The Links showcases impressive design, upstairs and down

Mary Frances Hill
The Province

The Links Residences

What: A collection of 55 three- and four-bedroom townhouses adjacent to Guildford Golf and Country Club.

Where: 7979 152 St., Surrey

Residence sizes and prices: Homes range from 1,410 to 3,145 square feet; $670,000 to $710,000 for three-bedroom, two-bath and powder room, 1,410 to 1,421 square feet; $753,000 to $865,000 for three-bedroom, two-bath, two powder rooms, 1,916 to 1,963 square feet; $910,000 to $1,055,000 for four-bedroom, two-bath, two powder rooms, 2,931 to 3,145 square feet. Prices do not include GST

Developer and builder: Infinity Properties

Sales centre: 7979 152 St., Surrey

Sales centre hours: noon — 5 p.m., Sat — Thurs

Those of us who grew up in single-family homes may recall that basements often seemed like afterthoughts. More often than not, they were poorly insulated rooms with low ceilings and panelled walls and sometimes served as storage pits for old furnishings and that lonely ping-pong table. At their best, they were a place where kids were allowed make a ruckus with friends.

At Surrey’s The Links Residences, Infinity Properties’ community of townhomes adjacent to the Guildford Golf and Country Club, visitors will discover a welcoming warmth in designer Jill Bauer’s basement display.

“Old- fashioned rumpus rooms typically had lower ceilings with ugly light fixtures and acoustic tiles,” says the principal of Jill Bauer Design. “Basements now feel like main floor living with higher ceilings and ample recessed pot lights.”

Bauer notes the exterior attraction of the Tudor and Craftsman-style architecture, the homes’ patio decks and backyards and the property’s location near protected green space and park land.

Inside, the display space has a bright, modern open-concept living room/dining space, and a finished basement that is as comfortable as the upstairs area.

“The wet bar, sectional seating and games table in the basement mirror the functions of kitchen, living room and dining areas on the main floor, and the generously sized sectional with plush pillows create inviting entertainment areas,” Bauer says.
Upstairs and down, she sticks to simple basics, such as wood tones, off-whites, neutrals and accents in muted colours.
“We encourage homeowners to invest in neutral furniture pieces and introduce colour and individual style with accessories,” she says.

“These accessories don’t have to be expensive, which allows owners to get creative, yet be able to switch out and replace them as styles and preferences change.”

Bauer’s aim to impress visitors with decor associated with family comfort extends to the outdoors, where Bauer is impressed with Infinity Properties’ backyard space.
“The backyards are more generous in size than most townhomes offer, which creates a single-family home feel, and extends family entertainment to the outdoors.”
Outfitting for entertainment can be as simple as placing a rug, chairs and a modern fire pit on a deck, as Bauer encourages buyers to do. “Finish it off with some outdoor string-lights to give that evening ambiance. A fire pit is always popular with the kids and grandchildren.”

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

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Security and fairness for landlords and renters will be focus of three-person task force, led by Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert

Western Investor

Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert will head up a new Rental Housing Task Force, Premier John Horgan announced April 10.

The task force will focus on how to improve security and fairness for renters and landlords in the province.

In many areas across Metro Vancouver and elsewhere in the province, vacancy rates have hovered close to zero and renters have struggled to find suitable housing at reasonable rates.

“Our laws haven’t kept up with the changing housing market, and that has left both renters and landlords vulnerable,” Horgan was quoted as saying in a press release Tuesday. “This task force will connect with British Columbians, review laws in other jurisdictions and deliver the first full review of our residential tenancy laws in 16 years.”

The task force will work throughout the summer to look into what further changes may be needed to modernize B.C.’s tenancy Law,  including:

• consulting the public, landlords, tenants and stakeholders on their views and experiences with current tenancy laws and processes within the rental industry;
• identifying options to improve security and fairness for both renters and landlords, while addressing the challenges of affordability;
• a review of the existing laws and how they apply to different housing models; and
• a review of innovative approaches in other jurisdictions.

Herbert will work with MLAs Adam Olsen and Ronna-Rae Leonard on the three-member task force.

It will report findings and make recommendations to Horgan and Selina Robinson, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, in the fall of 2018.

“One-and-a-half million British Columbians rent. For too long, issues of security, affordability and fairness have been ignored, with the voices of renters and landlords sidelined,” Herbert said in the press release. “We need to bring renters, landlords and all those who care about rental housing to the table to improve our tenancy laws so they work better for everyone. It’s time.”

Copyright © 2018 Western Investor

Housing starts in the first quarter of 2018 have more than doubled year-over-year, while home sales took a dive

Frank O’Brien
Western Investor

As housing sales dropped to the lowest level in five years, Metro Vancouver new home starts have soared in the first quarter of the year, with starts in Vancouver alone more than twice as high as during the same period in 2017.

There were 6,542 home sales on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) in Metro Vancouver during the first quarter of 2018, which is a 13.1 per cent decrease from the same period last year.

This represents the region’s lowest first-quarter sales total since 2013, reports the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV).

But total housing starts across the region increased to 6,864 units in the first three months of 2018, up 30 per cent from a year earlier.

In Vancouver, first quarter starts soared 109 per cent to 1,956 homes, including 1,592 apartments or townhouses. Vancouver detached house starts jumped 93% to 364 homes, reports Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

Huge increases were also seen in North Vancouver, where 1,422 homes broke ground so far this year, compared with 107 in the same period in 2017.

Starts were also higher in the Tri-Cities and Richmond, but were down in Burnaby and Surrey following near record starts in the first quarter of last year. West Vancouver had 120 multi-family starts this year compared with none in the first quarter of 2017.

The real estate board noted that sales of existing homes have been hit by a number of factors in 2018.

“We saw less demand from buyers and fewer homes listed for sale in our region in the first quarter of the year,” said Phil Moore, REBGV president. “High prices, new tax announcements, rising interest rates, and stricter mortgage requirements are among the factors affecting home buyer and seller activity today.

“Last month was the quietest March for new home listings since 2009, and the total inventory, particularly in the condo and townhome segments remains well below historical norms,” Moore added.

Despite 42,590 new homes now under construction across Metro Vancouver the current inventory remains low. Of the nearly 7,000 new strata units or new houses that have been completed so far this year only 1,004 remained unsold as of March, according to CMHC data.

© Copyright 2017 Western Investor

As Fair Housing Act Turns 50, Landmark Law Faces Uncertain Future

J. Brian Charles
Asian Pacific Post

This past Wednesday marked the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Watch the video above to hear from AREAA members and leaders about how this historic act has affected their lives and the AAPI community.

Fifty years after passage of the Fair Housing Act — a law intended to end housing discrimination and increase homeownership among minorities — key enforcement provisions of it are being dismantled by the federal government.

Efforts to enforce the landmark law, which was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1968, have ebbed and flowed over the past five decades. Democratic presidents have tended to direct more resources toward enforcing it and have put greater emphasis on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s role in desegregating cities. Republican administrations, meanwhile, have routinely scaled back those efforts.

But as the Fair Housing Act turns 50, many experts say HUD’s recent actions, under the direction of Secretary Ben Carson, represent a new level of attempts to undo the legislation.

Under Carson and President Donald Trump, HUD has decisively pared back its role as the primary legal advocate for the Fair Housing Act. Carson instructed HUD officials to delete the words “inclusive” and “free from discrimination” from the agency’s website. HUD recently settled a case in Houston under terms that at least one former official says does nothing to end residential discrimination in the city. And the agency terminated an investigation into Facebook for alleged discriminatory housing advertising practices. Carson has also delayed a requirement, established under the Obama administration, that local governments must create detailed plans to integrate racially divided neighborhoods. And HUD has put an indefinite hold on secretary-initiated housing cases, which historically have been seen as a critical tool in fighting systemic housing discrimination.

Advocates see the moves as a rollback of progress that had been made, particularly under the Obama administration.

“We had these important fair housing advances that were years in the making — carefully constructed rules on fair housing that were suspended with a memo from the administration,” says Philip Tegeler, president of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council.

By law, HUD must still investigate housing discrimination complaints that are filed with the agency by civil rights groups or individuals. But it has stopped initiating any investigations or legal actions on its own. HUD-initiated cases have historically tackled systemic housing segregation and lending discrimination.

HUD spokesman Jereon Brown told The New York Times that the agency is not backing away from its duty to pursue the Fair Housing Act or the law’s aim to reverse discriminatory housing practices. The department, according to Brown, is turning its attention to the bulk of its discrimination cases, which he said were not race-based.

“There is no mission shift. We are, in fact, putting more emphasis in sexual harassment” complaints, Brown told the Times. “In addition, 60 percent of the fair housing complaints we receive are disability related, and the majority of those have to do with service animals.”

The changes at HUD have left what housing advocates say is an uneven legal landscape that varies greatly from state to state.

In some places, like Louisiana and Texas, landlords cannot be forced to accept federal housing vouchers. Elsewhere, many cities have utilized exclusionary zoning practices to keep affordable housing out of more affluent neighborhoods, say housing advocates.

Without the federal government acting as an enforcer, the task of ensuring that fair housing standards are met falls to local civil rights organizations. That’s a problem, says one former HUD official.

“You are never going to compare what local civil rights groups can do with what the federal government is going to do,” says Gustavo Velasquez, director of the Urban Institute’s Washington-Area Research Initiative and a former assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity at HUD under Obama. “Just on fair housing, the federal government has 600 people across the country working on these cases. The combined staff of local groups working on housing across the country can’t match the resources available from the federal government.”

 

Recent Rollbacks

The settlement last month of a Fair Housing Act lawsuit in Houston is evidence, housing advocates say, that HUD under Carson is not committed to using court actions to address housing segregation.

That case, filed under the Obama administration, focused on the fact that Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner was blocking the construction of low- to moderate-income housing in an affluent section of the city. Furthermore, according to the results of an investigation HUD released in early January 2017, Houston’s application process for affordable housing discriminated against minorities.

Turner had defended his decision to block the housing project by arguing that black residents in low-income neighborhoods didn’t want to be uprooted and dispersed to wealthier white neighborhoods. Instead, he said, more needed to be done to attract additional investment in existing black neighborhoods.

“Our underprivileged families should have the right to choose where they want to live,” said Turner in 2016, “and that choice should also include the right to stay in the neighborhood where they have grown up. … I categorically reject the notion that in order for poor children to participate in the American dream that I have to move them from where they are and place them somewhere else. The answer is to invest in the communities where they are.”

Under Obama, HUD disagreed, all but accusing Turner of being a segregationist.

But in what critics say is an about-face by the agency, HUD last reached a settlement with Houston that doesn’t require the city to construct affordable housing in affluent neighborhoods — but does allow the city to encourage landlords in low-income neighborhoods to rent apartments to families that are using federal housing vouchers. (Texas state law allows landlords to refuse to rent to voucher users.) The city will also invest $2 million in housing for families left homeless after Hurricane Harvey.

What the agreement doesn’t do, according to Velasquez, is “compel Houston to do something about segregation in the city.”

The settlement has triggered a lawsuit by a Texas fair housing group, Texas Housers, who say Houston was clearly maintaining residential segregation in the city.

But with the federal government backing away from the case, Kate Scott, deputy director of the Equal Rights Center in Washington, D.C., says any battle to force local government to comply with fair housing laws is neutered. Scott was part of a federal action in 2012 against St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana, which federal investigators and the courts found were discriminating against black residents looking for housing after Hurricane Katrina. She says housing lawsuits in more conservative state courts are almost pointless.

“In Louisiana, it wasn’t an option to go into state court and sue over fair housing because we would always lose,” Scott says. “We are going to see the same pattern playing out over the country.”

In a somewhat similar move, HUD last year abruptly dropped an investigation into whether Facebook had allowed housing advertisers to target white users and exclude other users from seeing the ads if their social media activity suggested they were black, Hispanic or Asian-American.

HUD had launched that query in 2016. A lawsuit has been filed in federal court alleging that the social media giant continues to discriminate against women, veterans and single mothers in housing ads. By law, HUD will have to investigate the allegations.

 

A History of Poor Enforcement

The Fair Housing Act was the last major civil rights achievement of President Johnson’s administration. It came in the wake of a series of riots in Detroit, Los Angeles and Newark, N.J., and after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. It also followed the famed Kerner Commission report on race, which detailed the disparity in homeownership between African-Americans and white Americans and blamed racism as the main culprit behind the riots. The Fair Housing Act aimed to reverse the pattern of residential segregation and do so through enforcement actions when necessary.

Support for the basic principles of the Fair Housing Act has historically been bipartisan, according to Teleger, the president of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. Enforcement has been another matter.

“The principle that you shouldn’t discriminate in housing, that’s a pretty widely held belief, and it’s widely supported that we shouldn’t have policies that we segregate families by race,” Teleger says. “However, to effectuate those goals requires substantial changes to the status quo. There are issues like local exclusionary zoning that have a lot of local support.”

To some degree, federal resources for enforcing the act have tended to shift with political winds.

President Richard Nixon’s HUD secretary, George Romney, had challenged local zoning laws as governor of Michigan. Once he joined Nixon’s administration, Romney drafted recommendations to better integrate housing. Nixon blocked them and drove Romney from his cabinet in 1972.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton tapped former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros to overhaul HUD and double the department’s efforts to enforce the Fair Housing Act and address racial segregation. Cisneros did make some strides in that effort. For example, he sent in federal marshals after a town in Texas had refused to allow black residents into an all-white public housing development — the first time in history that HUD had taken over a local housing authority for civil rights violations. But Cisneros’ efforts were clipped after Congress slashed the agency’s budget following the 1994 GOP takeover.

Former President Barack Obama called for increasing HUD funding by 19 percent over his predecessor, George W. Bush.

In many ways, then, the efforts to step back Fair Housing enforcement under President Trump are par for the course under a Republican administration. Still, the vacillating approaches to the law have made it hard to make inroads in integrating housing, advocates say.

“When you go back and forth every eight years about whether you are going to enforce the law or how you are going to fund HUD, of course you are not going to make any progress,” says Scott at the Equal Rights Center.

That’s borne out in the data, which suggest that not much has changed in the past 50 years in terms of housing segregation.

The Kerner Commission report was updated this year to mark its 50th anniversary. Despite efforts to better include minorities and especially black Americans in the broader housing market, one metric has remained stubbornly low: homeownership.

In 1968, only 41.1 percent of black Americans owned homes compared to 65.9 percent of whites. In 2018, almost the same exact percentage of black Americans, 41.2 percent, own homes. White homeownership has ticked up 5.2 percent in the same period.

 

A New Era of Undoing

Although the Trump administration isn’t the first to change HUD priorities, housing experts say the agency’s current posture represents a new era.

From the time of Trump’s inauguration in January to October 2017 (the most recent data available), HUD took legal action in five discrimination cases, and all but one had been initiated before Trump took office. In contrast, HUD under Obama took legal action in 26 discrimination cases in his first year in office, and HUD under George W. Bush processed an average of 25 cases per year in his second term. (Data were not available prior to 2004.)

In the waning years of the Obama administration, HUD adopted what it called an Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which forced agencies receiving HUD-funded community block grants to complete a federal fair housing assessment in order to receive funding. Cities and counties were required to examine residential racial segregation and concentration of poverty.

But under Trump and Carson, HUD has delayed implementing that requirement until at least 2020. Carson has referred to the plans laid during the Obama administration as social engineering and questioned how inclusionary housing would impact an existing community.

“The rule would fundamentally change the nature of some communities from primarily single-family to largely apartment-based areas by encouraging municipalities to strike down housing ordinances that have no overtly (or even intended) discriminatory purpose — including race-neutral zoning restrictions on lot sizes and limits on multi-unit dwellings, all in the name of promoting diversity,” Carson wrote in The Washington Times shortly after the rule’s adoption.

Carson’s op-ed in 2015 seems to have presaged his actions as HUD secretary.

Few in the housing community have been surprised by HUD’s actions over the past 15 months, but they nonetheless have registered their disappointment at what they see as a large-scale unwinding of policies related to the 50-year-old Fair Housing Act.

Delaying the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, says Teleger at the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, is something of a slap in the face.

“To be suspending that near the anniversary year of the law,” he says, “speaks to how politics is trumping policy here.”

Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of The Fair Housing Act

 

© 2018 All rights reserved. e.Republic

Ephraim Vecina
REP

Weakening activity in the residential real estate sphere along with the growing importance of financial technology firms represent formidable challenges for Canada’s banking industry, according to a new report from The Conference Board of Canada.

“The impact of financial technology firms on the industry is growing, and to date this has been primarily beneficial to the industry. Productivity continues to increase considerably and has been a key driver behind its successful financial performance,” according to Michael Burt, Director of Industrial Economic Trends, The Conference Board of Canada.

In particular, with interest rates likely to see sustained increases through to 2020 and with even stricter mortgage regulations on the pipeline, mortgage activity will continue to slow down over the next several years, further weighing down on bank profits.

“In addition to mortgages, growth in consumer loans and lines of credit are also anticipated to slow. While real household consumption rose 3.5% last year, its strongest increase since 2010, record levels of consumer debt and weaker employment gains will tighten household budgets this year and lead to more moderate growth,” the Board stated in its report summary.

Also, fintechs stand in opposition to traditional financial institutions, the Board emphasized.

“The banking industry has responded by expanding their own digital and online capabilities by partnering with or acquiring fintech companies and have also ramped up their hiring of in-house IT workers to upgrade their own technological infrastructure,” the report explained.

“The result has been robust gains in demand for IT workers in the past few years, while some other types of skills have waned in importance. The resulting productivity gains have been enough to outweigh the negative impact of the shift to higher paid workers.”

However, the Board assured that despite these potential roadblocks, pre-tax profits in Canada’s banking sector are continuing to trend upward, projected to exceed $95 billion this year.

Canada’s banking services segment has been forecast to see output grow by an average of 2.6% annually through 2022, while pre-tax profits in the banking industry are expected to reach over $95 billion in 2018.

Copyright © 2018 Key Media Pty Ltd

New regulations to be enacted to free up rental housing

Linda Givetash
REP

The city of Vancouver is moving to legalize short-term rental accommodation like Airbnb but operators will only be able to advertise their principal residence.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said Wednesday that new regulations to be enacted next week are designed to protect and free up rental housing in response to a critically low vacancy rate.

“The goal of the city is to restore some of our long-term rental and take a balanced approach, making sure we are protecting rental stock at the same time that we’re enabling supplemental income for people who are using Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms,” he said.

There are roughly 6,600 short-term rentals posted online, and more than 80 per cent will remain legal under the program, city officials said.

Operators will be required to apply for a business licence by Sept. 1 and include that number in their listing, which Airbnb has agreed to make as a requirement on its platform.

Secondary suites are not allowed on the platform and city staff say there are about 1,000 units currently listed that are not an operator’s primary home.

Robertson said most of those units should go back on the rental market or be subject to a $1,000 a day fine as of Sept. 1.

Airbnb spokeswoman Alex Dagg said the agreement reached with the city, which also requires the company to share quarterly data and user contact information, is the first of its kind in Canada. She said other jurisdictions globally have implemented a similar partnership.

“I’m always reminded how progressive the Vancouver community is,” she said. “This agreement today is an important step to making home sharing easier while giving the city the tools it needs for enforcement.”

She said the information being given to the city will help enforce the new regulations, while allowing users to continue to list their homes with ease.

The city’s general manager of development, Kaye Krishna, said about 88 per cent of all online short-term rental listings are posted on Airbnb.

Other platforms are in negotiations with the city, Krishna said. The Expedia Group, which owns the platforms VRBO and HomeAway, has agreed to educate users on the new regulations and encourage them to obtain licences, she said.

The cost of the licence is $49 annually, and operators must have permission from their landlord or condo board and adhere to fire and safety standards.

The city has set up an online application, which Krishna said takes only minutes to complete, that will launch next week.

The city has hired bylaw enforcement officers to monitor violations and issue tickets.

“Housing here is for homes first and be used as a business after that and be taxed as a business appropriately,” Robertson said.

The new regulations, paired with the city’s recent empty-home tax, are “tools that can boost the supply of long-term rental, and again, make sure we are getting the best use of our housing stock across the city,” he said.

The city’s vacancy rate is currently at 0.8 per cent, Robertson said.

Copyright © 2018 Key Media Pty Ltd

Almost half of Canadian mortgages up for renewal

REP

Nearly half of all existing mortgages in Canada will need to be renewed in this year, substantially more than in prior years, according to a new report, amid rising interest rates and new rules that make it tougher for some borrowers to shop around.

A CIBC Capital Markets report says an estimated 47 per cent of all existing mortgages will need to be refinanced this year, up from the 25 to 35 per cent range in a typical year.

The increase is an unintended consequence of various rounds of regulatory changes aimed at reducing risk coupled with rising house prices that made it harder for homebuyers to qualify, says CIBC’s executive director and head of North American Rates Strategy.

Ian Pollick says borrowers in recent years have taken on mortgages with two- or three-year durations, which are now up for renewal alongside the typical five-year mortgages.

The increase in renewals comes as mortgage rates have been rising with five-year fixed rates up about half a percentage point compared with a year ago.

Meanwhile, new lending rules introduced this year stipulate that homeowners looking to renew their uninsured mortgage are subject to a new stress test, unless they stick with their existing provider, hobbling their ability to seek out a more competitive rate.

Copyright © 2018 Key Media Pty Ltd

Man who inherited East Van home feels forced by $14,139 tax bill to rent ?non-habitable? house

Chuck Chiang
Western Investor

An 86-year-old retired pensioner who inherited his mother’s 1927 home in East Vancouver decades ago says Vancouver’s new empty-homes tax is unfairly forcing non-speculative property owners like himself into either operating a rental business or selling.

The case of Garry Harding’s East Vancouver home is unusual enough that two B.C. real estate lawyers said they have not seen similar complaints since the empty-homes tax came into effect.

Harding, a retired movie projectionist living in Richmond, said he wrote to Vancouver’s municipal government after receiving earlier this year an empty-home tax bill of $14,139, due in April, for his mother’s old house on East 29th Avenue.

Harding’s family has been using the home for storage after inheriting the property, and the house has a number of issues including lead paint and lack of compliance to the fire code that make it “not habitable,” he said.

To avoid the tax – which Harding calls a “punitive, coersive fine” – he would need to spend at least $30,000 to bring it up to code for rental or sell, neither of which he wants to do.

“I sure as hell feel like I’m being cornered,” Harding said. “I’m 86. I’m not going to be able to recoup that money [for repairs] in my lifetime. I don’t think the city can force you to go into business. If you rent a house, you are in the rental business, and you have to get a licence from the City of Vancouver. I don’t want to sell under pressure.”

In a statement responding to Harding’s claims, City of Vancouver spokesman Jag Sandhu said the tax regulations on the issue are straightforward.

“The bylaw that council approved in November 2016 did not exempt uninhabitable properties because the intention is to move forward with creating housing supply on those sites,” Sandhu said.

The city allows an exemption for major redevelopment or renovation, but it only applies to properties that are unoccupied for more than 180 days of the year, where permits have been issued and work is being carried out diligently.

Sandhu said property owners can only submit complaints if the city made an error or the owner did not supply the proper information in his or her property status declaration.

Harding said he is now planning to sell the house by August, and that he feels unduly pressured by the city over the fate of his property.

“We don’t live in a socialist state. Why are we only targeting a specific group of people? If I had housing that’s easily rentable, then I can see that the city would have a case against me. But even then, why do I have to supply housing? If we live in private-enterprise society, why is a gun being put to my head, just because some guy wants to live in Vancouver?”

Wesley McMillan, a commercial litigator with Hakemi & Ridgedale LLP, said the city is within its rights to determine what land in the city should be used for. He added it is the homeowner’s responsibility, not the city’s, to maintain property in habitable condition.

“From a legal perspective, how is this any different than having a house fall into disrepair, and the city issuing a bylaw violation saying the property is an eyesore and a mess, and that the owner has to clean it up or the city will do it and bill the owner for it?” McMillan asked, adding that while the foreign-buyer tax levied by the provincial government has generated some litigation, few have challenged the empty-homes tax – for good reason.

“My thought is, the city clearly has an authority to tax, and they clearly have an authority to dictate land use, and this is a tax to dictate land use,” he said. “So my suspicion is that they are in the clear. The city is not saying you have to sell the thing; they are saying you have to rent it out or sell it. The fact that it has become uninhabitable in the last 16 years – we didn’t tell you to do that. You chose not to.”

However, Ron Usher, a lawyer involved the process of reforming the province’s real estate sector, said people like Harding become “collateral damage” when municipal and provincial regulators try to apply simplistic laws to complex situations.

Usher agreed Harding appears to have little legal recourse, but added that city officials need to look at whether an empty-homes tax that pushes people to develop or sell their property is really helping the situation.

“A compassionate system would look as it this way – is it really accomplishing our goals?” Usher said, noting that the long-existing capital gains tax should already be working as a brake on speculation. “The truth is, this guy [Harding] has a very large tax bill that is coming due. It’s going to get paid.… It’s not like he’s going to get away with something. But we don’t need a new tax.

“Do we really want to push this guy to sell his property to a flip-it speculator? There’s no doubt someone will want to buy this, but is that someone going to build something that’s going to help out our housing situation? Not a chance.”

Usher added that he has seen cases of owners whose homes contain two lots – with one acting as a backyard – and were surprised by new taxes levied because their properties were considered empty homes. He contended that a properly enforced capital tax collection procedure would be far more effective than a new levy that goes after “non-flippers.”

Harding said he is still pondering his next step, including possibly filing a complaint through the city’s ombudsman. But he added that most people he has spoken with supported his position.

He added that, no matter what the demand for housing is like in Vancouver, private owners cannot be forced to accommodate more people.

“They say there are people that want to live in Vancouver,” Harding said. “Well, that’s too bloody bad. I’d like to live in the Beverly Hilton in California, if you want to look at it that way. They say they want to live and work in Vancouver; well, not everyone in the world can live and work in Vancouver.”

Copyright © 2018 Western Investor