The affordability crisis in Vancouver certainly isn’t news—it was a central theme of our most recent civic election, and the two preceding it—but in recent weeks, calls for senior government intervention have landed on the premier’s desk in the form of a petition seeking restrictions on foreign ownership of property.
Readers might be confused by Premier Christy Clark’s warning that implementing taxes on foreign real estate investors would cause housing prices to drop, while Housing Minister Rich Coleman insists the provincial government has no intention of even collecting data on foreign ownership, nor has it come up as an issue for his ministry.
