With the election coming up quickly, you may still be wondering who you should vote for and who is the best person to represent you and your interests. If you are considering purchasing a house in the next few years, the real estate platform of each candidate may have an impact on your decision. Here’s what you need to know about the promises of each party:
As a general theme, the Liberal Party is promising to “make it easier for Canadians to find an affordable place to call home:”
• Remove GST on capital investments in affordable rental housing to encourage construction of new rental properties
• Aid the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the new Canada Infrastructure Bank in offering financial support towards the construction of new, affordable rental housing.
• Prioritize committing funds to advancing accessibility to affordable housing, building more housing units and refurbishing old ones.
• Asses rising home costs in Toronto and consider tools and resources which can be implemented to assist in decreasing prices.
Devoting money and assistance towards development and making it easier to build housing is a strong underlying theme of the Progressive Conservative Party:
• Review properties which are currently under ownership by the province and explore opportunities to sell these to developers to build more housing. This could include areas that are currently underused, not used effectively or vacant parking lots.
• Make changes to the planning activities to reduce permit delays and stimulate more housing and construction development.
• Reform zoning and planning processes across municipalities to be able to better educate developers on what and how to build in a certain area with the goal of making development happen faster.
The NDP is committed to reducing “renovictions:”
• Offer protection to tenants to prevent them from being evicted from their homes, by instituting a rent registry, whereby tenants would be given access and be able to know how much a landlord previously charged for rent.
• Commit to building 65,000 new affordable housing units, spread across the city, some in co-operative housing buildings or as not-for-profit options.
The main focus of the Green Party is creating affordable housing that can foster communities:
• Implement taxes on vacant properties to force owners to start renting it, sell it or hand it over to developers
• Add a surtax on quick turnaround real estate sales
• Necessitate that all new home and property developments, such as condos, have a minimum of twenty percent affordable housing included.
• Offer 30,000 new units per year made available for low-income and special needs community members, which are not simply placed in segregated housing blocks.
