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By Michael Reeve

HOUSING PLAN

Kamloops MLA Stone questions ‘one size fits all’ housing strategy

Apr 5, 2023 | 3:56 PM

KAMLOOPS — This week, the B.C. government announced a multi-billion dollar plan to address the housing crisis in the province. The ‘Homes for People’ plan includes a $4 billion investment over three years and $12 billion over a decade with incentives to build, laws to curb speculation and financial help for renters and homeowners.

The new plan touts future legislation that will make secondary suites allowed in every community in the province. The NDP are also looking to enact a measure to override municipal jurisdiction to allow single-family homes to be redeveloped into three- or four-plexes.

Kamloops MLA Todd Stone doesn’t believe the one-size fits all housing strategy is best for a diverse province.

“Yes, that does mean we need expedited approvals at the local level. We need local governments to ramp up, dramatically, the volumes of housing they are actually approving. Is a sweeping cross-province zoning law, that supersedes local government zoning the answer, probably not,” said Stone.

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The plan will also allow homeowners a forgivable loan of 50 per cent of the cost of basement suite renovations, but those suites would then have to be rented at below market values. Stone added that the B.C. Liberals are planning to release their own housing plan in the lead up to the next provincial election.

“The signature commitment of the NDP in two elections, in 2017 and 2020, was to address housing unaffordability,” said Stone. “They were going to make housing much more readily available from a supply perspective and they were going to make it much more affordable. Nothing could be further from the truth. They have failed on the housing affordability side, where we have never seen housing this expensive in the history of British Columbia. And we have never seen rents as high as they are in the history of our province.”