Federal government should have stayed in housing game, minister says
Global News
Housing Minister Sean Fraser says the federal government should have never got out of the housing business even as high-income professionals struggle to find affordable housing.
Housing Minister Sean Fraser says the federal government should have never got out of the housing business even as high-income professionals are struggling to find affordable housing.
“For the better part of the last half century, federal governments of different partisan stripes, by the way, liberal and conservatives, have stepped away from forwarding affordable housing in this country,” he said. “That should never have happened, but it did.”
Fraser said now much of the country is dealing with a housing crunch that has no easy fixes.
He told media in Vancouver that past federal governments were mostly preoccupied with providing subsidized housing to low-income people, but there’s been a fundamental shift as working professionals struggle to afford a home.
“This is an absolutely incredible part of Canada, but it is dealing with an extraordinary problem,” Fraser said.
He said he saw a newspaper headline about how an average one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver now costs $3,000 a month, and he struggled to understand how a senior on a fixed income or a student paying back loans could afford such prices.
He said he couldn’t pinpoint a reasonable price for a one-bedroom because people come from varied circumstances, but said people shouldn’t have to pay more than 30 per cent of their income for a home.
“If you work in Canada, you should be able to afford a place to call home,” he said.