Hey come on MB, those Canada Action Plan billboards (16 million was the last report for the first quarter of 2012) and reliving a 200 year old war (upward of 30 million) aren’t going to appear on their own!

“Doesn’t it mean that monies paid for rent can now go into a general revenue account for repairs? Can’t this part of the ‘agreement’ be amended?”
Quite right. Problem is, look what happened all over the world after the “socialist type housing” ended in those countries. The Real Estate sharks moved in! Same here! Best example… Little Mountain Housing Coop. They are not out of the “danger zone” yet…

Frances, I’m waxing nostalgic…

I’m ‘Over There’ fighting WWI—or more to the point—WWII. Then, I come home… to what?

Chances are that I am male, in my 20s, and starting a new life.

Are government subsidies—energy, transportation, schools, recreating centres, cultural programs—pointing me to buy a home in Coquitlam, get a job in Burnaby, and raise my family outside the metropolitan hub (Vancouver) but, within driving distance of the new pipeline: the Freeway?

Where are those incentives now?

Do we need another Hitler in Berlin to shake us awake to realizing that market forces alone cannot capture the full spectrum of values that constitute Canadian culture? Is it not the role of the public sector to smooth out the necessary aberrations that come with a profit-centered private sector economy?

@ Lewis, well said.

@MB#1

Where do you think the Feds get the money to dole out back to the Provinces? Us. And if you think we are going to be net beneficieries of any Federal housing program you are dreaming in technicolour. BC is a “have Province” and it is our dollars that are going to pay for services in other Provinces. Far better the Feds get out of these types of programs and reduce taxes to create taxing room for the Province. Not only does this stop the Feds from targeting money for political gain, it also creates savings by eliminating the leakage that is spent on administering the Federal programs. (you may see this as a negative, MB, as it would reduce employment in the public sector. )

@Dan Cooper. I am not questioning that the Sahota’s are slum landlords or that they will get a tax break on the property.
The point was the assertion, repeated by you, that it is Vision or the City government who gives the tax break. The City does not provide a different mill rate on property that is used for community gardens. Rather, BC Assessment Authority which is a provincial not a city agency assesses the land at a lower rate and therefore they pay less in taxes. Neither Vision nor the city government gives the tax break.

For waltyss:

From Vancouver 24 hours:

Downtown Eastside landlords notorious for owning troubled SRO hotels may be the next commercial land owners in Vancouver to get a whopping tax break by designating property as a community garden.

The Sahota family who own the Astoria Hotel on East Hastings Street through a company ( Yang-Myung Holdings Ltd.) are benefiting from a program that allows commercial properties to be re-classified as a public park or garden. The so-called “ Class 8” property classification permits owners of commercial property to pay onefifth of their normal tax bill.

Tax breaks totaling in the millions of dollars have been given to developers and commercial property owners during a year where the City of Vancouver is facing a multimillion dollar budget shortfall. The Sahotas were approached about using their property by a community organization named Greening the Inner-City looking to create an “ urban farm” to train up to a dozen area citizens as food gardeners.
Empty lots beside the Astoria Hotel ( 769 East Hastings) to Hawks Avenue have an assessed value of $ 8.3 million. The normal tax bill would be approximately $ 165,000. As a Class 8 property the tax bill could be reduced to as low as $ 33,000, providing an annual savings of $ 132,000.

The Astoria Hotel has been the centre of several complaints by tenants over the years.

.

@teririch: Frances has pointed out one area where you are mixed up. The other area where you are mixed up is your incorrect assertion that it is the city (Vision controlled or not) that determines either the Class within which a piece of property falls or the assessed value of that property. Both of those are done by the BC Assessment Authority.
What happens is that landlords, whether the Sahota’s or an oil company or someone else who has a vacant property will approach or be approached by someone who wants to use the property for a community garden. If they reach agreement, the landlord then applies to the Assessment Authority to have the property assigned to a different Class. Hence your reference to Class 8 which simply means that the land is then assigned by BC Assessment Authority to that class.
City has nothing to do with it. The culprit, if there is a culprit, is the BC Assessment Authority and the provincial government who passes the legislation and regulations that allow what you are describing to happen.
I am not sure of this but the city actually opposed this way of property obtaining a class designation taxed at a lower rate.
So you are right to be concerned but wrong with regard to whom you are assigning responsibility.

Am I the only one reading Frances’ story who is concerned about what she’s actually reporting–the threat to existing social housing projects posed by possible end to Federal funding? I’d like to see one of the major national policy think tanks do some analysis of the impacts of this on the country as a whole, socially and economically. It also has very interesting possible political consequences nationally: something for the NDP and Liberals to get their teeth into. Not to mention what impact the cancellation might have in giving the PQ a cause in Quebec.

Yes, I was referring to the Liberals in Ottawa during the 1990s, because we were talking about federal housing policy. The BC government under the provincial NDP and Liberals have tried to maintain some support for social housing.

@Frances #16:

Thank you for the correction – my interpretation was wrong.

(Too many hours with work travel and well….work!)

Cheers,
T.

Trish – thank you. While you’re likely not the only one reading who feels this way, you’re certainly the only one so far who has stayed on topic rather than translating everything as an evil Vision plot.

Frances’ blog has unfortunately devolved into a place where the same few adversarial and mostly anonymous voices make it not only tiresome and predictable, but also useless to try and stay on topic.

Thanks again for trying to do so and pointing a way forward for opposition parties at the national level, for the need for a national housing policy but, perhaps, a more comprehensive urban policy and, shall I say, vision.

@ Bill 10, Adele 13 + Frances 16,

A little fiscal history.

The federal Liberals under Chretien + Martin brought the rampant deficit spending under control in the 90s. It was Trudeau who started the deficit trend but left office when the national debt was well under $200 billion. It was Mulroney who first jacked the federal debt and annual defits to record proportions in the 80s and early 90s, followed by the fiscal roller coaster c/o Harper + Flaherty a couple of decades later with a confusing melange of cuts to key revenue sources (e.g. GST) followed by the highest deficit in Canadian history, followed by deeper cuts, all termed “fiscally responsible.”

It seems if you need truly responsible (i.e. less unstable) fiscal management in Canada, then vote Liberal. Conservatives have surely lost their way since Mulroney on what used to be one of their central planks.

Paul Martin cut deeply because he had to (too deeply into health care in my view, and something he later regretted), but he still left a remnant social housing program in place, notably reduced cooperative housing and the occasi0nal drop of funding into singular projects, along with a budget surplus.

Harper sank the surlpus, and will now remove all related subsidies and grants and make Canada stand out as the only industrialized country on Earth that does not fund social housing, amongst other things.

Now our friend Bill may favour a collection of powerful fiefdoms called “provinces” and a purposely weakened federal government, but going too far in this direction during the current global economic climate will ultimately result in …… well, gawd only knows as the US falters under its own tragic fiscal mismanagement and Canadian power devolves to the regions, each with their own debt challenges.

Maybe Cascadia will arise after all on the West Coast by mid-century from the fiscal ashes and political rubble in North America.

@ brilliant 25:

… forgive me if I don’t feel sorry for those too lazy to leave their subsidized homes to travel a few hours to get a good job.

I forwarded your comment to my 87-year old mother who is disabled and lives in subsidized housing with subsidized care, made possible in part with federal grants.

Her response was unprintable.

I know many people in co-ops and other federally subsidized housing who are unable to work due to age or physical / mental disabilities.

There seems to be a direct connection between your simple speech centre and your jaw / typing fingers that bypasses the rest of your brain.

People seem to want it both ways, ultimately there is one taxpayer. The feds lowered taxes and cut funding to a bunch of social programs. The provinces are always crying about wanting more power, there is nothing stopping them from increasing taxes by the same amount the feds cut them to pay for whatever program they desire. Instead the provinced decided to do the same as the feds and cut taxes too. No one wants to be the one to raise taxes so here we are.

@waltyss:

I agree with your point, upon clarification of what specific part of the original statement you were objecting to: that it is not the city but the provincial authority that determines the tax category. (We could argue whether the city could oppose some classification decisions and/or valuations more strongly, a prime example being the many acres of prime False Creek property currently assessed at a supposed value less than that of one single bedroom apartment despite their developer-owner running a profitable business upon them as well as regularly renting them out for short periods at a fee each time of many multiples their supposed total worth. But I certainly would not digress in such a way.)

That being said, I still think your point would have been more effective, initially, not as, “”I dare you to prove your allegation!” but rather, “You are simply wrong; this is determined by the province not the city.”

Cheers!

@MB #28

On the one hand you credit the Chretien Liberals for balancing the books yet on the other hand you acknowledge they did this by slashing transfer payments to the Provinces for programs that were the responsibility of the Provinces to deliver which is a pretty strong argument supporting my position. Of course Provinces are quite happy to receive funding from the Federal government because they don’t get blamed for the taxes necessary to provide the funding.

I am not sure how you make the connection of a weakened Federal government to the US fiscal mess (nor in fact how staying out of service areas they have no constitutional mandate to provide weakens the Federal government) but let’s say it is good for national unity to transfer money from the haves to the have nots (although you have to wonder about the state of the country when the two largest provinces are have nots). Why not have one transfer payment that Provinces can spend on the services they are mandated to provide in any way they see fit?

As for the deficit spending by the Harper government, let’s not forget that he has led a minority government for most of his mandate including the 2008 financial crisis. The opposition parties criticised Harper for not spending more (and ridiculed him when he said that the stock market crash provided a buying opportunity as Canada was strong – very profitable advice for those of us who took it). Let see what happens during the balance of his majority mandate.

@ Bill 36,

The cooperative housing intiative and social housing in general has had federal support for the better part of a an average lifetime while the economy grew.

If you are implying that the provinces will maintain national standards on this file when the feds vacate … um, create ‘tax room’ … and leave it up to a cadre of premiers to find the funds for an obvious nation-wide challange, then you’re dreaming in black and white.

Ditto for believing that government should elevate the management of money and bin social policy.

Federal money earmarked for certain uses has ended up in provincial general revenue coffers to be used at the pleasure of the premiers on other things, an ironic standard practice the Taxpayers Federation loves second only to lowering all taxes, with notable exceptions.

Why then would the absence of money transfered to the provinces for social housing fulfil the expectation that the provinces will create their own?

Downloading stops at cities, Bill, not the provinces. And BC cities have very little if any leverage given that it is illegal for them to tax beyond the rules set up by the province, or to run deficits. [Exception: Vancouver and the athlete’s village.]

I predict there will be even greater disparity between provinces concerning social housing, that the hands of cities will be cuffed while they, not senior gocvernments, are forced to deal with the consequences of a purely ideological fiscal decision, and that more tragedy will arise as the disadvantaged compete for fewer housing options.

Perhaps Metro Vancouver should separate and form its own nation.

Social housing, assisted housing, senior housing, coops… are all there for a reason, and they fulfill a very good task. It’s not only a social but an economic one as well.
We don’t live in Dickensian times, and this is not some third world country, on the contrary is one one of the richest countries (province, city) in the world.
All I’m saying is it takes $70,000 per year per person to keep a homeless person… on the street!
With a fraction of that you can house, cloth and fed anyone you want. If the idiots in government want to create a bigger problem and a bigger deficit, just because some ‘entitled’ ones feel over taxed a little, wait for this to come. MB, tell you what, why don’t you start taking in your home, transitory homeless, to show your appreciation for the government and to put your money where your mouth is?

@ Bill 39

You’ve pretzeled what I said.

I never said, nor did I imply, that cities should be allowed to run deficits. What I did actually say was that they cannot deal with yet another download from above, this time social housing.

You accuse me of “bias and lack of objectivity” while being ignorant yourself of what has actually occurred at the municipal level. One example is having to up municipal budgets (hence tax draw) a few years back when major roads were downloaded to cities by the province without consultation.

Roads are not cheap to maintain, especially big ones. Nor is social housing.

Cities are at the end of the dowloading chain, and cannot be cavalierly dismissed as just part of a giant public sector bureaucracy. They are under the foot of both senior governments, yet they are also one of the nation’s most important economic loci.

And you have not addressed my other point, that maintenance of national standards on several files is very important, social housing being one of them.

@ Mira 40

Can you please clarify the point of your post?

First you state that various forms of subsidized housing fulfils an important role. Ahhh, you’re bleeding heart, eh?

Then you go on to say we are one of the richest countries and can afford to supply subsidized housing, starting with the 70K per homeless person in shelters. Oops, you’re now a socialist, but you need to provide a reference for that figure.

Then you state that you feel you can house/feed/clothe individuals for a “fraction” of 70K without providing any further information that that has actually been accomplished in Vancouver if only gov’t idiots wern’t involved. Well, if not gov’t, then who, Mira?

Me, you say? Ha. Ha. Ha. Why not you? After all, you’re the one with the numbers, like you’ve got it all figured out.

So, you’re quite the Shifter, Mira, from bleeding heart through to hard heart. Can you please settle on one over the other just to slow the spin of your personal merry-go-round down a bit?

Thanks.

@MB 45-too easy. Those socialist paragons Jack Layton and Olivia Chow lived in subsidized housing when pulling down $120k a year.

Oh waltyss, waltyss, waltyss. Layton and Chow did indeed live in social housing. They’re not the only ones. Locally, those well-known champions of the little guy, MP Libby Davies and Jim Sinclair lived for many years in 3-bdrm townhouses in Adanac co-op. At the time Ms. Davies, as NDP house leader, received a salary in excess of $150K while paying $750/month in rent (the effective “market rate” at that particular co-op. That’s around 6% of income in a riding where almost half of her constituents pay 50% of income for shelter. It was not until this threatened to become an issue in the 2004 federal election that Ms. Davies moved into a house.
gman and brilliant may, as you state repeatedly, be captives of their ideology, but at least they have the intellectual honesty to live by it, unlike the Leftoids who care so deeply for the underprivileged.