Last week
I made a terrible mistake. I decided to follow up on a message from a concerned
Courier reader regarding a recent City of Vancouver policy.
Related
This time
it wasn’t about two suites in a small duplex building that the city had
determined were illegal following a complaint from a neighbour.
Nor was
it a complaint from the builder who had been previously told to add a larger
bathroom on the main floor of a laneway house since the upstairs bathroom was
not accessible to someone in a wheelchair.
Nor was
it from the Dunbar resident who was told by city officials that she could not
build the size of house she had hoped to build because of new city zoning
regulations.
This
reader’s concern had to do with the city’s new empty homes tax and its unfair application
for those who chose to keep a second home in Vancouver. Like most
Vancouver homeowners, she had received a flyer from the city asking, “Do you
own an empty or occasionally-used home in Vancouver?” It added,
“If your property is not a principal residence, eligible for an exemption, or
rented out for at least six months, it will be subject to the Empty Homes Tax.”
This
reader had owned a small, second home in Vancouver for years. She and her
husband used it whenever they came into the city for a night out or to visit
children and grandchildren. They also stayed there whenever they came into
Vancouver for medical reasons. They also made the apartment available to family
and friends visiting Vancouver.
She told
me she had contacted me because of an earlier Courier column I had
written about the plight of a well-to-do Florida resident who complained that
because he only used his apartment five months a year, he might have to pay an
‘Empty Homes Tax equal to one per cent of the assessed value. This was more
than three times his annual property taxes that he happily paid even though he
didn’t send children to our schools or place demands on municipal services.
However,
he was not at all happy about this tax. Nor was this other reader. She
wondered why the city would impose a penalty on someone who owns a home which
was not vacant, and impossible to rent on those days and weeks when it was not
being used. How was this going to add to the available rental stock, she wanted
to know.
I told
her to contact the city and she said she did. However, the only person who
responded was Elizabeth Ball who told her she didn’t vote in favour of the tax.
She also told me she was not alone. She was aware of many others who had kept
second homes in Vancouver for years, so they could continue to enjoy the city
after moving away to the interior, or in her case Tsawwassen.
I had to
agree with her concerns. While I have publicly questioned the appropriateness
and likely effectiveness of this tax as it related to truly empty accommodations,
for the life of me I couldn’t understand why the city would tax a home that is
being used.
Unless of
course it wanted to show some empathy with those who are struggling to afford
to buy or rent just one home.
I decided
to go to bat for her and everyone else who owned a second home in Vancouver and
was troubled by this very unfair tax by writing an op-ed in the Vancouver
Sun. I also linked it to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. What a mistake.
While I
did receive some thanks and compliments on the column, they were grossly
outnumbered by those who wondered why I would side with those who owned two
homes in a city with a severe housing crisis. Did I not care about them?
Who paid me to write this?
The fact
is, no one paid me to write the column. I just thought it was important to
speak out against a tax that seems to be based more on jealousy, as one of my
Facebook friends put it, than a genuine attempt to increase the supply of
rental housing.
@michaelgeller
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