ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep 28 Adam Olsen

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Ask Salt Spring Answered talks to Green MLA Adam Olsen about why he was opposed to the NDP's latest housing policies.

You're listening to episode 28 of Our Salt Spring Answered when we talk to Adam Olsen, our MLA, the MLA for North Saanich and the Islands, about why he, as the Green Party member, was opposed to the NDP's housing policy. Okay, I'm here with Adam Olson, who is the MLA for the Green Party for Saanich, North and the Islands. Hello, Adam, nice to see you. Yeah, it's great to be back again. Yep, and we've been at Ask Salt Spring this morning. It was a pretty intense discussion, I think, mostly about housing policy. where you were disparaging about the NDP government's moves with regards to their response to the housing crisis, the affordability crisis, as you pointed out.

Tell us a bit about why you felt that you couldn't support that bill. Well, I think first it's important to, we talked almost exclusively about Bill 44 today at Ask Salt Spring. However, one of the biggest challenges that I faced was that in the last couple of weeks of this fall session, we actually had five or six housing bills, separate bills. So the government had chosen, the BCNEP government chose to fragment their housing policy into a bunch of different bills, which made it nearly impossible for legislators to

actually be able to debate a coherent housing policy. You know, all of the policies that we face are interconnected when it comes to housing. And so by fragmenting it out, it made it very difficult for the public to understand what was going on, and it made it very difficult for legislators to be able to debate what is needing to be a coherent housing policy. Bill 44, I guess the best way that I can summarize it is to say that it's solving a problem that doesn't exist, or it's providing most of the solution to a problem that's not the most acute part of the housing needs that we have. It has been very clearly identified by communities right across this province that we have a core housing need, meaning there is 30% of the population, roughly, who are experiencing insecure, inadequate, or unaffordable housing, meaning they're spending more than 30% of their annual income on housing.

We've got a growing population of people experiencing extreme core housing need, meaning they're spending more than 50% of their annual income. This is very, very troubling, both from an individual perspective, those folks that are having to pay that, and also from a societal perspective, because the federal and provincial governments have not been building the social safety net in terms of social housing or non-market housing that can catch those people if they can no longer afford housing in that, in the for-profit housing market. So my biggest issue is the BC NDP government chose to build exclusively more supply of market housing when clearly what housing needs assessments and what the

statistics are showing is that we need non-market housing and we need the provincial government to be keenly focused on that. Yeah. And a couple of things you said, which I thought were interesting, that this was a blanket policy that all houses are created equal. Yeah, all housing supply. Yeah. And that all housing supply is good supply, but then only 10% of that housing supply is going towards any kind of non-market or affordable housing, right? I pressed the minister relentlessly on putting affordability measures into Bill 44. And what he repeatedly responded with over and over and over again was that it's been shown in Vancouver

that if you require these units to be affordable, that the market won't build them. Essentially, I'm not sure if he was trying to prove my point, but that's essentially what he was doing. My point was that unless the provincial government intervenes, the housing market, which is generally about creating wealth, will continue to do what it's always been doing, which is to create the industry that produces it, wealth. You need an intervention to produce housing that is outside the market for those that cannot afford housing in the market. And that's primarily the role of the provincial government. And funding comes from the federal government. Some policy comes from the federal government. But mostly, that's the provincial government's realm. curiosity to me that the BCNDP government turns to the market and says, do something that you're

not designed to do, create affordable housing. That's not how the housing market is designed. It's not the expectations that people who are in the housing market have. It has been significantly financialized. And so the way that we're going to produce housing affordability is to produce housing that's outside of that system. We need a system that is based on providing security and safety for people so that they can afford housing at the level that they need that housing to be at. And so, you know, I don't have, this is not a criticism of the development sector. You know, that's what needs to be made very clear. This is not a criticism of the real estate development sector.

That's the system that the provincial and federal governments have created. They're operating in that system, right? And so this is a systemic problem that lands at the feet of the federal and provincial government. I'm in the provincial government. And so when the province comes back and says, we're going to expect a system that is designed to produce wealth to all of a sudden produce affordability, you get what you get, right? Which is 10% of these units that are being built by the market can be affordable, but it's very difficult to get any more than 10%. So the government needs to intervene. And my key focus on 44 was design those programs, do the scale and scope focused on the core housing need

rather than continuing to create more market housing, which will only be built when profit can be generated. Right. Now, part of this bill was to basically increase density on single lots, right? Yeah. But, of course, it doesn't apply to Salt Spring. Now, you did sort of explain it, but perhaps you could explain again that while you were, on the one hand, not supporting the bill, on the other hand, you moved an amendment to have Salt Spring included in the bill, which some people might find a bit confusing, but perhaps you can tell me your

thinking on that. Yeah, absolutely. I think that it's important to acknowledge that I always operate in legislation. When I move an amendment, I have to be, you know, I have to be confident that if they pass it, I'm okay with that outcome, meaning I'm not playing games in there. I'm not, it's not, I'm not gambling that I can, you know, make a political move to say to Salt Spring, look, I'm trying to help you out or to the Islands Trust who made the request that Salt Spring be included in this bill. I just fundamentally don't believe that the BCNDP's approach that all supply, and you asked, you know, you stated that I made some statements at Ask Salt Spring here where all supply is not created equal. Supply, supply, supply, supply is not the answer to housing. The supply that we need is the answer to the housing

affordability crisis. We need to be more targeted. We need to be more strategic. We need to use the data and analytics that we have to make smart decisions about the housing that we need built. There's a narrative out there right now that all supply is good supply. And allowing for vast swaths of land to be upzoned in order to build more market housing that will be built when

the people who are building it can make money off of it isn't solving the affordability crisis that we have in fact it might be driving it the gap wider so the islands trust sent a letter asking for salt spring to be included this would have been this would there there was also measures in the bill around secondary suites and accessory dwelling units. I believe that one of the ways that some of the housing affordability issues on Salt Spring can be dealt with is through buildings that already exist. I think that's the most efficient way to deal with a portion of the challenge that Salt Spring's facing because building new buildings is very challenging and there's real limitations to building new buildings. So looking to the buildings that already exist and seeing if there's a way to redistribute some of the space in there to me is a way for that, a way forward in the short term. And so I have a very strong ethical perspective that when the people who are

elected to deal with a certain issue, in this case, it's land use, and it's the Islands Trust, make a request of their MLA to be included in something, despite what I might feel about the overall policy, I'll honor that. And I have worked, the island. I mean, I've worked on this issue a long time and it was not, you know, it was not an effort for me to, to try to confuse people or, you know, I knew that there was going to be some questions about it, but the reality of it is, is that there are aspects of this, of this bill that salt spring wouldn't have been included and you don't have

an urban containment boundary for an example, but so, you know know perhaps it would have been beneficial with the secondary suites and the some of the accessory dwelling units that are already in existence in terms of making those available for people to live in but when it comes to the broad scale re-up zoning that that the provincial government did in more urban centers where there's urban containment boundaries, none of that would apply to Salt Lake. Right. And the amendment failed anyway, so, right? Yeah, yeah. And this is the thing.

I didn't move the amendment because I knew it was going to fail. I just want to be clear about that. I moved the amendment knowing that the government could choose to either support it or not. So I had to be convinced of the policy issue, at least as it stood initially. And so from that perspective, I did my work in the legislature, and I continue to work with the Islands Trust Council, local council,

to try to achieve and support the outcomes that they're targeting too. So where does that leave Saltspring then? It leaves the Islands Trust back where it started, really, as far as its own bylaws are concerned with regards to secondary suites and so on, right? Yeah, there definitely has been the potential now for Saltspring to both the local governments, the CRD and the Islands Trust, to bring in some regulations around short-term vacation rentals. That happened this spring, this fall session.

But when it comes to Bill 44, which the government used closure to push through the other legislation, Salt Spring is not impacted by that. Right. Now, as far as we did discuss briefly the short-term vacation rentals, and we were talking about the CRD and the Island Trust are talking about possibly bringing in some kind of licensing system. And I think you said that the way it would work is that the CRD would bring in some kind of business licensing scheme and then the Islands Trust would bring in a bylaw around that that would then be enforced on Salt Spring, right? Yeah, I think that's probably, so that's in broad strokes what I think needs to happen. I don't know that it necessarily needs

to be the CRD that brings in the business licensing bylaw for the housing piece, though it might make sense that the CRD does it because the CRD has a business licensing model that they use in other parts of the region. But basically what it does is it starts

to allow us to be able to collect data to the number of units that exist, making sure that the units that exist are licensed and that the platforms won't be allowed to promote them or advertise them if they don't have a business registration number. It allows us to collect some basic information and then determine the scale and scope of the problem going forward. Right. Okay, and we also talked about the encampment issue, the Drake Road encampment and the people being moved on from there,

and there were some people in the audience who were quite involved in that. Now, you talked about the fact that the city of Duncan has created the village, which is, I gather, a community of cabins in a parking lot that has a community and support, washrooms, presumably water and so on. And also, I think you said Port Alberni has one too at the Friendship Center up there. What would it take to get something like that on Salt Spring? I mean, is it a local government issue as opposed to a provincial government issue? Well, it's the local governments or a local provider delivers the service. And what they need is a willing partner at the provincial government to do it. And, you know, we've been trying to navigate

this or my colleagues have been trying to navigate this in the Cowichan Valley and getting the provincial government behind it. But currently, it's a local government initiative up there. It's the mayor and council and Duncan have decided to move it forward. I think the provincial government's got some more involvement in the one in Port Alberni. But, you know, I think that one of the key issues, of course, is identifying some land and having a governing body that is able to deliver the service or an organization that can deliver the service. The outcomes that we've been hearing about from the village have been very positive. Lots of people have moved in, lots of people have moved through and gone from being unhoused

to into housing permanently. And it's been a great transitionary tool. I think what it shows is that the response needs to be multifaceted. It needs to be multidimensional from the provincial government. And that is the thing that disappoints me the greatest about Housing Minister Rabi Kalan's approach, is that the scale and scope of it has been so heavily weighted towards market housing, when the provincial government needs to be focused on, not on the market, but on the other pieces. It's not that they won't be involved in the market. They absolutely will be. But they need to be focused on delivering the housing tenures

that the market isn't providing and that the market hasn't proven willing to provide. And so that means putting in place responsible organizations for delivering housing for the full continuum of needs in our communities. And that's from the totally unhoused people, people living on couches, the people living in their cars, all the way through to people who have a place but are paying more than is suitable, or they have inadequate housing, or their housing is insecure for some reason, all the way through to high-end market housing. The provincial government has a role in all of those. And what I've been suggesting, what I continue to suggest to the housing minister,

is that the focus should be much more heavily on the supported non-market side of the equation. And in doing that, you actually free up the pressure to the development community in the market housing piece. And I think also ultimately it comes down to this. There's a lot of housing that needs to be built in order for us to catch up for the last 20 to 30 years of not building non-market housing. And so everyone's going to be busy. You know, I think that, I think that there's this, there's this feeling that, um,

that it's a threat, you know, talking about non-market housing or talking about providing social housing is a, is a threat to the development industry. No, no, no, no, we need to be together. The, the YIMBYs, the NIMBYs, the whole conversation needs to be together because what's at stake here is the health and well-being of individuals, our neighbors, friends, family, extended family, and our society. That's our communities, our regions,

and the entire province. That's really what's at stake here. And so for me, the government needs to be, the provincial government, this BCNDP government, I think they need to act much more like their former selves, frankly, which is, you know, this is the business that I'm surprised that, well, I'm surprised that they're, that I, you know, I'm here saying this about this government, perhaps. My expectation would be that they would have had this part right, and it would have been, you know, maybe other parts of the housing market they would have got wrong. But that's not the case here. And we see a pretty

remarkable shift in policy, a pretty remarkable shift. They were a social democratic party, and a lot of their social democratic roots have been abandoned. And it seems like they're a pro-development party now. Yeah, and, you know, I would say this again. I don't – I think that there's probably people in the development community think that I've been kicking their shins too firmly these past couple of weeks. I don't, you know, I have nothing against the development community. I recognize the role that the builders play. I recognize that they need to be able to be profitable and that they need to be able to go and get capital from banks and the banks require a certain amount of profitability. I understand all of those things.

And I just think that we should be giving them a choice. You're either joining us in building the non-market social housing that we need in our society, or you're working in the market side of the equation. That's fine. Like I said, everybody's going to be busy. But I'll just leave it at this. market side of the equation. That's fine. Like I said, everybody's going to be busy. But you know, I'll just leave it at this. Our society made the determination that having access to health care was important. So we created a social health care system for that. Having access to a good public education system was important to us. So we created a system, a public system, in order to support public education. We agreed that maybe having an insurance company that provides good quality insurance for people, that was important.

So we created that system. Same with power and energy, electricity. Having a system that can deliver it to all British Columbians. That was important to us. I would suggest that one of the most important aspects of our society that we have not put a level of protection in is our housing system. And perhaps it's now time for us, and I've heard so many people say, well, when the federal and provincial governments got out of social housing, this is what happened. Well, we know what the problem is. Now let's get on with moving into the solution.

Okay, thank you. Now, of course, we're going off for our Christmas break, and you are. I think people were talking about the fears they had over the unhoused people, particularly at this time of year when it's cold out and they don't have a place to go warm up and whatever. How's it going to be for you over the next few weeks? Obviously, you're going to try and, you know, have a little break and recharge your batteries and so on. Will you still be involved in that kind of stuff in the riding in terms of, you know, getting involved in looking after the folks

who need the most help? Yeah. You know, I just say this. I think that that's a part of the job that never stops. Um, it's a part of the, it's, it's always, it's always weighs on my mind. The, the recognition of the privilege that I have in life is, is something that, um, that, uh, humbles me for sure. And I think that, uh, we'll continue to work through the holiday season. We'll continue to work through the cold weather time

and ensuring as best as I can with the powers that I have in my office. I don't always have access to the resources and the tools that we need in order to solve the problem. But I'll strongly advocate for the community. I'll strongly advocate for those that need it. So I'm going to try to take some time off. That's for sure. But I recognize that there's some pretty extreme need in the community right now.

And I've committed, you know, I committed earlier today to coming over here. I'll probably be over here a few times throughout the month of December and early January, meeting with various groups and further understanding the challenges, both at a community level and at a governance level. And I'm fully engaged here on Salt Spring. Like I said at the end of the, it's an honor to represent this community. It's not easy. I don't expect it to be. It would be boring if it was.

Salt Spring, it's an honor to represent this community, and I look forward to, through 2024, working with the community to find solutions to some of these really, really complex challenges. Yeah. Okay, well, thanks, and good to see you today. Have a good Christmas. And you're listening to cheer.fm. We've been talking about Ask Salt Spring Answered.