Ryan Jabs

Housing non-profits slam 'catastrophic' cuts to affordable housing program Housing advocates are crying foul over B.C.'s new budget. As Katie DeRosa reports, advocates say the government has axed a program that pays for more affordable rental housing.

Here's @thomarmstrong.bsky.social and @jfatkey.bsky.social with some sound bites on the consequences of this poor decision: www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

Importantly for advocates, @christineboyle.bsky.social and @ravikahlon.bsky.social (who originally announced this program) can still fight this internally with their @bcndpcaucus.bsky.social caucus.

They can still get treasury board approval for an exception with a strong business case.

I am very supportive of fiscal responsibility and it's absolutely time the government made some tough decisions.

But they allowed this process to progress too far, with far too much non-profit money spent, to not at least honour their first round of applications.

There were rumblings of financial concerns over the summer as applications were being prepared -- but the government provided no communication until this budget came out -- allowing non-profit suppliers to waste that money & then wonder for months what was going on.

It's irresponsible.

The frustrating thing is that B.C. announced this program in May 2025 when they were under a similar financial outlook as today (their bond ratings were already being downgraded with the poor outlook).

Nothing has changed. And these homes are still needed.
archive.news.gov.bc.ca/releases/new....

B.C. quietly suspends major affordable housing fund, leaving proponents holding the bag - Grand Forks Gazette Province had earmarked $775 million for roughly 100 projects provincewide

Wow... this is a massive story. The B.C. government had non-profit home providers spend millions in design work & 1,000s of expensive hours with planners & planning deps. to get affordable housing project applications shovel ready.

They've now pulled the plug: grandforksgazette.ca/2026/02/18/b...

Long overdue:
Changing the interest rate structure for the Property Tax Deferment Program from simple to compound and adopting a prime plus 2% rate for new loans.

One big issue is that bond rating agencies will eventually penalize a government’s bond rating, which leads to higher borrowing costs and more money servicing that debt.

B.C. has had great bond ratings so low cost of borrowing. That’s been changing:

www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/b...

Driver who claimed the pedestrian he hit was to blame loses challenge The driver argued unsuccessfully at B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal that he was “0% responsible” because the pedestrian was wearing dark clothing and carried no lights.

"pedestrian was wearing dark clothing and carried no lights....

The tribunal arbitrator found ICBC’s determination that the driver was entirely responsible for the collision was reasonable."
www.timescolonist.com/local-news/d...
#safety #urbanism #yyj

YouTube video by Oh The Urbanity! How This Small City Tripled Its Cycling In Just 11 Years

Probably could have pointed you to this earlier, but @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social captured some of these features on their recent video on how great cycling is in Victoria. Tour starts around the 13 minute mark (but the whole thing is worth a watch): www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWm...

We have a remote-operated garage door here, near the recycling/garbage area and mailboxes. Kind of the hub of activity in the morning and evening. It also ties into access to all of the entrances. Design is geared around shared circulation to create opportunities for social connection.

The site plan? Yep, it's a photo taken from the corner, right around where we have this upper sitting space down towards the centre (circled with an arrow). We modified the final design to minimize the impact to surrounding trees but held to the tiered multiple social spaces intent of the design.

Canada has exactly one city with good weather and it’s too tiny Or how to cure thousands of Canadians of Seasonal Affective Disorder

YIMBYs and urbanists often make the point that you should let people live where they want: near jobs, schools and amenities. I'd like to make a special case for Canada: we should let people live where the weather is good!

open.substack.com/pub/carboncr...

Annex businesses tell Ford to back off Bloor bike lanes Stores in the Annex say the Bloor bike lanes have been a big boost to business. As Michelle Mackey reports, the neighborhood's BIA wants the province to back off its new bill that could see the lanes ...

WATCH: Seriously, if you’re following ANY bike-lane debate, you HAVE TO WATCH this news story. You actually can’t make this up. Ford claims without evidence that bike-lanes are bad for small business, and THE ACTUAL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION obliterates him with data.

Safe bike-lanes mean business.

These policies & new fees are constantly being added. Saanich, as an example, required us to cap a terminated service with this $300+ piece of equipment rather than a typical cap that is 99.9% effective and every other jurisdiction uses. It's this type of thing that is everywhere around housing.

There are incentive levers that the federal government can pull to throttle housing, but the muni policies I'm referring to are around DCCs/ACCs/TDMs/extreme tree protection/design specs/engineering requirements/public infra adds/testing requirements/report requirements/servicing requirements...

Protecting corporate interests hasn't really been a policy driver for core municipal governments like Saanich and Victoria.

(I do know that some larger rental owners in the US have vocally pointed scarcity out to cheerlead rental investment, but that hasn't been a driver of this policy).

Not at all creepy. My dad passed away in 2023. He was his usual, larger than life self right up until he went. We miss him but the grief is lighter now.

My sisters are all doing well. Thanks for asking. Email is on my website (link in bio) if you'd like to reach out.

These small stratas punch way above their weight, but these nanny-state requirements are onerous and expensive and are typically absolutely unnecessary.

You can't have both more affordable housing costs and a constantly growing list of requirements. It just doesn't work like that.

I get the intent is likely because older (and some newer) stratas didn't plan for EV chargers/heat pumps/etc, but it shouldn't be required for all stratas, especially small stratas or ones that are already 100% electrified w/ zero car parking on site or already with heat pumps/EV charging.

Hi @christineboyle.bsky.social, Your government talks a lot about affordability. However, I am constantly bombarded with new requirements saddled onto small strata developments.

This electrical planning report required for stratas over 5 homes is a good example.

www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/...

I haven’t read this plan, but I’d be pretty concerned around long term affordability if it mimicked the many policies embraced by the planning institute and planners in general for decades that have created the housing crisis.

Good, car-lite urbanism doesn’t need to kill affordability.

While this is partly true, housing prices in Victoria would likely be 10-20% higher if it weren’t for the housing built in Langford over the last two decades. They’ve planned poorly, but it’s happened directly because of the very expensive and generally anti housing policies the core has embraced.

I also think senior government tax wonks could introduce a .5% additional corporate tax on development/construction companies when they eliminate DCCs/ACCs/other fees.

It's a lot more progressive to tax profits at higher rates than create uncertainty with hidden "sin taxes" levied upfront.

That'll get more housing built AND generating a lot more federal and provincial revenue from the additional home construction to continue to subsidize affordable housing.

Thank you for reading my housing tax policy platform. :)

Instead of just simply giving out cash without seeing new homes built, like the federal government did through the housing accelerator fund, they should make municipal fees illegal (DCCs, ACCs, hidden policy costs, etc) and directly fund munis per home built (and penalize those that don't build).

I don't think it's a problem that local governments will solve, as increasing land taxes is incredibly unpopular. So new housing is treated as a burden.

Like all housing policy, this should be addressed by senior govs as they benefit from massive provincial & federal taxes from new construction.

This system also unfairly double taxes new residents, who pay for their new services and then they pay again through higher per sq. foot land taxes (new housing gets taxed higher despite having a lower demand cost) to upgrade old systems and address deferred maintenance from existing residents.

It's a tough place for even pro housing municipal elected officials, as they have few tax levers. It's easier to hide these taxes in the price of homes rather than move it into a more progressive and fairer land tax system.

But unfortunately these hidden upfront taxes mean fewer homes get built.

I’ve recently finished a small multiplex in Victoria, and half the homes have gone to retirees who wanted to live in that community.

The muni where this was built has since increased taxes on these homes by around $50k each. That is more than enough to eliminate this scale from being built.