Real estate rally in Vancouver this weekend
Posted September 16, 2016 6:54 am.
Last Updated September 16, 2016 1:12 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – With no end in sight as prices in the region’s red-hot real estate market continue to up, there is yet another rally planned to talk about housing.
Tomorrow protesters will gather at the Vancouver Art Gallery to call on all levels of government to take action to help ease the pain some are feeling in the market.
Justin Fung, with Housing Action for Local Taxpayers, says affordable real estate has been a growing problem. “What we have been seeing over the last five-six years is really unprecedented. I think there has been an avalanche of foreign money that has come into our housing market which has really distorted it and brought in a lot of speculation and greed.”
He believes there are long-term implications of this continued crisis. “When I look at people who are maybe a couple of years younger, or new people coming into the city, they look at those housing prices and say, ‘Wow this is insane.’ It limits our ability to attract top talent to the city.”
Fung says we are rapidly moving towards becoming a resort city, because of speculation and foreign money.
He believes we need to be smarter with how homeowners are taxed. “The BC Housing Affordability Fund proposal which adds a property tax surcharge that gets offset by income tax is really the right answer.”
The event at the Art Gallery starts at 2 p.m.
This rally comes at a time as the NDP has revealed it has documents to show nine students own $57 million worth of property in Vancouver’s Point Grey neighbourhood. Meantime, a recent poll found the new 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers was an idea supported by many British Columbians, but few thought it would actually work to help cool the prices.
