B.C. Housing Minister risks seeing progress undone in high-stakes election

Ravi Kahlon’s campaign office in Delta, B.C., doesn’t have a large sign out front. Instead, it has a large decorative steel frame that outlines the shape of a house. That’s an accident of strip-mall architecture, but the branding works fine: Mr. Kahlon is Minister of Housing in the current New Democratic Party government, and his portfolio is top-of-mind for voters ahead of the Oct. 19 election.
The stakes are high. Mr. Kahlon has helped David Eby’s government lead the way on housing policy in Canada. They’ve significantly increased housing starts, helping slightly drive rents down; added social housing; and made savvy policy shifts to deliver better homes.
Now, in a close election, all that is at risk. And if the NDP loses power, Canada will lose the one senior government that is taking a bold, non-ideological and pragmatic approach to the housing crisis.
In his temporary office, Mr. Kahlon, a lanky and affable former Olympian, framed the electoral choice between the NDP and the Conservative Party of B.C. in simple terms. “We’re in an election where the Conservatives are running an anti-housing campaign and we’re running a pro-housing campaign,” he said. Conservative Leader John Rustad, he said, is “playing to those that don’t want to see change and want to go back to the status quo.”
That’s standard campaign rhetoric, but tellingly it ignores ideological formulations – as Mr. Kahlon and the B.C. NDP have done in their search for solutions. Speaking to the left, they have attacked speculation in housing markets, built modestly more social housing and acquired existing rental apartments.
But they have also led the country on planning reform. They’ve legislated more density in cities, where it belongs, earning the ire of some municipal leaders.
Meanwhile Mr. Rustad’s Conservatives are flailing. As with Ontario’s Conservative government and the federal opposition, they have red-meat rhetoric and few good ideas. Mr. Rustad’s offer of a tax credit for housing costs would only give individuals more money to spend on rent, pushing prices up. They promise, vaguely, to undo some of the Eby government’s zoning reforms. They would build “new towns” in the exurbs of the Lower Mainland. Their platform would “streamline approval processes” but also give cities more say. What does that mean? Who knows?
Mr. Kahlon’s approach is coherent but politically complicated. “The government does have a role to play,” he said. “In some cases, it’s to cut red tape for the private sector to be able to build housing. In some cases, it’s to directly invest in affordable housing and/or use government lands for housing opportunities for people.”
Government’s role is to cut red tape. Forgive that strange formulation, because the Eby government understands the complex truth: If you want progressive results in today’s Canada, some of the restrictions have to go. It must be broadly legal to build apartment buildings, particularly in big cities. No Canadian leader has done more to advance that agenda than Mr. Kahlon.
Down in the weeds, Mr. Kahlon’s ministry has made smart policy choices, including legalizing single-staircase apartments. That could deliver vastly better apartments with more light and better space, exactly what B.C. and the rest of the country need.
Not everyone is on board. In Delta, he said, the call for more density resonates with South Asian émigrés, for whom extended-family households are part of life. For other people, the Eby government’s rapid-fire reforms seem like far too much. Older residents are worried about their kids leaving the province, “But they’ll also say, ‘I don’t want my community to change,’” Mr. Kahlon said. “How do you thread that needle?”
The answer, he said, is to be blunt: “Our communities have already been changing. Who can afford to live here has changed,” he said. While some B.C. cities are experiencing rapid growth and “feeling real pressures,” Mr. Kahlon said, “we’ve got communities in parts of Vancouver and the North Shore where there’s no kids. Our schools are empty because people can’t afford to live there. … So, we want to see gentle growth everywhere, not loaded up in just one or two specific communities.”
This makes sense. It also flies in the face of provincial and regional planning over the past two generations, which has pushed Lower Mainland youth and newcomers to the suburbs. In the last 50 years, the City of Vancouver has grown about 40 per cent; Surrey has grown by 479 per cent. “Housing scarcity is not an accident,” Mr. Kahlon said. “It’s partly because of systems and designs of government. And so that’s what we’re trying to address.”
In short, the housing crisis is complicated. The work in B.C. is far from finished, and there are no magic solutions. But there are good ideas, and Mr. Kahlon is the serious student that the province and the country need now.