SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 78

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22
Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)
  • May/31/22 7:17:25 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, Canada is faced with a housing crisis and we have to address this issue, which in no small part was a result of the federal Liberal government walking away from the national housing program in 1993. Soon after that, we saw the financialization of the housing market take root. This is when corporations and wealthy investors make big money by putting people out of homes. They buy up rental housing units, often older buildings, renovict everyone and jack up the rent. This is what the financialization of housing means, and it has to stop. REITs alone have grown from owning zero residential units in apartment buildings in 1996 to nearly 200,000 in the year 2020. In total, the largest 25 financial landlords held about 330,000 suites last year, which is nearly 20% of the country's private purpose-built stock of rental apartments. According to researcher Steve Pomeroy, for every one affordable housing unit created by government funding, 15 become unaffordable due to the financialization of rental housing. Right here in Ottawa, we are seeing 300 tenants at Manor Village be renovicted by their corporate landlord. The fallout is on the residents, who find themselves without a home. A senior named Peggy has lived there for 30 years. She is a fixed-income senior. People like Peggy are at the mercy of huge corporations and wealthy investors who are fuelling the housing crisis. Rich investors should not be allowed to buy up affordable rental units, force existing tenants out of their homes and jack up the rent to unaffordable levels. Canadians need the government to fix the mess it helped to create. The reality is that, left unchecked, the government cannot possibly build affordable housing units as fast as wealthy investors can buy them, hike up the prices and use the housing market to make money off of Canadians. For decades, Liberals and Conservatives have created a rigged system where wealthy investors profit and Canadians pay the price. That is why the NDP is calling on the government to take immediate action to stop corporate landlords and REITs from treating our housing market like a stock market. New Democrats are calling on the government to stop the financialization of housing by putting in place a moratorium on the acquisition of affordable homes by REITs and other corporate landlords. We are also calling on the Liberals to put in place an acquisition fund to allow non-profits or land trust organizations to purchase rental buildings when they come on the market. Changes must be made on how REITs are taxed, as well. The government is essentially giving massive tax breaks to wealthy investors: seven of the largest apartment-owning REITs in Canada have saved a combined $1.5 billion through federal tax loopholes. The government must close these loopholes. Amendments should be made to the Income Tax Act to require landlords to disclose in their tax filings the rent they received pre- and post-renovations and to pay a proportional surtax if the rent is excessive. Attacking the Bank of Canada, as the Conservative leader front-runner wants to do, is not going to fix the financialization of the housing crisis. A meagre foreign-owner tax will not do it either, but a moratorium on purchases—
550 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border