vulnerable are cared for in their community and have an opportunity for stability and for living a healthy life going into the future.

Interjections.

The Chair: Members, do you mind lowering your voices, please? Thank you.

S. Sullivan: These are temporary housing units. The majority of the completed are actually temporary. Can the minister maybe give some understanding of how temporary they are, what commitments there are for these units?

[3:20 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Most of the land opportunities outside of the member’s community, outside of Vancouver, are permanent. I think it’s important to recognize that the buildings last 40 years, and the buildings belong to the province. Where there are temporary sites, we have the ability to move these homes to a more permanent location, once that’s identified. That gives us an asset that we can use to house people for the long term. They have a 40-year life. So these are a good investment to use to house folks.

I also want to point out that when I talk about 20,000 homes, that equates to about 350 projects that are on the go. That’s what the scope means, and that’s why Shayne Ramsay looks a little tired. It’s 350 projects.

S. Bond: Good afternoon, Minister. I really appreciate the opportunity — and I want to thank my colleague — for just a few minutes. As the minister would be aware, I’m involved in estimates in the other chamber. Basically, we’re continuing on over there and running in here.

I wanted to raise an issue with the minister, and it certainly precedes her time in government. So I fully realize that it has been fairly lengthy, in the time that it has been discussed. I think, recently, it’s fair to say, there has been a lack of…. Let’s put it this way: there has been no progress made on the issue, and it seems like there is not an interest in having a discussion about it. It’s related to bidding and how projects are bid in British Columbia.

[3:25 p.m.]

I want to begin my comments by saying that I have enormous regard for the work that is done by B.C. Housing, but there has been an ongoing concern about the bidding process. In fact, we have heard from a number of contractors, people who would normally be involved in this process, concerned about transparency and about the process itself. A discussion started, I believe, in 2015 or 2016, and I think there was some fairly meaningful discussion going on, but recently there has been no discussion. I’m concerned about that, because what it causes is construction associations to provide, in essence, warnings and risk announcements to potential bidders on those projects.

I’m wondering if the minister can…. I know she’s got a lot on her plate. What I’d be most interested in…. This is a serious…. I fundamentally believe that the bidding process needs to be open, transparent and encourage as many people as possible to participate. When I hear that the construction association and others are concerned about this process and that that concern continues, I’m wondering if the minister is prepared to ask for an update on what happened here and perhaps re-energize a discussion with really important proponents in British Columbia.

Hon. S. Robinson: I’d like to thank the member for the question, and I can assure her that B.C. Housing has been taking the construction association’s concerns seriously and has met with them to discuss their concerns. There have been some changes to the B.C. Housing process that have already been made. I can assure the member that the Northern B.C. Construction Association has been actively engaged with us. They are satisfied with these initial changes. They look forward to working with our team on additional changes.

I can assure the member that the BCCA has been working collaboratively through the deputy ministers industry infrastructure forum and will continue to work directly with B.C. Housing as well.

[3:30 p.m.]

S. Bond: Thank you to the minister for that response. I do appreciate it.

I think that it’s a matter of confidence in the process. There is a clearly laid out process. For example, there have been, and I’ve been provided with, examples where the association believes there are owner’s bidding conditions in place, and they are then being forced to issue a risk statement to people who want to bid — for example, missing an important step in what is actually looking like a tender, and that’s not what the process says.

I’m encouraged to hear that dialogue is going on. I would encourage the minister to jump-start those conversations. We want as competitive a process as possible in order to make sure British Columbians and taxpayers are protected.

My other question. I note that — I think it was yesterday; as I said, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in estimates as well — the minister responded yesterday and made an announcement regarding protection of renters and landlords. I wanted to come today and talk a little bit about that.

I admit I haven’t had enough time to look at what the implications of that announcement are, but I’m appreciative if they are about trying to find a balance that protects both the landlord and the renter. Both of them are important. Without landlords who are prepared to be landlords, we’re going to have a much more significant rental problem in British Columbia than we have today.

Recently I’ve just had an ongoing stream of landlords who are struggling with how to work their way through the system when they have an issue. I had, for example, a relatively new…. He says in his own words: “I am a relatively new landlord and experiencing my first major issue.” The tenant actually won’t leave. There are all kinds of problems. The tenant will not leave. This man and his wife have done extraordinary things to try to make it respectful and responsible and do all the things. They checked all the boxes. They cannot get the renter to leave.

On the other hand, I had the story of a young woman who has two children. She’s a single mother. Her rental unit was infested. Somehow, through this entire process — she made a complaint; she did all of those things — it’s her fault. That is not acceptable. Somehow she is now facing additional costs to deal with that and had to actually relocate her family.

I have seen very poignant stories on both sides of this argument. I am hopeful that the minister, in thinking through…. I did read, quickly, things like reducing wait times, trying to make the processes more simple and all of those things. I just want to reiterate how important it is to find that balance for both landlords and renters, and from a regional perspective.

I’m wondering what assurances the minister can give constituents like mine, who live 500 miles from where offices exist and resources are…. I’m hopeful that in the new approach that there is going to be a contemplation of regional needs. Have we thought about…? Even if it’s itinerant services that show up in communities so that renters or landlords can have a face-to-face conversation. Those kinds of services. This gentleman asked: “Are there opportunities for a local office or a specific advocate for landlords?”

I just would appreciate the minister’s response. I did want to tell those stories here, because it is very difficult, even for us — I am a very experienced MLA — to find solutions and help those constituents. Frankly, I feel terrible about those circumstances. I’m wondering….

As I said, I appreciate that there’s been a recent announcement. Will there be a balance? Will we look at how we help landlords deal with those issues, protect renters and what about regional resources?

[3:35 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to express gratitude to the member for coming here as an MLA, about how hard it is sometimes when we hear all sides of what’s going on in landlord-tenant relationships. Because, in fact, that’s what they are. They’re agreements, and then when people don’t follow through on the agreement on either side, it becomes a problem for either side.

We have taken that very seriously — that balanced approach that the member talked about. If she has time over the weekend, she can take a look at the full announcement in terms of what we’re doing. But I will let her know and assure her, just as an example, that we’ve given money to both LandlordBC and to TRAC, the tenants’ group, to provide education.

As she pointed out, a new landlord might not know all the rules about how you go about doing this in the right way and not be offside. I believe that most people don’t want to be offside of the rules, but it’s really hard if you don’t know what the rules are. They’re often left to their own to figure it out, or they pick up and call their MLA. As an MLA, then we have to go on line and do the research.

We’re investing in educating both sides of the relationship so that they each know what their rights and their responsibilities are so that they can be the best tenant they can be and the best landlord they can be.

The other part that I think is important for the member to hear in this context is that we’ve invested significantly in the residential tenancy branch because the waits for service were so long. They went from 45 minutes down to five minutes to get your phone picked up. That’s the wait time. The average wait time now is five minutes.

It’s the same thing for…. It was 6½ weeks for an emergency dispute. It’s now down to four weeks. It used to be over eight weeks to hear an urgent dispute. Now it’s six weeks. Monetary disputes used to be 25 weeks. They’re down to 12 weeks. There’s still room to go, but we’re moving in the right direction. Call centre wait times are averaging four minutes. That’s well below the 20-minute service standard, so things are moving in the right direction, and people are getting service.

The other thing I want to assure the member is that we’re continually…. We’ve just done a major investment in the on-line portion of getting information and service. That is continuing to be done so that people who are not in a major centre can use the technology and use the phone, as part of it.

The last thing I want to mention, aside from the education piece which is going to go provincewide, is we’ve established a compliance unit, an enforcement unit. The major push of the announcement yesterday was that we now have a number of people, staff, who work at the residential tenancy branch to follow up on those chronic challenges or where people don’t act in the way that they’re supposed to. They’re not following the rules.

We’ve also legislatively given them teeth to actually provide administrative penalties, monetary penalties, if they don’t follow up. Part of the announcement yesterday was that the first penalty was assigned — $5,000 to a landlord who refused, after five or six notices, to do the repairs. They still hadn’t, so they were fined.

[3:40 p.m.]

We really mean business about both sides behaving appropriately. Renters who are chronically skipping on rent or being problematic…. We will also fine them and penalize them.

Those are the pieces that we’re doing. Really, at the end of the day, I think we all want those relationships to work better, work well, so that people aren’t left struggling to protect their asset and their investment or finding themselves without a home and finding themselves desperate with inadequate housing. That’s the work that we’re going to continue to do.

S. Bond: I’ll just thank the minister for her answers and for the initiatives that she’s taken. I will certainly attempt to find some time to review those.

I think that we do need to continue to look for balance. While I understand that in some parts of the province, obviously, rental supply is a critical issue, making sure we have landlords who are even willing to get into the market is an absolutely essential piece of this puzzle. If people are simply saying, “I’m not doing it; it’s way too much trouble,” then we have a bigger problem on our hands.

With that, I thank the critic for the time and the minister for the time as well.

S. Sullivan: I would like to ask some questions about the recent decision to impose rent controls in British Columbia. We have a very great concern by economists, both on the left and the right, that rent controls are very damaging to people who are renting. What happens is that there’s an underinvestment in rent housing. New investors don’t want to come in to rent.

I would like to ask the minister about what is behind that. Is there any economist that she can point to, perhaps, that actually endorses this as a positive thing for renters?

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the member’s question. I got a little bit of a history lesson because rent control actually came in, in the ’70s, here in British Columbia, so it’s not a new thing. It’s not anything we created or brought in. It’s been around for a very long time.

There are various kinds of rent control. Some are more stringent than others, and ours is seen as a moderate kind of rent management, I suppose. I want to remind the member that in any new construction, here in British Columbia, they can set the rent. Any owner can set the rent at whatever the market will bear. So there’s no requirement for what the rent should be on a particular size or location. It’s based on what the market is, and they can set the rental rates at whatever works for the landlord.

The only change that we have made is the annual formula to determine how much rent can go up from year to year. That’s the only change we made, which is the rate of inflation.

Again, I want to point out…. I know that the member has referred to economists. In between renters, there is an opportunity to increase rents to whatever the market would bear. That’s certainly an opportunity. The economists call this vacancy decontrol. So they actually have a term for this, which I learned today.

Learn something new every day. I learned that rent control came in, in the 70s, and I learned that economists call this opportunity to increase rent between renters vacancy decontrol.

S. Sullivan: Thank you for the historical reference to the 70s. That’s very interesting because I would think…. I believe, somewhat 80, 90 percent of all the rental housing that is currently available was built before the 1970s. It was built before rent controls when you had…. In the 1960s there was a very serious amount of new rental housing that came onboard, much of it in the West End. You can find buildings all over Vancouver — Cambie and 57th, 10th and Alma, those kind of places where you will find a lot of rental buildings.

After the 1970s, there was practically nothing built until fairly recently, when cities started to incentivize — you know, Rental 100. Vancouver and, I think, Coquitlam and New Westminster had a real incentive program.

Now that is in jeopardy. I know that just yesterday there was an announcement that a rental building on Alberni Street in the West End has just been cancelled and converted to luxury condos. I’m just concerned, perhaps, that the minister be aware that the rent controls did cause almost a complete end of rental building housing.

Now what we have is that the great majority of rental buildings are now 50 years old or more. They are getting toward the end of their life in which they can be maintained without a lot of extra investment. At that same time, comes in a more constrained rent control. We used to allow a little bit of leeway with 2 percent, plus cost of living. Now that’s gone down to just cost of living at the same time when 50-year-old buildings are now needing a lot of help.

Now we have a situation, with the Alberni announcement, that there is actually going to be less rental housing as a result of that building not going forward.

[3:50 p.m.]

I’m concerned, and perhaps I can ask the minister…. Given that the rent control does tend to stifle the market supply of rental housing, is there a concern that we will see even a bigger drop in the construction of rental housing?

Hon. S. Robinson: I thought it would be really helpful to get some data for this response. I just checked in, and in the first four months of 2019, purpose-built rental is up 46 percent over 2018, which I think is a good thing. In terms of the history lesson….

[3:55 p.m.]

I’ve been talking with UDI and developers and people who have been around a long time in this business. Certainly, when I became a new minister — I don’t think I’m so new anymore — I would ask lots of questions about: how did it used to be? What was it like back then, back when? These longtime developers would talk, and I would ask: what happened to purpose-built rental? What happened? Because in my community of Coquitlam, which really didn’t get growing until the ’70s…. Parts of it were around in the ’50s, but it really took another leap through the ’70s. That’s where the stock is, right? It stopped also in the ’70s there.

The message that I heard back, consistently, over and over again, was that the key factor was the federal tax incentives. It was having access to these tax incentives that drove the development community to build purpose-built rental. It was based on their information to me, as a new minister, that I’ve been regularly asking the federal government to come back to the table with something like that that would work to stimulate purpose-built rental.

There is significant agreement among the development industry, when I ask them, those who’ve been around, and I say: what made the difference? They continually point back to what was called the MURBs, this federal tax incentive.

The other thing that I think is missing from this conversation and from the questions is: what about people? Because at the end of the day, this is about people — people who need security in their housing.

We have all heard stories. I mean, we heard from the member from Prince George, talking about a mom and a son, a single mom. I think she was a single mom. The issue for them was an infestation in their housing. But I would expect that, for them, they need to know what their rent is going to be. They need to know. They need the security.

I can’t imagine what would happen to me if, you know, I’m living in my home, and then all of a sudden I get a notice that my rent is going to go up by 50 percent — what that would do to me and my ability to continue to stay in the community, to continue to provide stability for my children, to age with dignity and grace on a fixed income. What would that mean to me, as a person?

At the end of the day, I think that, as MLAs, that’s who we’re serving. It’s those people. Making sure that they have stable housing is absolutely critical because, if you think about it, without that, your ability to do anything else — to work, to volunteer in the community, to raise your children, to heal if you’re not well…. You can’t do any of that. And to have to fret because you don’t have a sense of what your major costs would be…. Again, housing is the number one major cost to all of us. That is pretty critical to just doing a family budget.

I can remember the days about what it was like for me and my family when my husband and I were two grad students and we had children — how we were going to make this all work, budgeting to the nickel some months because it was so tight.

I remember being so relieved when Safeway finally started taking credit cards in, I want to say, 1990, because there were some months that I wasn’t sure that I could get groceries, and having a credit card afforded me that extra little bit of wiggle room so that I could balance some months that were particularly difficult. I can’t imagine what it would have meant to suddenly have an increase in my rent that I wasn’t expecting and how I would have managed.

I know that there are many thousands of others. I think there are a million and a half renters who are in this province who could be in the same boat, so they need some certainty. I’m very proud of the fact that we made the decision to make sure that there was stability and affordability built into the formula so that they can plan, they can budget accordingly, and they can have peace of mind — peace of mind that comes with knowing how you’re going to make rent next month and the month after that and the month after that.

S. Sullivan: Thank you for that. I guess a question that arises from that comment is….

[4:00 p.m.]

For better or for worse, this society has chosen to pro­vide its basic needs of citizens through the market forces. We’ve decided that people don’t live in government housing. The great majority of people do not live in government-built housing as in other countries — say, in eastern Europe or such.

The question the minister asked about some supplier of rental housing just jacking up the rents by 50 percent…. Let’s just deal with that in terms of food, bread. Bread is not regulated. We do not regulate and put an upper limit on bread and food. We do not tell people that they cannot sell bread for any more than a certain amount and they cannot raise the price of bread by a certain amount. The people who need bread, all of us, are given security by having a healthy market. If someone decides to put up the price of bread by 50 percent, then there will be other suppliers that jump in and provide that bread.

The greatest security for a renter like myself is to have a lot of empty rental units in my neighbourhood and that I know I could tell my landlord that I will just go down hall or go down the street to another rental unit. Unfortunately this province, or at least, certainly, Metro Vancouver, has an extremely low vacancy rate. A renter cannot just go to another building right now. It is very hard to get rental. You’ll find lineups of people wanting to get whatever is available. This is probably the greatest threat to renters right now.

The minister made reference to tax policies of the federal government, which resulted in an enormous amount of rental housing. Yes, exactly. If you incentivize rental housing, they will build it. If you put punitive restrictions on rental housing providers, they will not build it. That’s what we have right now. That’s what we’ve had since the 1970s, when rent controls were introduced. We have not seen any real, significant rental housing being built since 50 years ago.

On the topic of incentives, clearly we need incentives. We find the two jurisdictions right next to us, Alberta and Washington state, do not allow rent controls. Washington state specifically bans rent controls as a way to give confidence to rental builders. They will not be threatened by rent controls. Right now, there is a lot of vacancy in Seattle. There’s a lot of vacancy in Alberta. That market works. The market works. Right now, you’ll find in Seattle, if you want to get a rental unit, you will have landlords offering you one, two, three months free rent. You will find them offering you flat screen TVs. This is what you call security for renters.

On the issue of incentives, I will note that there are rental providers who are assembling land for purpose-built rental, but they are subject to the school tax for, basically, luxury homes, and for the property transfer tax. These were meant for luxury homes, yet they are actually being levied on people who want to provide purpose-built rentals. Is there an opportunity and any interest by the minister, in the spirit of providing incentives, to exempt them from these taxes?

[4:05 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Well, first of all, I want to thank the member for Vancouver–West End, who had some, I think, pertinent information related to the project on Alberni. It was cancelled because of a negotiation breakdown with the city of Vancouver. It had nothing to do with rent control. He’s familiar with the project. It had to do with a different kind of negotiation with the city.

The other thing that the member had asked about was taxes and relief of taxes. It’s the Minister of Finance who makes those decisions and considers all of that. She’s in esti­mates right now, so I would encourage the member to take that question to the Minister of Finance.

The Chair: Members, does anybody want to have a break? I don’t know how long ago….

Okay, that was a yes from the minister. Let’s say we’ll reconvene in eight minutes.

The committee recessed from 4:07 p.m. to 4:20 p.m.

[S. Malcolmson in the chair.]

S. Sullivan: A couple of questions. The minister referred to a 46 percent increase in rental supply, I believe, this year. I would imagine this increase was initiated, put in place, started the construction, etc., quite a few years ago. I guess the question would be: if there is indeed a great increase in rental this year, what are we looking at, though, in terms of the following years? What is the pickup right now in rental housing construction?

Hon. S. Robinson: I thank the member for the question. I wanted to double-check the exact timing of which stage of development these units are at. In the first four months of 2019, purpose-built rental is up 46 percent over 2018 at the permitting stage. These are all at the permitting stage.

S. Sullivan: Question about the issue of renovictions. Now, I believe it’s also one of the Rental Housing Task Force recommendations.

[4:25 p.m.]

Under section 49(6) of the Residential Tenancy Act, a landlord can end a tenancy for renovations. This is completely legal. Tenants have a right to dispute the notice to end tenancy if they think the landlord’s planned renovations are not extensive enough to require the unit to be vacant.

Last May the government added a first right of refusal for the tenant to return to the suite under a new tenancy. They’ve increased the notice period and added a 12-month rent penalty for bad faith. Okay.

Rental housing owners have some concerns with this. As you know, the current stock of rental housing is very old. The average age of a rental building is 50 years, and there is a need for significant capital improvements to maintain their structural integrity. They need to be safe. They need to extend their useful life.

The concern is that if it becomes more difficult financially and with more onerous requirements to end a tenancy to carry out these necessary repairs and renovations, will that not ultimately hurt renters who will face a deteriorating stock of rental housing?

[R. Leonard in the chair.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Welcome, Chair, to the fun here at Municipal Affairs and Housing estimates. We’re having a grand time.

[4:30 p.m.]

I want to thank the member for the question. I have many parts for the answer because I think there are a number of different questions pulled in there. But it’s mostly around what we call “renovictions,” which are evictions because a landlord wants to renovate.

When I renovated my bathrooms, for example, in my home, I didn’t move out. I was able to live in my home while the renovation was undertaken, and it needed to be undertaken. The house was built in the 1970s. It needed that. We need to be very mindful about: what does it mean to renovate and to invest, and what are possible workarounds?

I know that most landlords want to keep good tenants, and it’s important that they keep good tenants, and most renovations do not require that people vacate the property. Most certainly, when we did bathrooms, we were able to stay in one place. It was awkward to bathe, sometimes, but we made it work because it was important to us to stay in our home. Where there are workarounds…. It’s really important that landlords invest in the properties, and they should. We encourage them to do that. But they also need to recognize that we’re talking about people who have lived here, and many of them have lived there for a long, long time.

Making sure that when there is a notice of eviction for a renovation, there has to be a legitimate reason that people need to be absent from the property and need to be removed and living somewhere else while that happens. The right of first refusal…. So when that happens and they significantly — whether it’s dealing with changing the foundation and like really significant renovations that does require people not to be on site…. Changing a toilet doesn’t qualify. I’m sure that the member would agree that changing a toilet does not qualify for having to vacate.

When they do need to do that, the right of first refusal is at market rent. The reason for that is we understand that when you make those kinds of investments, it’s important, and it’s a new tenancy, essentially. But the right of first refusal is that when people live in a neighbourhood for a long time, it’s more than just where they live physically. It’s where they live spiritually and socially, and it’s where their community is. Being able to come back, wanting the opportunity to come back, even if the rent has changed, is an opportunity for people to really put down roots.

Again, I want to keep coming back to people. This really is about people and how they live their lives. In my neighbourhood, there’s a family that has been renting a house that the neighbours purchased when it came up for sale. This other family was already living there, and they wanted to stay there, so the next-door neighbour actually bought it knowing the tenants. They’re longtime tenants. They’re part of the neighbourhood. They’re part of a community. We recognize that people live that way. The right of first refusal is about providing people with the opportunity to stay in community. That’s really important.

The last thing I want to say about that is that we’ve all heard the stories, as MLAs, of landlords who want to make investments and don’t necessarily know the rules around what to do when you want to make those investments and when it is okay to do an eviction for a renovation — what’s appropriate.

We recently heard of a story where ten people in a building were renovicted, essentially. The compliance and en­force­ment unit, when they heard about it, reached out and provided accurate information about what the criteria is, and the landlord pulled those notices, recognizing that they didn’t understand what the rules are.

I believe that most landlords want to do the investments. They want to do them right, and they want to follow the rules. That’s why we’ve invested in making sure that everybody understands their roles and their responsibilities in this landlord-tenant relationship, because that’s really what it is. It’s a relationship that needs to work well.

The member for Prince George–Valemount I think spoke really well to that, in terms of providing the both/and — the landlord has needs, and the renters have needs — and making sure that it’s a system that is fair and transparent. Everybody understands the rules, and everyone follows the rules.

S. Sullivan: I don’t think anybody has troubles with what you’re saying. If people don’t need to move, then that shouldn’t have to happen.

[4:35 p.m.]

The reality is that the majority of rental buildings are coming to the end of their lives. Without serious input into the infrastructure, there will be a real degradation of the living conditions. So if a landlord, an owner, has to go and do significant work to try to maintain the viability of the building, the liveability of the building, and cannot try to recover that through the rents, then I think what will happen is it just won’t get done. That’s what we’re probably looking at.

Hon. S. Robinson: If they are significant to the point where people need to move out, then they’re new tenancies when they come in. They can charge the rent to recoup their costs. That is the system that’s in place.

However, if they’re cosmetic, if it’s about changing toilets, if it’s about adding in a dishwasher, those are regular ongoing maintenance. A good landlord would build that into the ongoing maintenance and ongoing upgrades that they would do in terms of investing in their properties. Those would be considered sort of cosmetic, I would imagine, whether it’s a fresh coat of paint….

We’ve all heard those stories of landlords who’ve chosen not to follow the rules, who say: “I’m doing a major upgrade. You need to leave.” People leave, and what they’ve done is they’ve slapped on some paint. They’ve added a dish­washer. They’ve changed a toilet. Now they’ve in­creased rent by 40 percent.

Well, the reality is that those are cosmetic changes. They’re not significant to warrant a renoviction. That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about renoviction. That’s an inappropriate use of that.

But where they need to do major structural, where people ought not to be physically in the building because it needs that much work, then they become new tenancies. People are asked to leave so they can do the work that they need to do, and then they become new tenancies.

What we’ve said is the right of first refusal is an opportunity to create a new tenancy with an old tenant so that they can continue to maintain their relationships in the community, their relationships with familiarity, and come back to live where a home has been for however many years, however long it’s been for that person.

S. Sullivan: I wanted to ask about the rental-only zoning that was passed last year. At that time, during the committee stage, second reading, the minister and I had some interactions about this.

I’ll just quote the minister’s words at the time. “It just reflects the guiding principle that a zoning bylaw that would require housing to be rental housing does not intrude on the property rights of individuals who own property or who own and occupy housing in existing buildings.”

It seemed quite clear from the minister’s statements at the time that rental-only zoning was not meant to be used as a kind of a downzoning. It was to be used as an upzoning, as incentives that developers would be able to sort of voluntarily go into.

What has happened in, certainly, the city of New Westminster is that the city took that zoning and then tried to impose it on existing strata buildings. I believe that this is in court right now. But I would love to hear the minister’s thoughts on this, given that her statement seemed to be indicating that this should not be used in the way that New Westminster used it.

[4:40 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: The member is quite correct. We provided the authority in May 2018, in response…. Again, this was a response. This is about us listening to local governments. Local governments have been on the front lines of the housing crisis, doing their best to address the challenges that, certainly, they have been seeing. They asked for this tool. We’ve heard it from a number of cities as well. We heard it, in particular, from Vancouver. That was a city that asked for it as well. They put forward a resolution.

The Union of B.C. Municipalities supported a resolution. We know that they are on the front lines of the housing crisis. They are also in a position to identify local housing needs and advance the delivery of new homes. They have the land use planning decisions, and they asked for a tool that would help them deliver on the kinds of housing that they wanted. So it’s really up to them to determine whether and where rental zoning would be helpful to address their local housing needs.

S. Sullivan: Yes, but the minister was quite clear that the zoning was not to be used as a kind of downzoning, taking away property rights from existing buildings. That seems to be what has happened, or what is being attempted, in New Westminster.

Hon. S. Robinson: Like I said before, it’s up to local governments to make the decisions about when and where to use this tool. They have a whole range of land use planning tools about whether to put commercial here or industrial there or single-family over here or multifamily over there. It really is up to local governments. They’ve asked for tools. Our job is to give them some tools.

It’s what we’ve done. We’ve given them this tool, and now it’s up to them. They have a whole suite that they get to use and make decisions based on their needs and the situations that they are in. I think there’s agreement with the member that that is the role of local government: to make the land use planning decisions. They’re on the ground, so it’s up to them, once they have the tools, to figure out when and where to use them that best meets their needs. That’s the expectation of all local governments.

S. Sullivan: The minister’s previous statements that rental housing would not intrude on the property rights of individuals who own property or who own and occupy housing in existing buildings…. That is not what you believe now. Your current approach on this zoning policy is that it can be used to intrude on the property rights of existing owners.

[4:45 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Like I said previously, local governments, as an order of government, have the autonomy to use a range of tools. They have professional staff to provide them with guidance about how to best use these tools. The expectation is that they will be thoughtful and mindful about how to use these tools that makes sense for them in their communities. That’s up to local governments to do just that.

S. Sullivan: The minister’s point about professional staff being responsible…. Now, the hon. member from the West End very helpfully corrected a point, that the Alberni Street development that was supposed to be about 200-some-odd units of rental is now going to actually be more units of luxury condos. He also mentioned that that’s the case on Robson Street, where a major purpose-built rental building was cancelled because of city of Vancouver staff that were obviously trying to extract much more benefit than the market could bear.

I note that Amazon, which is moving in as a serious employment generator and which is going to result in a serious demand for rental housing in the area, has now taken out its residential because of city staff.

I remember, certainly as mayor and a councillor, being quite shocked by the policies that were being proposed. When I went to look at the curriculum of planning professionals, I found at the time that there wasn’t a single economics course required. I believe that has changed now, that there is one course where economics is dealt with as a certain part of the course.

I’m wondering if there is some way that the minister might be able to encourage or even mandate that planners take an economics course.

[4:50 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I got a little bit of a lesson about planning. I have a couple of planners here on staff and a couple of economists as well. We had a little conference about the member’s question.

The Canadian Institute of Planners accredits planning schools. Here in B.C., the B.C. chapter is PIBC, the Planning Institute of British Columbia. I would invite the member to take his query to them, given that they accredit the planning schools.

Here in British Columbia, to be a registered professional planner, that’s managed by the Minister of Advanced Education. Again, that would be a question that would be more appropriate for that minister.

S. Sullivan: I wanted to ask a couple more questions about the rapid response to homelessness. The minister indicated that of the 2,000-some-odd units that have been completed under her mandate, the majority are the temporary, modular housing units — I believe 1,378, if my notes are correct.

I was especially…. Well, first of all, I’m very interested in Vancouver, the experience of Vancouver, because those seem to be approved very quickly. I was just wondering if the minister has taken any lessons from this process that could be applied to market and non-market projects.

[4:55 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to thank the member for the very interesting question.

In terms of acknowledging the work to get 606 units open in the city of Vancouver, it took a lot of hard work. Certainly, we heard consistently from the city of Vancouver that having a provincial government that was ready, willing and able and committed to working together with them to bring this housing online quickly was a valued partnership. What I learned from that is that having a partnership, having a relationship…. When you want to accomplish the same things, you can get a lot accomplished in a very short period of time. That we were working collaboratively with the same goals in mind really moved things forward as well — but also coming forward with the resources.

We came forward with the resources to deliver, and we were committed to delivering. Because it was available to them, they were really able to move in a direction that was able to deliver for people. Again, at the end of the day, it’s really about delivering for people. So I think that made it very successful. It wasn’t just in Vancouver. It was the same thing in Surrey.

I don’t know if the member had a chance to visit the Whalley strip when it was at its worse, but I did. It was a year before the election. I have to say, frankly, that I was appalled. Most of us are familiar with the Downtown Eastside. But it was a completely different level of sadness and loss. These people were lost, and they were literally on sidewalks. You’d walk down three or four blocks, and the sidewalk was covered with tents and tarps — sidewalks — and people moving all over. And businesses…. People couldn’t access their businesses because there were tents on the sidewalks. Because it was off the main strip, one street over from the main strip, most people didn’t see it.

[5:00 p.m.]

The city had been struggling with it for a long time. They had come up with a plan to engage people differently, support them as best they could. But it was when we made the announcement that we were here to help, that we were here with resources, here with commitment and with relationship, they, too, moved very, very quickly. The mayor was on it, moved her staff, gave them very clear direction to engage with us to deliver on a temporary solution for that Whalley strip.

One of the highlights of my short career as Housing Minister was back last June, when over a three-day period, all of those people were moved into their homes, where there were wraparound supports. There was a story that one of…. They brought movers in to physically work with them to box up their belongings, label the boxes and bring them to their home.

There are five sites in Surrey. We are continuing to work with Surrey to identify permanent sites for this kind of housing, because this had been going on for a very long time. That was also a demonstration of what happens when you roll up your sleeves and say: “We are going to get this done.”

I do want to give a shout-out to the previous mayor, Linda Hepner. There was one instance where there was a bit of a hookup around…. “Your folks are saying that they can’t move forward on this, and my folks are saying that they’re not moving forward on this.” I picked up the phone, and I said: “Linda, what’s going on?” It wasn’t about blaming anybody. It was about: “We want this, so you go talk to your people. I’m going to talk to my people. Let’s just get moving on this.” Really, by the end of the day, whatever the hookup was, it was resolved, and they’ve continued to move forward. That, to me, is about commitment and about relationship. That was really good learning. Of course, it’s about resources.

The last one I want to talk about — I mean, there are certainly many others — is the one in Smithers, a small town. They did a count. They needed, I think, 20-some-odd units of this supportive housing with the wraparound services. They were one of the first to pick up the phone and just say: “Minister, we want some of this in our community.”

I’m very proud of the fact that in just this year, it was opened. They’ve always had a shelter, to manage the people who were homeless, but everybody who was in the shelter or identified as homeless now has a home. So that shelter no longer needs to be open. We’ve closed the shelter, because everybody who has been identified as homeless now has a home. I’m very proud of that as well, because when you house people, you get to make other choices. Choosing to close a shelter is another proud moment for me. That was significant learning for me, around what it means to be committed, to be in relationship and to have resources.

There were other things that we learned along the way. That’s about the development approval process. I know the member has talked about that before. We’ve heard this before. When I became a new minister, talking to the development community, whether it was the Home Builders or UDI or whoever it was: “What are some of the barriers, in terms of moving things faster?”

They talked about the development approval process. It hasn’t been reviewed in a very, very long time. We’re undertaking a comprehensive review. We’re working with stakeholders. We’ve engaged in comprehensive consultations with a range of stakeholders from across the province, communities of all different sizes, various aspects of the development world, making sure that we’re all talking to each other and identifying issues and opportunities to improve local government development approval processes. Not only do we need to move faster to bring the right kind of supply, but it’s also very expensive when you’re developing a project and it gets stuck somewhere in a system. Time is money; we recognize that.

We’re working on that end as well, because we learned that when we’re committed, we’re in relationship and we have resources, we can move with some considerable speed. So identifying ways to speed up other parts of the system is certainly a commitment of this government.

S. Sullivan: I regret that I haven’t been able to experience all of the other areas of homeless concentrations. My main experience is in Vancouver. I note that just in the last week, there are four or five tents that have just been set up in Helmcken Park, which is two blocks from my home. There is a home, Yaletown House, that is made for, especially, people with dementia, who often will sit in that park.

[5:05 p.m.]

There’s a lot of concern by the people who staff that house that this is quite new and quite sudden. I am getting other requests and comments from people. We do have Oppenheimer Park. We have other places where there are a lot of tents being set up. Despite that we have these 1,300 units, I’m wondering: are there more units being planned for the city of Vancouver that can take the pressure off, with these homeless tents that are now setting up around the city?

Hon. S. Robinson: I do have a response for the member, but I do have a lot of staff here. I just wanted to ask if we’re just going to use the remaining time for housing, and I can let staff go? Okay, thank you.

The member had asked about additional resources in Vancouver and commented on the fact that there are homeless people who are finding a place to rest their heads at night in a local park. First of all, let me assure the member that we are in regular conversation with the city of Vancouver. The new mayor is pretty tenacious about advocating for his community, and we have regular conversations about additional modular supportive housing, as well as shelter space. So that work continues.

I think it’s important to reflect on how we got here. The fact that there hasn’t been…. In the last dozen years before we formed government, we couldn’t even get a homeless count, a provincial homeless count, in order to do proper planning. To me, that was.… I remember asking for it. I remember being in opposition and asking for a homeless count — how many people are homeless? — so that we can plan, so that we can prepare. That wasn’t happening.

That was, for me, frustrating on my side, but also, I think, for all the front-line folks, because people just kept coming. They kept coming into homelessness, and there was no response. There was no coordinated response. I think there was a response, but it was never coordinated.

[5:10 p.m.]

It didn’t fit in with anything else, and cities were left to handle it on their own. I’ve certainly heard from the mayors of Vancouver, Surrey, Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam that they were left on their own to just handle it. Terrace had a significant homeless problem for a very small town with limited resources. It was very, very difficult for them to manage the people that were living in the forests, that were living by the river and that were living in their parks, because there was no coordinated effort.

I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done as a government. We have done a homeless count provincewide. We’ve committed to do it. We’re going to keep doing them regularly, because it’s important to know what the scope of the problem is so that we can plan accordingly. I think this is basic strategic planning, and it’s good policy to understand the scope of the problem so that you can create a response.

I’m very proud of my colleague the Minister for Social Development and Poverty Reduction. This year, based on the homeless count, he’s put together a homeless action plan, because we’re going to keep seeing people falling into homelessness if we don’t stem that flow, if we don’t address some of these other pieces. He and I are working closely together. I’ve got the housing file, and with B.C. Housing, we do the response when people fall into homelessness.

Again, we have to have a plan to address the fact that people have been becoming homeless for a very long time because no action was being taken. Having a coordinated response that addresses prevention…. We want to make homelessness a rare occurrence. Having an immediate response…. We want to make homelessness, the experience of being homeless, as brief as possible because we know that when people get more and more entrenched in a homeless life, it’s harder and harder to get out.

We’ve all heard the stories of the people that we have housed who talk about and say that they can’t sleep in the bed for the first little while. They need to sleep on the floor, and that’s because, for years, they have been sleeping on concrete. That has to be awful. I can’t even imagine.

So making sure that we keep it brief — addressing stability, making homelessness a one-time occurrence so that it’s not like people cycle through. That’s why we have supports when people first come off the streets. It’s really important to support them in their housing so that they’re not cycling through, because that’s hard on them, and it’s hard on the service providers as well.

Also, working better together. We need to coordinate among our ministries and externally with our partners — with local governments, with service providers — so we can ensure that our programs are all properly connected and we can also ensure accountability so that people don’t fall through the cracks.

Coordinating the implementation of the plan is being led by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. To inform the plan, the provincewide homeless count was completed in 2018. They identified a total of 7,655 individuals who are experiencing homelessness. We expect that that’s probably a slight undercount, because it’s always difficult, but at least we have a starting place.

We know where we need to target, where we need to focus, and we know often where these people are. It’s the first time that we’ve had a provincewide baseline, which will allow us to measure our progress. I’m very proud of that work.

The other thing that dovetails into this is the overall poverty reduction strategy. People don’t wake up and just find themselves homeless. They fall into it. There’s a series of events that happen that result in homelessness, and poverty is the common theme.

If you’re extremely wealthy, you tend not to be homeless. You tend to find something. But if you’re poor, you don’t have enough resources to pay rent. It’s very easy to fall into homelessness. So our poverty reduction strategy is part of that.

All of these pieces fit together to make sure that we are addressing some of the core issues that lead to homelessness so that we don’t have people setting up a place to sleep, a place to rest their heads, in parks. I know that’s not what the member wants. I know that’s not what the people who live nearby, who have dementia, want. It’s not what any of us want.

Making a concerted effort is going to take a coordinated effort with many different partners. And it’s certainly going to take time, because this homelessness issue didn’t appear overnight. It’s been building for well over a decade. We’re doing our best to move as quickly as we can on it.

[5:15 p.m.]

S. Sullivan: Thank you for that, Minister. I think the key point I’d like to make is that this homelessness has now appeared in my neighbourhood last week, after the temporary modular housing. Many of them have been constructed. So there seems to be something still that needs to be done beyond what we’re doing now.

I’ll just mention that the minister is probably too young to remember this, but I do. Old guys like me remember when we didn’t have homeless. It certainly wasn’t visible. It was a shock to the system. People were so confused and surprised to see homeless people, basically in the early ’80s.

I tried to find out why, what went into that. I certainly know the SROs in the city…. It was in 1973, ’74, ’75 that the city shut down over 2,000 SROs. Then in the late 1970s again, another shot of shutting down SROs. And then the early ’80s. That seems to have been the tipping point.

I remember speaking with one of the staff people who was very respected in this area, Judy Graves, who said that in the ’70s, there was just so much housing around. There was availability. There were vacancies. It seemed to be that people always found a place, no matter what their situation was.

That seems to be a critical part of the problem, which as my theme — “Supply, supply, supply; more housing available, more housing availability, more vacancy”…. It will take some of these issues just by virtue of the housing being there.

I wanted to ask about the temporary modular housing. There are two cases where there’s been a lot of public comment and, I think, may have even damaged the welcomeness, the welcoming, of temporary modular housing. Those are Maple Ridge and Nanaimo. I believe those two were situations where government actually took special efforts to ensure that those were available.

Can the minister explain what went on there, or her interpretations of that? What technique was used to secure that housing, that space? I believe it was not welcomed at that point by either the landowners or the neighbourhood. That has certainly led to some commentary that has not been particularly helpful.

[5:20 p.m. - 5:25 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Because these are two very different examples, I’m going to start with one, tell the member the story about where we started and how we got to where we got to in Nanaimo, and then I’ll talk about Maple Ridge. They are very, very different, and they required different strategies in terms of supporting the community.

With Nanaimo, the previous council had rejected a modular housing project, and almost literally overnight there was a tent city that formed. I think folks who were homeless sort of were hopeful, and then they congregated. It got to the point where there were up to 300 people in this particular tent city. It was pretty challenging for the city, for the neighbours, for everybody.

The city did get a successful order to close the camp, but what that meant was that 300 people now were going to be scattered into the community. We felt, and certainly the city felt, that there needed to be some sort of response. It forced all of us to move quickly to address what was going to happen with 300 people who had been homeless, who had been sort of congregated, but now were no longer allowed to be where they were.

We were able to bring on 170 homes on two sites within the city. One of the sites was owned by the city and one by the province, as the landowners. The city asked us to work with them in an urgent manner to move to make these available. There were, absolutely, community consultations and information sessions around the community, letting people know what was happening, but it really was an urgent matter.

I want to thank everybody who worked on it. Within a matter of three months, we purchased existing workforce housing; we moved them from Fort St. John, which is where they were; we shipped them down to Nanaimo; and they were refurbished and open. All within three months, which I know that the member will fully appreciate, given how long it can take.

For us, it was about a crisis response. It needed a crisis response, because a crisis had been created. And these are temporary. These are a temporary solution to a problem that was an extreme problem, and it was a crisis.

[5:30 p.m.]

We continue to work with the city council to identify a long-term solution, not just for housing for these folks but for all kinds of people in the community who need housing that they can afford. That work continues. We’re in regular contact with the council, identifying opportunities and making sure that we can continue to deliver the kind of housing, again, that people need.

I also want to assure the member that each building has its own advisory committee that is set up with RCMP, neighbours, local government. They do ongoing monitoring and, again, try to engage in education but also identify any potential problems that might arise so that we can nip it in the bud, make sure that everyone is responsive and doing their role. So it’s also a way to do accountability.

We continue to make sure that people have an opportunity and the supports that they need to take care of themselves; to get to their medical appointments; to take care of, perhaps, chronic health needs; to develop life skills; and to have a regular meal. I was talking with a provider who was talking about helping people to clean. No one ever taught them how to clean a bathroom.

These are the kinds of things that the on-site providers are doing and making sure that people have the opportunity to learn new skills that they can take with them as they move through the various levels of housing. That’s Nanaimo, which was a unique situation that required a response. We’re continuing to monitor, and we’re continuing to move forward with that.

Maple Ridge is a very different kind of situation because it had a different kind of history and different kinds of challenges. The homeless situation in Maple Ridge, which has become quite entrenched, has been going on for four years. It’s resulted in two different camps, gone through two different local governments and two provincial governments. So it’s a long-standing problem in this community.

In fact, the Quality Inn was under contract to provide services and supports. That was in 2017, but the previous government collapsed the deal. We believe that if that hadn’t collapsed, we wouldn’t be in the situation right now that we’re in, in this community.

What’s happened there is Anita Place homeless camp was formed. It’s the second camp — again, significant numbers of people. A new local government was elected.

Well, let me go back. We had been working with the previous council. What we were able to do, under the previous council, is we installed, actually, 53 units of modular housing on provincially owned land. That relieved a little bit of the pressure from the camp, and we were working to identify other opportunities to deliver additional housing. The election happened. A new council came in, and they made different choices than the previous council.

This council decided to shut down the camp without any notice to anyone. They shut it down. That meant that 50-some-odd people were now going to be scattered into the community, again, with no supports, with no monitoring, with certainly no housing, no access to water, no access to bathrooms. That did create a significant crisis, sending those people out.

We opened up an emergency shelter. We’ve had an average of 40 people in that emergency shelter since then. But we also have another piece of land to bring in 51 more units, with supports, because the shelter is very temporary. The contract is going to run out fairly soon on the property at the old mattress shop. We know that we need to make sure that we have housing. Winter is going to come. It comes every year, and we want to make sure that people are housed.

In this instance, that’s the work that we’re doing. Again, we’re still and we’re continuing to work with this existing council to look at long-term situations. We’ve already identified that the land that we’re currently building the 51 units…. Again, both are temporary. Both the Royal Crescent and the current one that we’re working on, the 51 units at the Burnett site, are temporary.

[5:35 p.m.]

We’re looking for long-term supportive housing. We’re working together with the council to determine that. The council has made it clear they want seniors housing on the Burnett site, so we’re continuing to look at how to do that. We recognize that.

We’re working with the community to make sure that they understand, having information sessions, doing all of that work, having a community advisory committee as well, setting that up so that everyone in the community knows what’s going on. They can monitor it. We’re going to continue to do that work, making a difference in the community, because — and I know the member would agree — having people living in tents is not acceptable.

Providing them with a place to rest their head, with the dignity of a shower, with the opportunity to make a meal for themselves, as well as having all those wraparound supports, people who can make sure that they get to medical appointments, make sure the nurse can come in and have a place to actually do a wound dressing change, make sure they can access the supports of the health authority to address any mental health issues or other health issues…. All of those things are done with 24-7 supports. Staff are on site 24-7, making sure that people have the opportunity to make the kinds of choices they need to make so that they can have a stable life and create the kind of life that they want for themselves.

S. Sullivan: Thank you for that description. I’m wondering about the wraparound. I’m looking at a few quotes now.

His Worship Mayor Krog: “Things were put together very quickly…there were significant issues with…security, criminal behaviour, all sorts of problems. I’m not going to pretend that it was a pleasant experience for the neighbourhoods.” Then he also said: “We have a Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions. I think they need to try harder, to be quite blunt about it. The citizens in my community are losing their sympathy, which I think we should all naturally have for those suffering from mental health or drug addiction issues.”

Then a letter that was shared by the member for Langley East in which the minister stated that there will be a rotating nurse providing essentially one-third of an FTE for the housing sites in Maple Ridge. So it seems like the three sites, apparently, that one FTE…. I guess my question is about whether the minister would consider that wraparound services, if it’s just a portion of an FTE for each building.

Hon. S. Robinson: Again, I appreciate the member’s concerns. In these particular instances, again, they were crisis and getting things identified. Because these two very different challenges were crisis, doing the assessments that need to happen in all the other programs that we do happened simultaneously. So making sure that we’re getting the right services did take a little bit longer.

Again, I want read into the record and remind the member that for every single project, we do an assessment, an individual assessment for every single tenant. We use the vulnerability assessment tool. It provides a consistent and fair way of identifying who could benefit most from supportive housing, different approaches to handling their case. The tool can help prevent people from falling through cracks in the system by coordinating services among agencies.

[5:40 p.m.]

This tool assesses a person’s level of vulnerability in ten areas: survival skills, basic needs, indicated mortality risks, medical risks, organization and orientation, mental health, substance use, communication, social behaviours and level of homelessness. It’s used to assess the support needs of applicants, assess eligibility of supportive housing, inform housing placements to create a healthy tenant mix and create a fair and transparent process. So as a result of that, when we do that work, we’re able to identify the exact needs and the exact services needed by the people living in this community.

They also get, automatically, staffing that is 24-7 from professional organizations that are housing providers, that have some counselling skills, that have listening skills, that work with people to develop life skills, that also do case planning, that provide meals and make sure that they get to medical appointments as needed. I have an example from Maple Ridge that I’d like to share with the member around the deployment of Fraser Health services that are available to the programs that are there.

We have an intensive case management team that’s contracted service with RainCity Housing Society. We have a nurse practitioner, full-time. Outreach primary care services for homeless, vulnerable individuals that works with the modular housing, as well as the homeless camp — because there are still people there — as well as the shelter. A full-time combo of an outreach nurse and another mental health nurse, as well as a mental health care worker. The nurses provide dedicated services to the same clients, and the mental health worker assists with medical appointments, housing searches, recovery focus interventions and other supports.

There are psychiatric services that are available to these clients. Again, the workers who are on site help to facilitate the appointments, helping to make sure people get to their appointments, helping to make sure that they take their medications. We also have contracted substance use services with Alouette Addictions Services society. There’s a contracted service, as well, for an opioid agonist treatment clinic. There’s a public health nurse — 0.75 FTE assigned as overdose lead for Maple Ridge — and a portion of a full-time community health specialist that supports the Maple Ridge team.

There’s a harm reduction coordinator. The Maple Ridge public health unit provides fixed-site harm reduction supply distribution as well as immunization and outreach clinics for marginalized populations. Then we have home health. It’s a small 0.2. But, again, primary care nursing assessments, wound care, palliative care…. We’ve had some formerly homeless people who passed away because they had cancer, and having palliative care was really important.

Again, this is part of a wraparound, based on an assessment. Doing the assessment helps us identify what services need to be brought to bear and what services people can access. It’s the combination of the two. Also, a 0.2 FTE home support worker that provides personal care support. These are the kinds of supports that are included as part of wraparound services. I hope that answers the member’s question.

S. Sullivan: Minister, this is about the housing hub. I wanted to get a better sense of that. Maybe the best way, rather than asking general questions…. Maybe about a specific one…. WestUrban Developments in Squamish received construction financing, $14 million.

I just wanted to know: is that a loan on the government books? I believe that it was underway and approved in 2018. Was the housing hub involved from the start, or is it possible for developers to approach the government mid-process?

[5:45 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I’m going to answer the second question first, which is that developers can approach at any time and check in with the housing hub to see what opportunities might be available.

In this particular case, it was construction financing, which will be paid upon completion. In return for the low cost financing, we got a concession on rent levels and affordability for the community.

Vote 37: ministry operations, $318,559,000 — approved.

Vote 38: housing, $486,365,000 — approved.

ESTIMATES:
OTHER APPROPRIATIONS

Vote 50: Auditor General for Local Government, $2,608,000 — approved.

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that the committee rise, report completion of the resolutions of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:47 p.m.