Updating my mini–series on flights and exposures through YVR airport in Vancouver. No particular reason…
Learning to Not Fly
Regulation
What to Expect from an Empty Homes Tax
Joint with Jens von Bergmann and cross-posted at mountainmath
Empty Homes Taxes are back in the news!
In a very short time period, we’ve got Vancouver raising its Empty Homes Tax rate from 1% to 3%, based in part on a report from CMHC about a sharp rise in condos on the rental market, we’ve got Toronto eyeing its own Empty Homes Tax, and now reports suggest that even Ottawa is considering getting in on the game.
BC Housing Platforms!
It’s election time in BC! And housing is back on the agenda, even if not quite as centrally as in past elections. Here I want to provide a quick basis for comparing each party platform, adding in a short bit of my own analysis. My quick take is that when it comes to housing there are things to like in each platform, and I hope the parties work together to keep housing on the agenda!
Vancouver’s Crime Pandemic! That wasn’t.
We now have over six months of pandemic conditions in Vancouver and crime data to (roughly) match. We also have all kinds of claims about crime flying around, sometimes pushed by the police (VPD) themselves, only heightened by click-seeking reporters and the vote-seeking politicians. So we should probably check into the data. Long story short: there’s scant evidence of a crime wave showing up in the VPD crime data.
Let’s Visit the Airport!
So, what’s happening at the airport these days?
Here in Vancouver (or more specifically, Richmond), I discovered that YVR actually posts some of their data. This is great! I’m going to look at their recent passenger data to get a sense of two things. First, how much air travel into and through Vancouver has grown in recent years. Hello globalization! Second, how much air travel into and through Vancouver has shrunk in recent months. Hi there world-wide pandemic! Continue reading
Lots for Sale
I’m currently enjoying Desmond Fitz-Gibbon’s Marketable Values: Inventing the Property Market in Modern Britain. It’s a fascinating book on how British real estate was transformed from estates granted and traded in private transactions bound by custom (think of landed nobility but also the Commons pre-enclosure) into something that could be bought and sold at auction and described in terms of a market, mostly over the course of the late 18th and 19th Centuries.
I was curious about this book for lots of reasons, not least because it seemed British property practices often spread to colonies, as in Canada. But as described by Fitz-Gibbon, this was actually a two-way street, and experiences in real estate at the peripheries of Empire also often informed practices back in England. Continue reading
Projections and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
jointly authored with Jens von Bergmann at MountainMath
When people want to live in your city, how many should you let in? On the one hand, this is a moral question. Do you have an obligation to people who don’t already live here? On the other hand, it’s a moot question. At least in Canada, cities don’t have the power to control migration. Continue reading
How many owner-occupiers can already defer their Property Taxes in BC?
We’re rolling around to property tax time, and municipalities are about to feel the COVID-19 crunch. The Mayors of Metro Vancouver have been leading an ask of the province to backstop municipal finances given that many residents and businesses may fail to pay their property taxes. Indeed, the City of Vancouver recently commissioned a survey indicating that due to job and income losses, some 25% of home owners in the city would be paying less than half of their 2020 property tax bills. Continue reading
So are you two a couple now? Asking for the BC Government
BC has been lauded for rolling out an assistance program for renters, unlike basically every other province. At the same time, BC’s also been criticized for the perceived inadequacy of that rental assistance program, as well as the fact that it literally goes straight to landlords. In conjunction with the temporary eviction moratorium, it would appear that the BC Temporary Rental Supplement (BC-TRS) is really aimed at supporting landlord incomes and easing tenant-landlord relations to avoid a rash of evictions once the moratorium has been lifted. Continue reading
BC Renters by Household Type & Need
Yesterday BC unrolled a quick support package for tenants and landlords affected by COVID-19 related job and income losses. In addition to an effective moratorium on evictions (yay!) and a rent freeze for the duration of the crisis, the province offered $500 going directly to landlords to offset rents for those with lost income. The measure appears to be aimed at preserving landlord incomes and landlord-tenant relationships even as the eviction moratorium temporarily boosts the bargaining power of tenants. Lots of details remain to be determined, including, apparently, whether the benefit applies per tenant or per unit. Continue reading
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