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The financialization and commodification of housing is largely to blame for the affordability crisis, says BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau.
In an interview with BIV, Furstenau blamed short-term thinking by previous governments for creating conditions in which for-profit housing is predominant, the costs of renting and ownership are often unaffordable, and families are driven away from B.C. or into housing poverty.
Furstenau said that starting in the early 2000s under Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government, the province cut important programs for women, immigrants and the most vulnerable. Programs were also cut at the federal level that would have enabled sufficient co-op and not-for-profit housing, leading to the “downstream impacts” visible today.
“We have allowed a for-profit industry that financializes housing to create the conditions here in B.C. where more and more people can’t afford to live here and are leaving,” she said.
“By building more commodities, when we have an insatiable amount of capital that can be invested, including public pension plans, we have a problem. I think we have to have governments that are willing to both acknowledge and define that problem.”
The Green Party leader said Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), pension funds and others invest in housing and then try to extract profits, making housing costs onerous for those with entry-level, minimum-wage and mid-level jobs. She noted that the median individual income in B.C. is approximately $41,000 and that there was a 22-per-cent increase in rents in the last two years across Canada.
The average asking rent for all property types in Canada increased 21.8 per cent from $1,788 in December 2021 to $2,178 in December 2023, according to Rentals.ca and real estate services firm Urbanation Inc. Statistics Canada says the median total income in British Columbia in 2022, the latest year available, was $43,170.
“There aren’t many people earning $41,000 who can afford the rental market or housing market,” Furstenau said. “I challenge you to find someone whose income has gone up 22 percent other than the CEO of a REIT.”
A 2022 report commissioned by the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate stated: “The financialization of housing refers to the growing dominance of financial actors in the housing sector, which is transforming the primary function of housing from a place to live into a financial asset and tool for investor profits. The financialization of housing is recognized as a trend that is undermining the realization of the right to adequate housing.”
The Green Party leader said Canadians have a constitutional right to shelter.
“Any person who cannot be assured of having regular sleep in a place they feel secure and safe – that is denying people their basic right that is protected in the Charter to security [of the person],” Furstenau said.
Citing examples of successful housing initiatives in other jurisdictions including Paris, Vienna and Singapore, the Green Party leader said lively communities and a thriving economy require affordability.
Furstenau also linked housing and mental health. Responding to a question about the toxic drug crisis, business vandalism and stranger attacks, she said in part that people can’t afford to live here.
“People are being unhoused at an astonishingly terrible rate and we are seeing the impacts of a [preventative] mental health-care system that essentially does not exist,” she said.
“It’s really important that we unpack the kind of language and rhetoric and discourse we have around this. When we have politicians saying, ‘I’m going to solve this with involuntary care,’ they are not telling the truth. They are not talking about the reality or conditions right now and are not interested in looking at root causes. People need housing, people need a place to live.”
From 2017 to 2020, the Green Party had a confidence-and-supply agreement with an NDP minority government led by then-premier John Horgan. When asked for the conditions that the Greens would insist on in any future coalition, Furstenau said: “We are preparing for what we would like to see any government in this province to be focused on and to be implementing the solutions that are there. The part that I find frustrating is we know governments have the capacity to make this happen and act with urgency.”
