B.C. government promising 1000 new affordable Burnaby homes

The B.C. government is promising more than 1,000 new affordable rental homes in Burnaby. The city says the units are badly needed, But as the CBC's Zahra Premji explains — those who live there and are dealing with rising costs say it's only a start.

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[kaze]

Step in the right direction. Yes, it is not enough to meet demand. Everyone knows this. But this is a positive step. Get it done, folks move in, then replicate the project again and do it better :)

[ninemoonplanet]

There are corporations buying up condos, apartment blocks as REIT Real Estate Investment Trusts. Frequently these are international, corporations like BlackRock the largest investment corporation in the world.
In Edmonton, Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, Vancouver the amount of "monetized" owners has risen dramatically. These are not ordinary people, but investment groups, corporations who can buy up "mortgage backed securities" like housing and raise rents to satisfy the investors.
Currently the "apartment for rent" listings aren't often single owners but management companies.
IF CBC Vancouver would do some basic investigation, you'd find that there are thousands of empty houses, condos, held strictly as investment.

[chinaiscommittinggenocidei]

Ban foreign real estate owners for both residential and commercial.

[frenzybar]

A thousand? They need at least 25 k units!

[truth]

Governments need to stop taxing new developments so heavily and remove some of the crazy red tape. Governments can't play hero when they have been a huge part of the problem all along!

[nicklang]

This is why having marketplace comprised of only private companies is usually not a free marketplace. Private companies may only offer competitive prices if they run out of consumers or consumers go elsewhere, and since there is a high demand they do not have to compete with each other. Also since some private companies have most of their value in their stock price they may be getting profit while having a very high complaint rate among their consumers. When it comes to buying things out of necessity there should always be a part of the market dedicated to a publicly owned organization, otherwise private companies will never run out of consumers even if they are gouging the market.

[goozbaghali]

I'm glad NDP is building these, but we need so much more. Rental and none market housing all over metro Vancouver, and BC. At least NDP is doing something, BC liberals did nothing, they and their cronies just got rich from the housing market.

[rtaskyy]

They need at least 10x that to make a dent

[UncannyGirl]

1000?!? 1500?!? (There's about that many rental appartments now within the hub of Brentwood alone.) We really 3000+ and a promise of at least that much more in the next 3 years.

[adarshraghuram]

It's shocking to hear these people still frame it as an "affordable housing" issue. Inevitably leading to dumb non solutions like rental rebates. It's a housing shortage issue! It's basic supply and demand. We don't need"affordable" housing. We just need housing so that the prices can drop on their own without having to rely on our hyper competent politicians

[nicolesmith]

can someone define what is affordable?

[guymontag]

That's a step in the right direction, at least. Time for government to step up and create affordable housing, at scale. Market forces will clearly never allow that to happen, otherwise.

[adanactnomew]

We need to reduce immigration and build more social housing

[Matt-YT]

We need to build build build!
Rent supplement is not going to resolve the issue, only increase taxes on the middle class that is already struggling!

[djdjdr]

Cool, where are the other 220000 immigrants going to live?

[MrAlene]

Affordable rental housing is what the country needs. The nimbys have abolish missing middle housing for the middle class. Get rid of outdated zoning laws and get going in building housing

[piku]

Can humanity please stop treating housing, food and water as a commodity?

[rl]

Commonly like Portland tiny house will help.

[hgjghjvg]

can the BC government offer free housing same as free covid vaccine?

[aavvcc]

Did a CBC employee make a mistake and allow comments on this story?