Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Kootenay—Columbia.
It is a huge honour to rise today to speak to a very important issue.
In just three years, we have seen the cost of real estate in my riding go up 50%. We saw the housing crisis happen in Vancouver, and people sold their homes and moved to Vancouver Island, to Victoria. Then those people moved up island to our communities, which were very affordable for many years. It is affecting people in our communities. Homelessness is on the rise. More and more seniors are living in poverty. In fact, we are seeing more seniors at our homeless shelters than ever before. Young people are losing hope. Working families are struggling to make ends meet. People living with disabilities or accessibility issues are finding it harder and harder to find a place to live.
This month I held three town halls in my riding to hear from residents about this issue. They made it very clear that this is the most important issue affecting people in our riding. We were fortunate to have experts come and sit on panels to talk about the situation.
One group that was there was the BC Non-Profit Housing Association. It brought forward the housing affordability definition. We can all agree that if someone is spending more than 30% of before tax income on rent and utilities, it is no longer affordable. In my riding, over 50% of renter households are spending more than 30% of their income. In fact, a quarter of renter households in my riding are now spending over 50% of their income. This is outrageous. There is no way people can put money aside to buy a home at some point in the future, or just to meet simple needs such as clothing, medicine and food. People are struggling. They are having to work two or three jobs just to make a living, never mind setting aside money for retirement.
I think about the most vulnerable. In British Columbia, someone on income assistance receives a housing allowance of $375 a month. Thirty-six months ago, the average price of a home in the most affordable community in my riding, which is Port Alberni, was $192,000. Today, it is $303,000. People are moving into our community and commuting out because it is the most affordable place. The problem is that people have to have an income that is almost 50% higher than the average median household income to be able to buy a home now, which now costs $303,000.
More and more people are not able to buy a home and more inequality is happening. People who can afford it are coming in and buying five or 10 houses. They are renting them out and driving rental prices up. As we know, people living on low incomes struggle to make ends meet. When they cannot pay their rent, they are pushed out onto the street to find another place to live. However, when there is a vacancy rate of .01%, they cannot find a place to live. Those rents are now higher than the threshold of $375 a month. More and more people are turning to the street or shelters. They are falling through the cracks or living in precarious situations.
In a question earlier, I identified that to buy a house in Parksville or Courtenay one would need to have an income of over $140,000. Less than 6% of the people in those communities earn over $140,000. It is completely not working for people in our communities. We have heard loud and clear from local governments. They are calling on the federal government to invest in their communities immediately. This is an absolute crisis. When there is nowhere to live and young people are losing hope, it is a big problem for all of us.
We can look at where we were in the 1970s and 1980s when 10% of our housing was non-market housing. Today, it is 4%. The Conservatives' approach that the free market will resolve it and we will just build more supply has not worked. It has completely failed. The Liberals' approach that they will roll out money over 10 years if they are re-elected and house 50% of the homeless people in Canada does not work for 50% of the homeless people because they are not going to have a place to live. As well, 10 years is too long.
We have seen bold investments from the Province of British Columbia. It has shown the Government of Canada what urgency looks like. It has rolled out $1 billion this year and is going to roll out $7 billion over the next 10 years. It would be great to have a federal government that does not just give it $31 million a year in transfers but actually matches the funding. This is an opportunity to support people who are falling through the cracks, but also the local economy.
We have heard the Comox Valley Chamber of Commerce say loud and clear that this is the most important issue. Dianne Hawkins said, “Employers and their employees have been impacted by the lack of affordable housing and income inequity which exists in our area. Access to safe, quality, affordable housing and the supports necessary to maintain it create one of the most powerful social determinants of health. The Comox Valley needs a continuum, or wide range of housing solutions that target a full spectrum of population groups.” They are saying that it is actually limiting economic growth in the region for small and medium-sized enterprises.
We need to create diversity. There are countries that are doing it. In Europe over 30% of the housing stock is non-market housing. In Vienna, it is over 40%.
I was fortunate enough to live in a co-op housing project that was built in the 1970s and 1980s when the federal government actually invested in housing, before it started downloading in the 1990s. In 1993, Paul Martin cut federal transfers on housing to the provinces, downloaded on the provinces and then the provinces started downloading on local governments. I sat in local government. I remember how hard it was for us to come up with the capacity to deal with this complex situation. Most municipalities do not have the capacity, aptitude or resources to take on this problem on their own. They are relying on senior levels of government to invest and get involved.
When people cannot find a place to live, it affects their mental health. It affects child welfare. That is a huge problem in British Columbia and it is connected to housing. One of the most important determinants to health is housing. The stress this is causing families is unbelievable. Is this what we want? Is this the type of society we want in the future for our children? Do we want them to live under so much stress and have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet? We know that 30% of single women over the age of 65 are living in poverty. We are failing them. This is an opportunity to help them.
I think about working families a lot. The most important investment one makes in life is a home. Right now, so few people are making that investment because they cannot afford to. The biggest economic leakage in people's lives is when they cannot afford to buy a home. The biggest economic leakage in communities is when people outside the communities or the country buy all the housing. That wealth is leaving. Rural communities know too well about wealth leaving their communities, something which unfortunately, we are getting far too used to.
This is the beginning of a crisis. This crisis is not going away. People who have had to move to more affordable places in my riding are now in the most affordable, and it is compounding. They have nowhere to go. There is nowhere left to go. This problem is not going away and they are not going away.
I met someone at one of my town halls and every day since that town hall, I wake up and I think about Marcy. She has lived in my community for over 30 years. She has been homeless for the past four years. With low vacancy rates and rents that are sky high, she has not been able to find a place to live. She has been living in her van. She actually upgraded to living in a trailer on a property and she is worried that the bylaw officer is going to move her out. She worries about that every day. This is what Marcy worries about. The free market is not helping Marcy right now. She needs help and it is our duty to help her come up with the solutions. We can do that. We can create more co-op housing.
Indigenous elders say that there is nowhere to live on their reserves and in their communities. There is overcrowding. Sixteen people live in one house. The government's promise to fix that has not come to fruition. There are 10 indigenous communities in my riding and I cannot name one that would say that the federal government has lived up to its promise to support indigenous housing. Verna is a 76-year-old indigenous elder who barely gets by on her pension. She was hit with a rent increase and a big hydro bill. She is like Marcy. She is concerned, not just about herself but she is also concerned about the youth.
This is a problem. I am glad we are having this discussion today. I could cite so many comments from my constituents. I am grateful they shared their experiences. We need to be vigilant. We need to work collectively and we cannot wait 10 years.
We need money to roll out the door right now. The government believed it needed to buy the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which we know was a big mistake. If the Liberals could come up with $4.5 billion for a leaky pipeline, why can they not come up with $4.5 billion for our seniors, our elders and our most vulnerable? The government needs to do this immediately and it needs to address it and get money out the door.