My latest op-ed for the DailyHive was posted on August 20, 2025. You can read it here.
Interventions by senior levels of government is a major interest of mine–I wrote a Master of Laws thesis on the subject, after all! The basic problem is that local governments have all the wrong incentives when it comes to housing: local voters are, pretty much by definition, people who have successfully found local housing; meanwhile, people who have been priced out of a given city don’t get to vote on the policies that have excluded them.
Housing is a system, and applying a purely local lens to housing fosters dysfunctional system that systematically excludes the people harmed by the status quo. That’s why jurisdictions around the world are recognizing that senior levels of government (provincial, state, or national) need to have an important role in ensuring a healthy, functional, and affordable housing system.
When David Eby became premier, to his credit his government quickly became a national leader in enacting housing reforms (like provincial multiplexes and transit-oriented areas). These were good first steps, but sadly provincial action has languished since then. These reforms were designed with a “one size fits all” approach and so while they are useful in setting a minimum standard in the suburbs and smaller cities, they’ve had very little impact in the City of Vancouver itself.
So long as the province continues to fail to recognize the central role of Vancouver in the housing crisis, the city will continue to act like a pressure cooker, with the escaping steam scalding the entire region. The province took some good first steps, but they were only first steps, and now it’s time to step up and do a lot more.
Comments are closed.