Province will offer B.C.'s poorest families rent subsidies

Miro Cernetig
Sun

B.C.'S NEW RENTAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM

VICTORIA -- Up to 15,000 of B.C.'s poorest families will be offered rent subsidies of between $1 and a few hundred dollars a month under a $40-million program to be introduced today by the B.C. Liberal government.

In a bid to help the working poor, the provincial government is promising to assist families who make less than $20,000 a year.

The policy, part of the government's multi-pronged social housing strategy, was outlined Monday in The Vancouver Sun.

Called Housing Matters in B.C., the program -- only available to those who have less than $10,000 in assets, pay more than 30 per cent of household income in rent, and have filled out a tax return -- is being billed as a way to keep those 15,000 B.C. families in private sector housing, where landlords set the rents.

It is also meant to relieve pressure on the government's own stock of government-assisted social housing, which currently has a waiting list of 14,000 people.

Forestry Minister Rich Coleman, a former real estate developer who was given control of social housing by Premier Gordon Campbell, will unveil the new strategy today.

It does not include the future development plans of the government, which is aiming to provide incentives to private developers to build more social housing.

The New Democratic Party revealed details of the rental supplement program Monday.

More than a year in the making, it represents a challenge to the traditional model in Canada of housing those who fall below the poverty line. It seeks to give the poor a chance to stay in market housing rather than in public housing projects.

But the NDP -- whose leader Carole James has said that government can't abandon its role as the central player in building social housing for the poor -- found the government's plans inadequate given the challenges of poor B.C. families in one of Canada's hottest real estate markets.

Under the draft documents obtained by the NDP, a family of five in Burnaby paying $900 a month in rent would receive about $110 to help it make ends meet.

A family of three in Vancouver with an income of $10,000 and paying rent of $825 would get a subsidy of $287.51, the documents show.

The NDP's Jenny Kwan, a longtime activist on anti-poverty issues, said rental supplements will do little to deal with the thousands of homeless in the province. She said studies have shown that it will not encourage the building of more housing for the poor and in fact, over time, will inflate the rents they now pay.

Kwan noted the $40 million to be spent on the program could be used to build more than 2,000 permanent units of social housing.

She also questioned why residents in housing co-operatives will not be eligible for the supplements.

"Based on the leaked documents," she said, "this does very little to address our homeless problem today."

The Liberal policy is shaping up to be a major ideological debate between the Liberals and the NDP. James plans to focus on the homelessness and the urban poor.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006