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The City of Kelowna is looking to the province, and particularly its Speculation and Vacancy Tax, in order to help with the lack of affordable rental housing in the city.
As council debated adding more tax dollars to a reserve fund specifically designed for land acquisition for affordable housing projects, it was noted tax dollars from the controversial tax have not flowed back to the city for housing initiatives.
"That is something we continue to lobby the provincial government on," said Mayor Colin Basran in response to questions from Coun. Ryan Donn.
"But no, it has not come back in terms of money collected specifically in Kelowna for affordable housing initiatives.
"This is one of our continued concerns as the tax is continued to be collected, but not being directed back to Kelowna itself."
Without getting into detail, Basran says the city has sent a letter to the province after it was asked to provide feedback.
"I don't see this (tax) going away," said Donn, "but I do think we should be advocating for it to be spent in our community."
During Monday's discussion around affordable housing, council did agree with a plan to double the taxpayer contribution to a land acquisition fund from $200,000 to $400,000 in 2022, then to $600,000 in 2023 and beyond.
That would allow the city to purchase land specific for affordable housing every four years or so.
However, in order to keep up with the demand for housing, staff noted the city would need about 2,600 more affordable housing units within the next 10 years.
It was noted land for that amount of units would cost approximately $20 million per year.
"That's crazy to me, and just goes to show the deficit created by the lack of investment by the provincial and federal governments for decades," added Basran.
"I really appreciate the fact that we as a municipality have done a lot to address that, including hopefully moving this forward. But clearly, we will not be able to do it alone. We can't keep allowing this deficit to pile up because it ends up with more people on our streets."
