[URBAN NOTE] "Victoria mayor seeks power to tax empty homes"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Ian Bailey looks at Victoria's efforts to curb real estate speculation.

The mayor of Victoria wants the B.C. government to give municipalities across the province what Vancouver is getting – the right to tax empty homes – as a way to help ease the housing crunch in their own communities.

Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said she’s concerned about a scenario in which investors simply buy up properties elsewhere in the province to escape Vancouver’s expected tax on vacant houses.

The B.C. government has announced a special sitting of the legislature next week to give Vancouver the power to tax empty houses, but the change won’t apply to other municipalities.

That disparity “creates an odd, unequal playing field that could exacerbate the problem in other municipalities at the same time as it attempts to solve the problem in Vancouver,” Ms. Helps said in an interview on Thursday after council debated the issue.

“The consequence could be that people stop investing in properties to flip or hold in Vancouver because they know they’re going to get taxed and they just buy properties in Victoria or Burnaby or West [Vancouver] and do the same thing, because that jurisdiction doesn’t have the same taxing powers.”