NDP Rent Freeze and Renters Rebate

[Urban Cowboy]

Vancouver has quite a few co-op buildings, with some being below market. People wait for years to get into them.

There are some subsidized housing developments in Penticton that are similarly full with long waiting lists. This used to be the territory of Service Clubs, Kinsmen, Kiwanis, etc. but land prices have pushed things out of their reach as well. I have a thought that some of them limit the time a tenant can stay to a few years, sort of a stepping-stone arrangement to let people get it together to move back into the open market.

Still, the market for rental prices has moved out of reach for lower income people/families. This is another manifestation of an out-of-control income distribution. Some local governments have moved toward something called "inclusionary housing", where developers of multi-family buildings are required to include a percentage of "affordable" units as part of the permit process. Another route would be a progressive property tax, where high value properties pay a higher rate, with the extra money going into subsidized housing.

Can't speak for Penticton, but I can assure you that places such as Society of Hope up here, have many many tenants that are seniors so your stepping-stone arrangement would do them no good whatsoever, given that they are on fixed income and even with OAS and GIS added to CPP, they'd still get around $1,500 a month if even that, so where exactly in the open market would they fit in?

[fluffy]

Can't speak for Penticton, but I can assure you that places such as Society of Hope up here, have many many tenants that are seniors so your stepping-stone arrangement would do them no good whatsoever, given that they are on fixed income and even with OAS and GIS added to CPP, they'd still get around $1,500 a month if even that, so where exactly in the open market would they fit in?

The developments I'm thinking about here in Penticton are geared towards young families, so some degree of turnover is desirable. There are seniors' housing developments put together by service clubs as well, but I doubt they have time limits, as you say some measure of security is a must for seniors. Not so much for younger families, it would just be an open-ended subsidy that doesn't exactly encourage progress.

[Urban Cowboy]

Can't speak for Penticton, but I can assure you that places such as Society of Hope up here, have many many tenants that are seniors so your stepping-stone arrangement would do them no good whatsoever, given that they are on fixed income and even with OAS and GIS added to CPP, they'd still get around $1,500 a month if even that, so where exactly in the open market would they fit in?

The developments I'm thinking about here in Penticton are geared towards young families, so some degree of turnover is desirable. There are seniors' housing developments put together by service clubs as well, but I doubt they have time limits, as you say some measure of security is a must for seniors. Not so much for younger families, it would just be an open-ended subsidy that doesn't exactly encourage progress.

Society of Hope has quite a diverse number of sites, some of which are apartments catering mostly to older ones, while they also have many townhouse units, which are occupied by younger families with children.

Columbian Centennial Housing does much the same but perhaps not on the same scale as the former.