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    Make Housing Central: British Columbia and the Affordable Housing Crisis
    Make Housing Central: British Columbia and the Affordable Housing Crisis
    Make Housing Central: British Columbia and the Affordable Housing Crisis
    Ebook137 pages2 hours

    Make Housing Central: British Columbia and the Affordable Housing Crisis

    By Kishone Roy

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    About this ebook

    Rapidly surging house prices, historically low rental vacancies, long waitlists for social housing, and a massive homelessness epidemic — all these have led to many British Columbians feeling trapped in their current housing situation. In Make Housing Central, Kishone Roy, CEO of the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association, tells the story of the affordable housing crisis in B.C. and proposes a realistic long-term plan to solve it.

    Using personal stories, data, and a look inside the non-profit housing sector, Roy shows in vivid detail how British Columbians in many different situations are coping with the crisis. This digestible read helps makes sense of the most pressing issue facing our province – and shows that inaction will be more costly than action.

    Kishone Roy is CEO of the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association; sits as Director of Encasa Financial, a mutual fund company owned by the affordable housing sector; and chairs the B.C. Rental Housing Coalition. A former political advisor, he has worked as a consultant and fundraiser in the non-profit and academic sectors.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKishone Roy
    Release dateApr 18, 2017
    ISBN9780995931916
    Make Housing Central: British Columbia and the Affordable Housing Crisis
    Author

    Kishone Roy

    Kishone Roy is CEO of the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association; sits as Director of Encasa Financial, a mutual fund company owned by the affordable housing sector; and chairs the B.C. Rental Housing Coalition. A former political advisor, he has worked as a consultant and fundraiser in the non-profit and academic sectors.

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      Book preview

      Make Housing Central - Kishone Roy

      Prologue

      IN THIS BOOK, I share a wide variety of stories about individuals and organizations who are dealing with the current housing affordability crisis in British Columbia. Housing and homelessness are currently the number-one issues in the province, and my hope is to use this opportunity to help build some understanding and empathy because it is going to take a long time to solve some of the problems we are facing, and we are going to need government officials, media, housing providers, and individuals to stick with this cause even when other issues top the polls from time to time.

      As I write this, we are heading into a provincial election, and as an advocate, I want to help ensure housing affordability stays among the top issues that are discussed in the campaign. Elections matter and we are going to need that discussion to take place with every candidate, from every party, so that they fight for this cause after they are elected. However, that doesn’t mean that housing is a provincial issue alone. Even if the provincial government made a significant financial investment over an extended period of time, it is likely going to take long-term partnerships between it, the federal government, municipalities, and housing providers to build the housing supply we need and raise the incomes of people living here. The situation is now a crisis. We can no longer spend decades squabbling over jurisdiction, as we did in the ’90s and 2000s. Fortunately, those partnerships are now beginning to be forged, and BC’s recent investments appear to be following this partnership method, but a lot more work is needed.

      I work for the BC Non-Profit Housing Association (BCNPHA) and chair a group called the BC Rental Housing Coalition. I am not an urban planner or an academic, but I get to collaborate with a lot of people who are, and I get to meet hundreds of people from across the province who are coping with this crisis in many different ways. I know I haven’t captured all of their stories here, but I hope you will see how many issues in housing are connected, and how it is possible for us to work together to solve them. There is a lot of despondency, anger, and frustration out there, but recently I’ve also seen cause for hope and some substantial action. Because housing takes so long to plan and build, it is likely that the situation in BC will get worse before it gets better, but progress is happening, and with sustained action we can make BC affordable again.

      My hope is that by sharing some of these stories and statistics, we will earn your support for our plans to help address this issue. Sarah Payne, a freelance writer and journalist, has written a series of stories about real British Columbians that will appear throughout the book. We’ve tried to include a diversity of stories, regions, and types of housing situations as a way of capturing how widely varied each of our circumstances are. I suspect they also portray our similarities when it comes to our aspirations, our challenges, and our concerns about the path we’re on.

      As I read through the first batch of Sarah’s stories, I was struck by the openness and honesty of each of her subjects. People are full of passion about this issue because housing is a central facet of all of our lives. There are also hundreds of organizations in BC filled with people who care deeply about this issue and about the people they are helping, and not just in social housing, where we’re often focused on those who are most vulnerable. Most British Columbians believe that everybody deserves a safe, affordable place to live, and that is still possible in a prosperous, growing, and welcoming place like this. It’s just going to take a mix of developers, private-sector landlords, co-ops, seniors housing, and community living, as well as homelessness and tenants’ rights groups, working together whenever possible.

      I know that sounds like a lot: getting cities, the province, and the feds to collaborate with that many groups. However, in my role I get to work with all of those groups and have seen some real success stories. I’ve also spent most of my professional life in politics and, in the past year, have met with each of the political parties, their housing experts, their leaders, and many of their candidates. For the first time, I am seeing a genuine interest in learning about this issue and trying to solve it. The great thing about elections is that they give everybody a chance to talk about issues. They also give everyone a chance to learn. We can all end up in our little bubbles, looking at the world through the lens of our own situations, but, for many, an election is a chance to be open-minded and to evaluate different perspectives. Hopefully this book provides plenty of perspectives, in addition to my own.

      My own perspective has been shaped by these and many other voices, but also by working and volunteering in the BC political scene for over twenty years, and by the twenty-four times I have moved homes. Over the course of my life, I’ve had the privilege of living in many different types of housing, including social housing, market rentals, and properties I’ve owned: detached homes, a townhome, and my current condo. I don’t think mine is a particularly relatable story because I have lived across the country in everything from abject poverty to working pretty senior-level jobs that have helped me get to know many of the political candidates and leaders running for election in BC, but I do hope it provides context for why I am writing this book about the housing system. In some ways, I am a product of that system, having benefited tremendously from our social safety net. It is still possible for a kid to grow up poor in Canada and to have many of the opportunities I’ve enjoyed, but, by any measure, it is getting harder and harder. The gap you have to leap between each housing type is widening, and far too many British Columbians are feeling stuck in their current predicament. I grew up resenting many aspects of the situation I was born into, including my name, the colour of my skin, and my economic class, but I now feel incredibly fortunate for those experiences because they’ve taught me a lot about myself and what is possible here in Canada.

      That said, the most challenging aspect of writing a book on the topic of affordable housing has been articulating my own experience with it. I spent most of my life avoiding my own history with poverty, not only because I was ashamed of it but also because I didn’t want to be defined by that aspect of myself. Yes, I grew up in and out of social housing, but I also had a long career in politics that I am very proud of. I’ve worked in factories, restaurants, universities, and the tech industry, and I studied leadership theory and change management for my master’s degree. Each of those experiences shaped my perspective and defines me in some way as well. But I also know I wouldn’t have had any of those opportunities if I hadn’t come from where I did, so I want to share a little about my history.

      I was born in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1976. My mom had me when she was seventeen years old, and a few years later, she found herself a single mother of two boys. My mother was always ambitious and resourceful. Often, she worked full-time, sometimes she went to school, and sometimes she received social assistance. When times were good, we’d move from social housing into bigger private-market rentals, but when she needed help, we frequently got it in the form of affordable non-profit housing or by moving to other locations. We briefly moved to Bathurst, New Brunswick, before eventually coming to BC when I was thirteen.

      Affordability wasn’t the only reason we relocated a lot. We were a mixed-race family in an era when that was less common. I was often the object of violent racism and never felt safe. I know some of the relocations my mom made were to protect us. At an early age, I even changed my name from Kishone to my middle name, Tony, to avoid some of the discrimination I constantly felt. Except for a few formal occasions, I used the name Tony Roy until 2016. There were many ups and downs growing up, but, overall, I lived adequately most of the time. The social housing we frequently lived in was far from transit, schools, or jobs, but it was often affordable and usually safe. Even though I felt the stigma of poverty, I now realize, looking back, that those feelings were largely in my own head. The housing provided by non-profits, churches, and service groups was some of the cleanest, most stable, and most important housing I’ve ever lived in.

      I came to Vancouver in 1989 and moved out on my own at age eighteen after I received a unique gift in a Christmas hamper from a non-profit in Coquitlam called SHARE Family and Community Services. We often got extra support from foodbanks and community groups. The year I finished high school we were paired with a donor family who had asked us to submit a list of different things we might want for Christmas. I had written a job. To our surprise, the donor family found me a job: working in a factory in Vancouver. That job gave me the ability to rent my own place. Later, my brother and I found a basement suite in Port Moody and, while he finished high school, I got a small supplement from the government for children staying in the home of a relative. We didn’t own anything at the time, but local charities like the Salvation Army donated a bed to us and a pair of plates, bowls, and utensils. After that, neither of us needed any help again. We went

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