CANADA

Temperatures over 40 Celcius, longer heatwaves: report offers advice to adapt

Grand Bend Beach in Lambton Shores. July 4, 2020. (Screenshot from the Grand Bend Beach cam)

By Adelle LoisellApril 20, 2022 

Unless governments, communities, property managers, and individual Canadians act, a new report by researchers at the University of Waterloo suggests heat-related deaths in Canada will double by 2080.

That’s under its best-case scenario. Under its worst, it predicts those deaths will increase by 450 per cent over rates from the last half-century.

The report stresses governments need to recognize extreme heat events as natural disasters the same way it classifies flooding and wildfires. It says 17-million Canadians living in cities and towns are vulnerable, and Southwestern Ontario should anticipate some of the worst impacts.

In Windsor, “Irreversible Extreme Heat: Protecting Canadians and Communities from a Lethal Future” suggests between 2051 and 2080, the number of extreme heat days, those with temperatures over 30 Celcius, could increase from the current 23 to 79 days a year under a high carbon model. Maximum temperatures will jump to 40 degrees, and the duration of heatwaves could be 9.8 days.

In comparison, between 1976 and 2005, Windsor’s maximum temperature was 35 Celcius on average, and heat waves typically lasted four days maximum.

London could anticipate 61 days a year with temperatures over 30 Celcius and heat waves that last eight days.

The report did not provide projections for Chatham-Kent, Sarnia, or Leamington but did say those communities are also at risk.

Pavement on Hwy 3 in Tecumseh buckles in heat on July 15, 2018. Photo courtesy Gary McNamara/Twitter.

Not only are lives and the healthcare system at stake, but infrastructure like roads, railways, and bridges could fail in extreme temperatures while failing crops threaten food security. It also suggested cities that suffer the worst heat could see more crime as mental health and the economy suffer.

While air conditioning has helped Canadians weather the worst impacts of heat so far, it may offer less benefit in the years to come because it requires electricity. As demand grows during hot days, greenhouse gas emissions rise, and power grids could fail.

However, the Intact Centre for Climate Adaptation also said Canadians are not helpless in the face of rising temperatures. It points out that heat-related deaths are preventable, and adaptation is possible.

There is no doubt the document offers some dire predictions for the next six decades. It also recommends actions individual Canadians, property owners, and communities can take. Some have already started to adapt.

Individual Canadians might consider using ceiling and portable fans more, improving home insulation, installing window coverings like shutters, and modifying living, working, and sleeping arrangements.

30 maple trees were planted as part of the Diamond Project in Durham. (Photo courtesy of the Diamond Project via Facebook)

Both individuals and communities can plant more trees, but cities and towns are encouraged to promote green roofs and building facades. Property managers can prompt apartment dwellers to create balcony gardens.

Municipalities can develop extreme heat emergency plans, extend opening hours at beaches, public pools, water parks, and cooling centres, and offer free public transportation to those locations that offer residents respite. Patrols could check on residents in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and flexible hours might keep outside workers safe.

These B.C. cities will get hit hardest by future heat waves

The B.C. Interior cities of Kelowna, Kamloops, Penticton, Creston and Vernon are expected to face some of the hottest and long-lasting heat waves starting in 2051. A lack of preparedness, however, still leaves the big cities of Metro Vancouver vulnerable.

Stefan Labbé
a day ago

Heat-buckled concrete in Kelowna.Jeremy Spurway via Castanet

Kelowna is projected to face the longest-lasting heat waves and the hottest maximum temperatures of any major Canadian city, a new report says. 

The report, published Wednesday from the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, outlines several measures tenants, landlords and communities can take to prepare for the fallout from extreme heat. 

Modelling heat waves between 2051 and 2080, the researchers found Kelowna will become among the top 10 “hottest” metropolitan areas in Canada.

Smaller Interior communities like Kamloops, Penticton, Creston and Vernon are also expected to reach similar temperatures. 

In another metric, Windsor, Ont., is expected to have the most number of very hot days with an average of 78.8 days over 30 C under high-emission scenarios. In that field, Kelowna came in fourth after three other southern Ontario cities. 

The top 10 metropolitan areas based on projections for warmest maximum temperature and the average length of heat waves until 2080. Irreversible Extreme Heat: Protecting Canadians and Communities from a Lethal Future

Over 17 million urban Canadians are expected to face extreme heat in the coming years. The report also warns of “red zones” in low-lying areas in B.C., southern Prairies, the St. Lawrence River valley in Quebec, and regions north of Lake Erie in Ontario.

Whereas flooding and wildfire — expected to increase in frequency and intensity this century — will cost Canada vast sums of money,  heat waves will ramp up as a kind of silent killer.

“The impacts of heat are death,” said lead author Joanna Eyquem, managing director of Climate Resilient Infrastructure at the centre.

The parts of the country expected to be hit with the hottest heat for the longest aren’t always the most vulnerable. Heat waves that occur outside of the summer or in communities unaccustomed to extreme heat can face massive human casualties, as was seen in Metro Vancouver last summer when nearly hundreds died alone in hot, poorly ventilated rooms. 

Eyquem called on all levels of government to start taking extreme heat more seriously.

After last year’s heat wave in B.C., Eyquem said she expected to see a growing recognition of heat’s deadly potential. But when she looked at Canada’s federal disaster database, it still failed to mention the disaster. 

On a Health Canada webpage outlining its role in a disaster, Eyquem said the agency did not include extreme heat among other risks like earthquakes, floods and outbreaks of disease.

“It’s not seen as an emergency,” she said.

To date, local governments have largely been left on their own to deal with extreme heat — whether creating cooling centres or deploying misting fountains. But as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, provincial and federal governments play key roles providing funding, coordinating action plans and delivering messages. 

In the interim, an individual who chooses to adapt their home to extreme heat also makes life more comfortable and affordable at the same time. 

And while the report doesn’t specifically target Indigenous communities or the acute challenges of Canada’s North, Eyquem says it offers a baseline for action at the local level.

“There are simple things, even just sticking up some window films to kind of cut the sun coming through your windows,” she said. 

“That's very affordable. So I don't know why we're not doing that.” 

This ‘silent killer’ of climate change may hit 17 million Canadians the hardest. Here’s what a new report suggests as protection

APRIL 20, 2022

It’s floods that lead to repairs costing billions of dollars. It’s fires that burn images of charred buildings and communities into our minds.

But of all the extreme weather events made more likely by climate change, it’s another — extreme heat — that is the deadliest. And a new report by Canadian experts on climate adaptation says there are clear ways to make sure fewer Canadians die of extreme heat in the future.

Without action, the picture painted by a report on irreversible extreme heat from the Intact Center on Climate Adaptation — a University of Waterloo climate adaptation research center — is dire. The documentwhich is meant to instruct individuals, communities and higher levels of government in Canada to prepare for and avoid the worst effects of extreme heat, concluded that 17 million Canadians — including the population of Toronto — live in metropolitan areas that the report’s authors regard as at highest risk for extreme heat events.

In the best case scenario, with lower carbon emissions and stable population, the frequency and severity of extreme heat events until 2080 will mean 50 per cent more people are expected to die compared to the past 50 years for heat-related reasons.

In the worst case scenario — high carbon emissions and large population growth — the rate of excess deaths could be 450 per cent greater than in the last 50 years.

Joanna Eyquem, managing director of climate-resilient infrastructure at the Intact Center and the lead author of the report, said the high death toll from extreme heat — most recently highlighted by the heat dome in British Columbia that claimed 526 lives in eight days last year — make it apparent why adaptations to extreme heat events are urgently needed. Extreme heat, the report states, is the “silent killer” of climate change — and is avoidable.

“Heat-related deaths are avoidable, with the right action, information and adaptation,” Eyquem told the Star. “That’s something we can avoid.”

It’s not that Canadians have not been exposed to extreme heat before, and suddenly will be. Item explains that instances of extreme heat, usually defined as temperatures above 30 Care already more common as a result of climate change, and are likely only to become more common.

That has direct effects on our health, such as by causing heat stroke in people who can’t avoid the heat, and indirect effects, such as by exacerbating mental-health issues and keeping people indoors and alone.

And heat does not strike equally everywhere. The effects of extreme heat are much worse in urban environments, where concrete absorbs heat and fewer trees and plants are present to cast shade and retain cooling water.

“Not only are (artificial city) surfaces hotter during the day because they absorb all that solar heat, they give it out at night so we don’t get this cooling effect overnight,” she said. “That’s what we call this heat-island effect in cities.”

According to the report, urban environments can be 10 to 15 degrees hotter than rural areas on the same day for these reasons.

Older people, people with chronic conditions and people who live far away from green spaces are the most likely to be affected.

Fifteen metropolitan areas were identified as most at-risk for extreme heat in the future: Kelowna, Lethbridge, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Windsor, Hamilton, Niagara Falls/St. Catharines, Brantford, London, Ottawa, Toronto, Belleville, Kingston and Montreal. A total of 17 million Canadians lived in these communities, per 2020 Statistics Canada estimates.


The Intact Centre, which consulted 60 experts for its guidance report, came up with 35 recommendations for tackling effects and deaths from extreme heat. It said that even with extreme heat events becoming much more common, deaths may not rise as much if these adaptations take place.

For individuals, the central recommendation is to make a plan for extreme heat in the way they might already have a fire or an earthquake plan. The plan would include noting any vulnerable family members you should check on in person during extreme heat, and identifying a cooling place you can go if your home is not adequately cool.

The report also recommends coming up with ways to passively cool your home if possible, such as with reflective window coverings or increasing plant areas.

The recommendations for property owners and managers also include coming up with an extreme heat plan, as well as playing a more active role in increasing green infrastructure such as trees on their properties, and maintaining designated air-conditioned cool rooms.

Communities are also encouraged to increase tree cover and vegetated areas, as well as to map which areas in the community are most vulnerable to extreme heat, prepare for extreme heat warnings, and provide incentives for owners and tenants to implement shaded areas.

Eyquem said it may not be intuitive for all Canadians to think about extreme heat, especially before the summer has started. But that’s exactly what she thinks we should do: Start thinking of heat as a climate disaster to prepare for in advance.

“I think in Canada we still have a cold climate mentality, we’re more worried about heating than cooling,” she said. “But that’s going to shift in the future. We’re warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.”

And, she said, heat is a good example of how climate change is not only an issue with carbon emissions and preventing environmental disaster.

“It’s framed as an environment issue,” she said. “But really it’s a health issue. There’s a lack of awareness that this is going to be important going forward for our health.”

Alex McKeen is a Vancouver-based reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @alex_mckeen

 

Ottawa struggled to block unvaccinated from accessing EI benefits: documents

By Staff  The Canadian Press

Posted April 21, 2022 11:58 am

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The employment insurance section of the Government of Canada website is shown on a laptop in Toronto on April 4, 2020. Internal government documents show that the Liberals' pledge to prevent unvaccinated people from accessing jobless benefits didn't eliminate all avenues for them to enter the EI system. Jesse Johnston/The Canadian Press file photo

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Internal government documents show that the Liberals’ pledge to prevent unvaccinated people from accessing jobless benefits didn’t eliminate all avenues for them to enter the employment insurance system.

The briefing notes prepared for Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough say that unvaccinated workers could qualify for EI sickness benefits, even if they are sick with COVID-19.

The laws guiding the social safety net program don’t have any explicit rules around eligibility for EI for anyone who refused to get vaccinated.

7:24Disobeying clear vaccine policies seen as noncompliance in EI claims: Qualtrough

Disobeying clear vaccine policies seen as noncompliance in EI claims: Qualtrough – Oct 24, 2021

While Qualtrough was told the government could put rules around regular jobless benefits, officials suggested the same couldn’t be said of sickness benefits.

Documents prepared by Qualtrough’s department last fall suggest officials advised against preventing access to sickness benefits and removing an incentive for ill workers to stay home with symptoms.

The details are contained in documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act that outline some of the moves inside government as officials readied for a wave of layoffs for workers who refused to get vaccinated.

RENTIER CAPITALISM

Toronto's new wealth gap is driven by real estate, not income | The Star

Date: 2022-04-16 

When Giulio and Antonia Cescato bought a brand-new, modestly sized condo-townhouse in downtown Toronto in January 2015 they paid just under $600,000.

They made $150,000 at the time, a combined salary that, along with equity from Giulio’s condo, allowed them to put down a 20 per cent deposit.

The two-bedroom home at Dundas and Sumach streets that they share with their six-year-old son, Gabriel, is near schools, transit, grocery stores, daycares, barbershops, banks and restaurants. Their payments right now leave enough room to splurge once in a while, and take the “occasional vacation,” without feeling stretched.

They had wanted to upsize eventually, but even with the increased value of their home, re-entering the housing market at the current sky-high prices would leave them “mortgage poor.”

“Even if the bank was to give us a mortgage, it doesn’t seem sustainable in our minds to take on that much debt,” Giulio, 42, said.

By today’s standards, the Cescatos are lucky. They were able to buy their house when the average cost of home was about $620,000. This year to date the average is $1.3 million.

The high cost of real estate has led to a widening wealth gap threatening individuals’ security and the long-term prosperity of the GTA — a divide not based on income, but on when and if you were able to buy into the real estate market.

That difference determines more than if a family scrapes by, scrounging for rent or mortgage payments, or whether it can comfortably cover its housing costs, and afford restaurants and vacations.

It also impacts the biggest life decisions, says University of British Columbia professor Paul Kershaw — whether to move out of your parents’ home; live with a partner; have children.

On Monday, federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland called Canada’s housing affordability challenge an “intergenerational injustice.”

“We cannot have a Canada where the rising generation is shut out of the dream of home ownership,” she said, referencing her government’s budget measures to increase housing supply and affordability.

It was an acknowledgment of how, in less than a generation, buying a home has gone from a financially challenging but relatively common milestone, to a pipe dream for many people, especially those without family wealth. The fevered housing market of the pandemic has only exacerbated those challenges.

Ontario home prices are 22.5 times the average disposable income, up from 12.1 in 2010, and 9.7 in 2005, according to a report from Oxford Economics released by Mortgage Professionals Canada in March.

“Maybe not 10 years ago, but 15 years ago, if you grew up in Toronto and you were fortunate to get a good education and get a good job, you could buy a house and you could live in a neighbourhood either where you grew up or in another neighbourhood of your choice,” says University of Toronto professor Matti Siemiatycki.

Now the tension between what people earn and the price of a home is pulling at the fabric of the city.

“People who grew up here can’t live in the neighbourhoods they grew up in anymore. They can’t afford to buy and often can’t afford to rent either,” he said.

The gentrifying of neighbourhoods risks “severing deep meaningful social ties as people hustle to make ends meet,” said Siemiatycki, citing soul-sapping commutes and “painful decisions to leave a place that they often love and call home.

“If young families and workers can no longer afford to live in Toronto or people feel precarious in their place here, the city risks losing the work and dynamism they contribute,” he said.

It also cements inequality within generational cohorts, says Kershaw, a founder of Generation Squeeze, a group that advocates for intergenerational equality, noting there is an entire swathe of people who don’t have access to wealth.

About a quarter of older Canadians are not homeowners, said Kershaw. That means their family members can’t rely on intergenerational wealth for housing assistance.

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Canadians have one of the world’s highest rates of home ownership. In 2016, 67.8 per cent of Canadian households owned their dwelling. In Toronto it was 53 per cent.

New census data won’t be available until summer, but the most recent statistics suggest home ownership is down among younger people. The 2016 Census showed half of millennials owned a home at age 30, compared to 55 per cent of baby boomers who owned at that age.

And the trend seems to be more prominent in Toronto. The 2018 Housing Survey by Statistics Canada found while half of first-time homebuyers nationally were under the age of 35, only 41.2 per cent of first-time buyers in Toronto were under 35.

Toronto couple Karan Kumra, 33, and fiancée Erin Prisciak, 32, have given up vacations and live frugally in order to the make the mortgage payments on the upper Beach semi they bought late last year for just over $1 million.

The couple — who have a combined salary of $150,000 — say they wouldn’t have been able to enter the market if it weren’t for sizable help from family.

Prisciak, a radiation therapist, said for her, with $50,000 in student loan debt after graduating, buying a house in Toronto was “never an option.”

The couple were only able to purchase because of a gift of $250,000 from Kumra’s parents. That reduced their mortgage to around $805,000, which still means $3,000 a month in payments.

“We pretty much can’t plan trips outside the country, or we’ll fall behind on our mortgage. So, we do small trips in Ontario and maybe later we’ll get to other parts of Canada,” said Kumra, an entrepreneur who manages retail operations for a cannabis outlet in Toronto.

They’re thankful for being able to buy their home, which they view as a retirement asset.

“We’re very privileged, very lucky … to have that kind of assistance from family. We’re absolutely thrilled that we got in when we did because (the market) is getting (more expensive),” Kumra said.

That kind of gift isn’t the reality for most first-time home buyers. Ipsos research for the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board found only 17 per cent of buyers were counting on gifts from family or friends. And while the proportion of buyers expecting family support has been consistent since 2015, the value of those gifts has grown along with “the meteoric rise of housing,” said Ipsos senior vice-president Sean Simpson.

“There’s no amount of hard work or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps that is going to help most people (get into the market),” added Prisciak. “If you don’t have some kind of wealth from family, I don’t think buying a house in Toronto is an option.”

Kershaw agrees.

“We’ve created an economy where full-time work in a reasonable period of time cannot secure housing. I don’t even mean home ownership — even access to a rental with enough bedrooms to have a family,” he said.

Kershaw calls himself a prime example. During his 17 years as a professor, he figures he’s paid about $500,000 into his defined contribution pension plan.

“Last year, while I was sleeping, my home went up by $500,000,” he said.

The impact is personal and public. In the hot real estate markets of Toronto and Vancouver, Kershaw said the high cost of housing will make it increasingly difficult to attract the best and brightest workers.

“Why would you want to come where your wage is going to buy you a fraction of the property? You’re pushing that 30- or early 40-year-old away from cities because they’re looking for space, they’re looking for the access to the ground to send their kids out to play,” he said.

While families moving further out of the city to smaller communities rejuvenates more affordable places, it also spreads the contagion of unaffordable housing and wealth inequality by driving up the prices there.

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For economist DT Cochrane, the Toronto region’s housing crisis isn’t a sudden, isolated problem — it is a symptom of an issue that has been brewing for years.

It is “maddening,” he said, that people have been talking about the wealth gap since long before the pandemic.

In the GTA, there are few social issues that better illustrate the growing divide between rich and poor than the lack of affordable housing.

And while governments and the housing industry mainly focus on a supply shortage, analysts and economists, including Cochrane, who works with Canadians for Tax Fairness, say the high cost of housing has to be viewed in the context of other factors including wages, pensions, interest rates and the commodification of homes.

If we ignore those issues, the wealth gap will only widen as people increasingly view housing as their retirement nest egg or an asset for a corporation.

“What’s happening in the housing market is going to turbocharge the process,” he said.

“Owning a house becomes an important source of leverage to then buy another house and another house. To go from owning one house to two houses is much easier than to go from owning zero houses to even one house.”

A 2020 report from the Toronto Region Board of Trade and WoodGreen Community Services found people earning $40,000 to $60,000 a year have been priced out of Toronto. Among them: personal support workers, grocery clerks, social workers, nurses and teachers.

Anyone who works in the city should be able to afford to live in the city, said Cochrane. “Otherwise, they’re just fly-in slaves.

“The fact that a teacher can’t afford to buy a house in Toronto should be really worrisome to the people of Toronto,” he said.

If more workers had union protection, stronger pensions and higher wages, people would be less reliant on rising home values for their financial futures, added Cochrane.

“We don’t think about corporations having obligations to their workers at all, whereas in the immediate postwar era there absolutely was that perspective.”

U of T professor Siemiatycki says it’s also important to put rising housing costs through the lens of inclusivity and diversity — who is able to buy into the market and who is excluded.

“We are running the risk of gentrification in some neighbourhoods that have really historic ties to racialized communities and continue to be hubs of those communities,” he said.

“If the market is just left to run wild, those communities have often had a very hard time buying in.”

Mike Moffatt, senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, who also teaches at the Ivey Business School at Western University, adds that households could face another kind of crisis. He is among those who say it is possible home prices will eventually fall, although he won’t speculate on when that might happen.

If they do, he says, “There is a good chance we end up with the worst of both worlds where we have a significant enough correction to put people underwater (having a mortgage that’s higher than the value of your property), but prices are still so high that first-time homebuyers can’t get into the market.”

Moffatt fears it could take five to 15 years to sort out the region’s housing supply issue — which he believes is the main driver of unaffordability. Asked if that means an entire generation has been sacrificed, he says, many people have already been priced out for years.

“I do think there’s a problem,” he said.

“Most of my research associates are in their mid- to late 20s. They all feel like they’ll never be able to get a home. They’re not happy about it and I get where they’re coming from. I share the concerns.”

Meantime, says Kershaw, Canada’s aging population, which had better pensions, has the lowest rate of poverty and low income of any age group in the country.

“It’s not like today’s retirees are depending on housing but they do get accustomed to the extra wealth,” he said.

Kershaw says Canada has to think about how we build back better in terms of housing because we’re not as productive when it comes to output of work compared to other countries. Instead, our economy relies on real estate, rental and leasing which produces relatively few jobs.

“With low interest rates, Canadians have borrowed more money and bid it into the price of housing,” he said.

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Watching the struggles in the market, the Cescatos, who bought their townhome in 2015, are staying put — choosing not to stretch their finances in order to move up.

The couple say they’re fortunate they had the money for a decent down payment — “Which was all our free capital,” said Giulio, a planner with a firm in the city — and that their home had room for when their child came along.

They had hoped to parlay their unit into something larger, but that plan is “kind of laughable right now,” Giulio said. Even though the Cescatos earn larger salaries now and their unit has nearly doubled in value in the last five years, a move into a larger home isn’t in the cards because everything else on the market has soared too.

“Even a modestly priced house close to where we live now, we’d be looking into the couple million dollars range, if not more and tripling our mortgage,” Giulio said.

“The accountant in me says ‘absolutely not,’” added Antonia, 43.

So at this point they are looking at making improvements to their unit to make it their “forever home.”

“We have a European-style fridge, it’s small for a family. I had a friend who choked when she saw my refrigerator,” said Antonia. “So we might want to think about doing some kitchen renos down the road, to actually fit a full-sized refrigerator.”

Tess Kalinowski is a Toronto-based reporter covering real estate for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @tesskalinowski

Donovan Vincent is a housing reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @donovanvincent

PROPERTY IS THEFT

HOUSING IS A RIGHT

New project shows ‘the terrible human cost’ of house-flipping



APRIL 19, 2022

VANCOUVER—The Berlin Wall hadn’t even been down for a full year when Paul Kroeger moved into his small house across the street from a cemetery in Vancouver. For more 32 years, the 67-year-old has paid rent there — $700 a month when he moved in.

Now, standing underneath a patch of plywood on the ceiling left exposed when the finish peeled off, Kroeger is preparing to leave. The weathered house has been sold, for almost $1.6 million, and he’s been evicted.

“I haven’t moved much in my life, so I’m not one to consider homes to be temporary,” he says. “I’ve got a certain attachment to the building and property and such.”
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After three decades in the house, Kroeger is moving into a basement suite a few blocks away he found by leafletting his neighbourhood. He happens to be one of the foremost mushroom experts in the province and with that comes research equipment, specimens and a reference library he now has to move.

Even though he has a new place secured, the experience is stressful, he said, especially because the developer who took the property over initially wanted him out much sooner. The house will soon be torn down.

Housing is becoming temporary for more Vancouverites, and the phenomenon has even started spreading across the country. As landlords seek to cash out amid record-high property values, more people like Kroeger are being told to find somewhere else to live.

The problem is much bigger than people realize, a Vancouver housing activist said. Rohana Rezel’s latest research has discovered hundreds of cases in the city in the past year where houses were flipped months after residents were evicted.

The work builds on a previous map Rezel’s Open Housing project built showing properties in Metro Vancouver already up for sale after being purchased less than a year prior. Some of the new listings represented a 70 per cent increase over the property’s purchase price in the previous listing.

Now, Rezel has taken it a step further.

His project looked at homes recently put up for sale if they had already been sold within the past year. Then, he tracked down their old listings from the first time they were on the market.

If those listings said the home had tenants and the new listing says they do not, Rezel counted them as likely having renters who had been evicted. So far, he’s found 372 such homes in Metro Vancouver and mapped them out.

“Flipping has a terrible human cost,” he said. “I’m not even talking about how it’s driving up prices and making homes unaffordable, it’s throwing people out into the streets.”

Rick Pedersen knows the costs.

At the end of the month, Pedersen and his wife have to find a new place to live. They haven’t even been in their 1,700-square-foot apartment 18 months.

Before they moved in, they say, they were told the owner wasn’t interested in selling anytime soon. When they sought to renew their lease late last year, they were told the owner now wanted to go on a month-to-month basis, but still wasn’t planning on selling.

Six weeks later, the couple in their 50s say, they were given an eviction notice.

“That’s how quickly the scenario changed on us,” Pedersen said.

It’s not the first time — Pedersen said he’s been put out of his home eight times in the past 14 years by landlords who were selling. But this time it stings more as rents in the province have spiked tremendously in recent months.

A recent report from the website Rentals.ca, crunching data from its own postings, found rates in British Columbia for one-bedroom apartments increased 17 per cent year over year as of February.

“Similar townhouses in the region here — same sort of square footage, pretty much cookie-cutter — we’ve seen as high as $3,750,” Pedersen said. “We’re talking about a $1,600-1,700 jump from what we paid just over a year ago.”

Now, the couple’s next apartment will either be hundreds of dollars a month more each month, or much smaller, which means they will have to off-load some of their possessions, likely at a loss.

“My wife and I am sitting here going, ‘What are we going to do?'” he said.

Rezel said his project shows unfettered house flipping in Vancouver isn’t just driving up prices, it’s displacing people, and all just so flippers can turn around and try to sell them again for big profits within months.

British Columbia’s rent-control regime limits annual increases for existing tenants to a modest rate — this year, 1.5 per cent. (A pandemic rent freeze was allowed to expire as of Jan. 1.)

So it’s more appealing to sell a house without tenants, Rezel said — if the new owners choose to rent it out they can charge the going rate. Otherwise, a landlord could be getting far less than that if a tenant has been in the unit for a long time.

According to provincial regulations, if the buyer plans in good faith to occupy the unit, or have a close family member occupy it, the tenant can be given an eviction notice effective in two months. If a new owner plans to use the unit for another purpose, like a shop or a caretaker suite, the tenant can get a four-month eviction notice once the title has been transferred. In both cases, the tenant must be compensated one month’s rent.

Michael Golden, a lawyer who deals with landlord-tenants disputes, said in a case where a person has been evicted so a new owner or their family member can live there and no one actually moves in (or stays fewer than six months), the The former renter can pursue the owner for a year’s rent through the province’s Residential Tenancy Branch for a $100 fee.

“The proceeding is a one-hour hearing which is done by telephone conference,” he said. “So, if you’re a tenant who thinks your landlord hasn’t followed through with what they were supposed to do, you pay $100 and a one-hour phone call and you could get a significant judgment.”

Golden said often people find out their place is up for rent again by keeping in touch with neighbors, or they see it advertised online. (According to the Residential Tenancy Branch website, the same compensation applies to those given four months notice.)

Rezel said the quick, high yields from flipping homes aren’t as abundant in Vancouver anymore and flippers have slowly moved east of the city.

Now that flipping has naturally started to cool in some parts of the Lower Mainland, he expects governments to try to take credit for it. But, he said, they haven’t done enough.

Rezel said a new anti-flipping tax proposed by the federal government and meant to apply to all homes bought and sold within a year won’t likely won’t make a difference unless the rate is immense.

“The solution is a real flipping tax to make the situation unprofitable,” he said. “And we also need vacancy control so that if you evict a person the new owner shouldn’t be able to just jack up the rents. If you make evicting unprofitable it’s just not going to happen.”

In a February poll by Vancouver-based Research Co., 41 per cent of British Columbians aged 18 to 34 said housing, homelessness and poverty are the most important issues in the province. But Pedersen said he doesn’t believe the government is serious about curbing housing costs.

He said one reason so much speculation is happening is that landlords can make money off short-term rentals — a phenomenon whose very existence tells him no one in power cares about his troubles.

“It is the biggest lie being told to the public, that they want to get a handle on housing. It’s absolute rhetoric from government. I don’t care which party we’re talking about,” Pedersen said.

“If they had the stones to do it, the first thing that they would do is they would ban Airbnbs.”

Jeremy Nuttall is a Vancouver-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @nuttallreports

Source: www.thestar.com

CANADA

New housing data connect immigration and property ownership

INVITING LANDLORDS TO BE CITIZENS

APRIL 21, 2022

The Canadian Housing Statistics Program released 2020 data that show investors to the Quebec Immigrant Investor program owned, on average, a single property in Metro Vancouver valued at $1.940 million – the highest property value out of all admission categories.

New housing data offer a first-time view of the relationship between immigration and property ownership in cities where real estate prices have climbed highest, Vancouver and Toronto.

The data released last week show the degree of property ownership, as well as values ​​and total family incomes, for every category of immigrant. Out of all immigrants, those who obtained citizenship through the controversial Quebec investor immigrant program have the highest assessed property values, either as a single property or multiple properties. Many have long suspected that the Quebec program has operated as a backdoor for wealthy immigrants who opt to buy properties in Vancouver and Toronto instead of remaining in Quebec, which was the intention of the program.

The Canadian Housing Statistics Program released 2020 data that show investors to the Quebec Immigrant Investor program owned, on average, a single property in Metro Vancouver valued at $1.940 million – the highest property value out of all admission categories. The average family income for that group is $70,000. By comparison, the average income for immigrants who owned a single property in Vancouver was $130,000.

The Quebec investors also had the highest average total assessed value for multiple properties in Vancouver, with an average total assessment of $4.6-million in properties. The average multiple property immigrant owner had a total assessed value of $2.7-million. The average family total income for multiple property owners for Quebec investors was $100,000, compared with the average of $190,000 for all admission categories.

The CHSP, which is part of Statistics Canada, provided the data as a valuable glimpse into the realities of Canada’s housing market. The data also included the finding that 15 per cent of individual owners (as opposed to institutional investors) own 29 per cent of all British Columbia’s housing stock.

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The intent behind the Quebec program is that investors, who must have net assets of at least $2-million, among other requirements, intend to settle in Quebec. Critics argue that, while they’re supposed to stay in Quebec, it’s impossible to stop investors from moving elsewhere. It’s a passive investment – ​​requiring $1.2-million injection into the provincial government to be returned interest-free after five years – without having to set up an actual business. (The investment amount had been $800,000 but was increased in 2018). In return for the loan, those high-net-worth individuals are pretty much guaranteed permanent residency in Canada.

It has proven to be a hugely popular program. Immigration lawyer Colin Singer describes it in a video online as the most popular investment visa program in Canada. The program began in 1986 and had been processing 1,900 applications a year before it was put on pause. Quebec, which has its own immigration policy, won’t take new applications until April 1, 2023, pending review.

Critics say the problem with the program is that while Quebec has enjoyed the investment money, other provinces have funded health care and grappled with the flow of foreign capital into their housing markets – particularly BC and Ontario.

In Toronto, the Quebec investor multiple property owner had an average assessment value of $2.4-million. Average family income totaled $90,000 for that same group.

There was a parallel federal immigrant investor program, also hugely popular, that ran for 28 years, but that program was canceled in 2014 amid concerns that investors were not paying their fair share of taxes and there was little economic benefit for Canada. However, the program’s long-term effects show up in the CHSP data as well. The average total assessment value of the federal investor immigrant who owns a single property in Vancouver is $1.580-million, with an average family income of $75,000. The average total assessment value of multiple properties held by a federal investor in Vancouver amounted to $3.8-million. That category of immigrant had an average family income of $110,000. Approximately 30,000 people purchased property in Vancouver through both investor programs, according to the data.

It is important to note that these investors are not deemed “foreign buyers,” because they are homeowners who hold citizenship, says Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s city program. The foreign buyer statistics that are routinely cited by the provincial government, for example, do not include this group.

The new data illustrate the importance of considering capital flows from foreign sources and not just the number of foreign buyers. The new temporary ban on foreign buying included in last week’s federal budget, for instance, deals only with foreign buyers, not foreign capital inflows. The ban also exempts foreign students, which has raised eyebrows. Several years ago, student homeowners made headlines for owning some of Vancouver’s most expensive properties. The most controversial example was the UBC student who bought a $31-million house. Students living in Vancouver appeared to be proxies for foreign wealth, and lenders were giving them preferential loan terms.

Dr. David Ley, University of BC professor emeritus, has said that all levels of government have courted foreign money for decades. In BC in 1988, the province began courting Asian money when the resource-based economy went into decline. He says the reach out to Asia Pacific was illustrated best by the sale of the vast Expo 86 site to a Hong Kong property development consortium in 1988.

“It was a sale that put Vancouver on the radar of property investors in Asia and established networks with the Canadian property sector. The development and real estate companies had formed an informal growth coalition with government, designed to sustain off-shore capital flows into BC,” Dr. Ley said in an e-mail.

“Regular trade missions by all three levels of government spread news of opportunities; the federal government alone sent five ‘Team Canada’ missions to Asia in the 1990s. The Business Immigration Program (which included investors) provided the means for both capital and capitalists to enter British Columbia.”

CIBC chief economist Benjamin Tal spoke at the Vancouver Real Estate Forum on April 12, and he said that new immigrants play a key role in the housing market.

An estimated 70 per cent of the 405,000 new immigrants who were admitted last year were already in Canada on temporary visas, which means they speak the language, probably hold jobs and are therefore already well on their way to buying property.

“It’s not just the number of immigrants, but their ability to buy a house and participate in the labor market,” Mr. Tal said.

He said the composition of the immigrants is also important, because there is a labor shortage in the construction industry and so far Canada is not attracting those workers.

“In my opinion, the No. 1 factor limiting supply of real estate now, the new housing in Canada, is labour. You cannot find it. And when you do find it, the charge is enormous. It’s crazy,” Mr. Tal said.

Mr. Yan says the system is failing new immigrants who’ve arrived to work and settle if it also allows new immigrants who are here because they are wealthy and have an appetite for real estate investment. The 110,565 immigrants who came through the federal skilled worker program and purchased a single property had one of the highest total family incomes, at $120,000, and a far lower average property value of $990,000. Although skilled workers outnumber the Quebec investors to Vancouver by a factor of 10, the latter camp has greater spending power, and the ability to drive prices upward.

He’d like to see data on exactly how many properties the wealthy investor group owns.

In this way, immigration policy and housing policy go hand in hand, he said.

“Immigrants from around the world are being sold the dream of Canada, and yet with housing unaffordability where local incomes are so decoupled from housing costs, you’re pulling out the first rungs of that dream. Canada is inviting the world to a dinner party and it turns out to be a potluck for multimillionaires.”