B.C.’s Cortes Island is making housing history as the first community in the province to tax short-term holiday rentals and have the funds directed to affordable housing projects, said Mark Vonesch, the area’s Strathcona Regional District director.
B.C.’s Cortes Island is making housing history as the first community in the province to tax short-term holiday rentals and have the funds directed to affordable housing projects, said Mark Vonesch, the area’s Strathcona Regional District director.
The logic here is that the primary owner of houses in Canada is individual families, 65% of residential properties in this country are lived in by the owners. Go ask a home owner if they’d be willing to vote for a party that will intentionally drop the value of their house by 50%. We actually need closer to 70-80% reduction in some places to reach “affordable.”
Any potential policy that reduces home prices enough to help will simply not be palatable to most of these voters, and given that this 65% is often older and more likely to vote it means that the majority of voters do not want actual policies to reduce housing prices.
Targeting Airbnb ignores the fact that Airbnb makes up a tiny percentage over the overall market, and thus doesn’t have as significant effect as people believe.