In Our View: What Next for Homeless?

To anybody who has walked around downtown Vancouver, driven past highway underpasses, or read recent headlines, it comes as no surprise that the city is facing a housing emergency. There is a desperate shortage of affordable residences, homeless rates are rising, and soaring rental prices are promising to exacerbate the problem.

Therefore, last week’s decision by the Vancouver City Council to officially declare a state of emergency related to housing was a simple and necessary one. The more difficult question, however, is about what comes next.

By declaring an emergency, city leaders have paved the way for placing a property-tax levy on the November ballot with the goal of creating a fund to purchase, build, and preserve low-income rental housing. Because details of such a tax have yet to be worked out, it would not be prudent at this time to express support or opposition for the plan. But there is no doubt about it being time for the city and for citizens to work together on addressing the problem.

In this regard, Vancouver is not alone. Portland declared a housing emergency last fall, and numerous other cities throughout the country have done the same. But, in part because it is within a metropolitan area, the extent of Vancouver’s crisis is unusual for a midsized city.

The city has a rental vacancy rate of 2 percent, which has been called the lowest in the nation and which leaves few options for residents who are in need of housing. Meanwhile, city officials say that median income has grown 3.1 percent over the past five years while rental costs have gone up 38.3 percent. This leaves an increasing number of people being priced out of the housing market, an issue that received increased attention over the past year with a series of mass evictions at local apartment complexes.

All of this leads to a need for weighing government intervention against free-market principles, and suggestions that an unfettered free market would solve the problem are easily debunked. For example, Hong Kong is ranked No. 1 in the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, yet the South China Morning Post reported earlier this year: “Skyrocketing rents and squalid conditions in shoebox apartments have pushed more people onto the streets as the number of homeless in the city hit an all-time high last year.”

In other words, solutions do, indeed, call for intervention on the part of government. For Vancouver, that action will be placed in front of voters, with City Councilor Alishia Topper saying, “Regardless of what we put together, the voters decide. … This council will not. We’ll just give people the option to vote.”

The idea for a fund dedicated to low-income housing was put forth by the city’s Affordable Housing Task Force, which developed a variety of suggestions that also include amending zoning to encourage affordable housing options and strengthening tax exemptions for multifamily housing. Overall, a mixture of efforts that balance the needs of residents and the rights of landlords will be required.

Whether or not that mixture includes a property-tax levy and a city fund to support low-income housing remains to be seen. But at this point, the need for action is too great to rule out any well-considered suggestion.