YOUR PERSPECTIVE: NDP housing figures fail to reflect reality

Apr 12, 2023 | 9:30 AM

For six years, this NDP government has been promising to build the housing people in B.C. desperately need. Not only did they commit to construct more units, but they also promised to address the housing crisis and deliver affordability.

Unfortunately, we have watched prices skyrocket and people pushed out of the communities in which they grew up — simply because they cannot afford to live in their hometowns anymore.

Recognizing their failure to deliver on housing, the NDP government, led by Premier David Eby, recently put forward a new housing strategy. However, rather than a bold new vision to address the crisis, the plan abandons the NDP’s old promises and fudges the numbers.

Eby’s so-called housing ‘refresh’ is little more than an admission that his NDP government is incapable of delivering their original promise of 114,000 homes by 2028. The supposedly new housing plan contains mostly previously announced or delayed commitments and carefully crafted messaging to hide government’s glacial progress.

In fact, government has even begun counting units that were built in the 1980s, as well as temporary modular housing, towards their housing totals. These figures are misleading at best and certainly not what people had in mind when government promised to ‘build’ homes.

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When you get through all the smokescreens and creative accounting, the reality is that five years into what was supposed to be a 10-year plan, just 15,783 homes have actually been built and opened by the NDP. That’s a disappointing 13.8 per cent of their 114,000 unit promise.

Making matters worse, it’s becoming clear that even if they were on track to reach their goal, much more housing will need to be built by both government and the private sector to deliver affordability in our province. Yet over the past six year, the NDP has done little to encourage housing construction throughout the province.

We know that whatever government is currently doing to improve affordability simply isn’t working. To truly address this crisis, we need more than vague plans and ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches. We need a government that is ready and willing to efficiently build the housing B.C. needs, where it is needed most — anything less is simply not good enough.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of Fraser Valley Today or Pattison Media.

by Michael de Jong MLA for Abbotsford West

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YOUR PERSPECTIVE: NDP housing figures fail to reflect reality

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