Housing debate heats up as homeowners struggle with surging interest rates
📷 NDP MP for Nanaimo — Ladysmith Lisa Marie Barron spoke to reporters about the housing crisis after the NDP caucus meeting in Nanaimo on Friday July 28, 2023. Photo: Mick Sweetman / CHLY 101.7FM
Christina Findlay is a care aide in Nanaimo and the mother of a toddler who has had to take on a second job three days a week doing childcare for shift workers after her mortgage went up by $363 a month in May.
In addition to increasing the rent for the tenant in her secondary suite, which Findlay says is below the market rate, her family has had to cut back on the types of groceries they buy to help make ends meet.
“We're eating a lot more pork, even chicken is so expensive right now,” she said. “So a lot of pork or bean-based meals.”
The Bank of Canada increased its overnight rate to five per cent on July 12 saying that inflation was “proving more persistent” than previously thought. Interest rates have jumped from 0.5 per cent in March 2022 to five per cent in July 2023.
On Friday, the federal NDP’s BC caucus met in Nanaimo to discuss health care and housing with local providers.
Nanaimo — Ladysmith Member of Parliament Lisa-Marie Barron called on the federal government to take steps to de-commodify housing.
“We are seeing a Liberal government government that continues to allow housing to be used as a commodity and this needs to end,” she said.
The NDP is proposing a national acquisition fund “so that cooperatives and nonprofits can get into the market and see that affordable housing stays truly affordable,” according to Barron.
Barron would also like to see Ottawa put a moratorium on corporate landlords buying affordable housing and for the federal government to invest in co-operative and social housing.
“We need to see that happening again,” she said.
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took aim at Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre at an affordable housing announcement in Hamilton on Monday
“I'll be blunt: Housing isn't a primary federal responsibility. It's not something that we have direct carriage of but it is something that we can and must help with,” he said.
“When Stephen Harper's government, with Pierre Poilievre being a big part of it, pulled themselves entirely out of the housing business for 10 years there were a lot of missed opportunities.”
Earlier this month, NDP Leader Jameet Singh spoke in Windsor, Ontario and mentioned Portugal's policy of a subsidy for mortgage holders.
“We need to see some aggressive measures put in place to give people some relief to give people a break so they don't lose their homes,” he said.
On Friday, NDP Housing critic Jenny Kwan seemed to walk that idea back.
“That was something that I know our leader looked into and something that we should obviously think about; however, it is not a policy for us at the moment.”
Instead Kwan would like to see the federal government institute rules, such as in New Zealand, that require people to have a 40 per cent down payment to purchase a second property to cool speculation and allow first-time home buyers to enter the market.
For Findlay, the problem isn’t just how much interest rates have gone up, but also the speed at which they did so saying that they should have started earlier to lessen the shock or more radical solutions.
“Instead of living in this capitalist society that clearly is not working for us and is extremely dysfunctional at this point, we could just pick a different system,” she said before adding “but that’s probably not going to happen.”
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.