Between-tenant rent controls focus of new demands from major BC union

Poutinetown, 5 months ago

Could major unions hypothetically create a housing co-op fund that would initially be funded by an optional “fee”, then later sustained by rent? That would incentivize people to join such unions, the unions would be able to use their large network of members (which requires zero effort to join) to quickly raise funds (smaller unions could pool with each other). That can be used to build affordable housing, which would have otherwise been built by for-profit corporations.

BlameThePeacock, 5 months ago

There’s two big problems with this.

A) The amount of money required is staggering, on the order of 500-1000k per unit… Which is exactly what people already can’t afford. People who already have houses wouldn’t pay the fee, and people who are renting can’t the fee that would be required at those prices.

This is the primary reason why government isn’t building even hundreds of thousands of units in BC, they quite literally can’t afford it.

B) Essentially, you need to buy/build houses at current market rates, which doesn’t save you anything now for renters. All it does is control the price in the future by removing the benefit to the landlord from the cost equation. It only helps 10+ years down the road when prices have gone up even further and those properties could be kept nearer to the original prices than the new market price.

Poutinetown, 5 months ago

Why would it take 1M per unit for a new development? Is it due to the high cost of labor in BC?

SamuelRJankis, 5 months ago

My 2010 strata building in Vancouver is insured for $127mill. It’s about 300 unit, multi tower high rise and 50/50 split of 1&2 bedrooms mostly. So about 433k each.

There still a lot of other details along with the land probably being similar price. But overall 100 million or even 1 billion doesn’t really buy a lot of house these days even on larger scales.