No support for Green plan to study ways to cool P.E.I.'s housing market

A Green Party motion to explore ways to cool P.E.I.'s hot housing market went down to defeat Wednesday, gaining no support from either Liberal or PC members in the P.E.I. legislature.

The motion called for the creation of an independent commission to study the issue and report back in twelve months.

It also called on parties to support a "Lands Protection Act-styled regulation" for housing in P.E.I. "to protect against the concentrated ownership of Island housing stock in the hands of a few, to protect against speculative activities that benefit private interests over the public interest and to improve access to homeownership."

P.E.I.'s Lands Protection Act places limits on how much land individuals and corporations can own in the province.

"Imagine for a moment if the Lands Protection Act did not exist here on Prince Edward Island? What do you think ownership of our land would look like?" Green Leader Peter Bevan-Baker asked MLAs during debate on the motion.

According to the Canadian Real Estate Association's home price index, a tool to measure housing price trends across the country, housing prices on the Island increased 26 per cent in the 12 months leading to March 2022. Across the country the increase was 11 per cent.

Meanwhile the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said rental costs on P.E.I. rose eight per cent in 2021, the largest increase in a decade, and increasing shelter costs have for months made P.E.I.'s inflation rate the highest in the country, reaching 8.9 per cent for the month of March.

The province's apartment vacancy rate in 2021 fell to 1.5 per cent. In 2018, the rate bottomed out at 0.3 per cent.

On the same day the Green push for an independent housing commission went down to defeat, government made it clear that its new Residential Tenancy Act, the first draft of which was completed in 2019, won't be ready to be tabled in the legislature before the fall.

That bill is meant to modernize tenancy current legislation developed 30 years ago. Government says it will send the bill for further consultations as it tries to strike a balance between protecting the rights of tenants and landlords.

The Greens have been pushing to have the legislation declare housing as a human right, and say government actions would increase commercialization of the housing market.

They say rising prices are pushing future generations of Islanders out of the housing market.

"Housing can't both be a commodity and a human right. They cannot exist together," said Green MLA Steven Howard during debate on the motion.

Some of the measures the Greens hoped a housing commission could explore include a vacancy tax on empty homes and a deposit requirement on home purchases that rises as a person buys more properties, a measure meant to reduce speculation.