The Sunshine Coast could be facing a massive increase in development pressures, all due to proximity and the process of elimination.
On Tuesday, in its first full budget, B.C.’s NDP government announced it was increasing the foreign buyers tax on residential property from 15 per cent to 20 per cent and extending it beyond Metro Vancouver to also include the Victoria, Nanaimo, Fraser Valley and Central Okanagan regions.
The budget also introduced a new speculation tax on residential properties that will take effect this fall in the same metropolitan areas. Targeting foreign and domestic property owners who don’t pay income tax in B.C., the new tax will levy 0.5 per cent of assessed value in 2018 and two per cent starting in 2019.
The decision to apply the two taxes to communities beyond Metro Vancouver, according to Finance Minister Carole James, “ensures that we don’t simply push the speculation into other markets.”
That’s apparently not how Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons sees it. Simons said this week that he does not agree with excluding the lower Sunshine Coast, that he’s raised the issue with his government and will be looking for an explanation.
We expect more than a few realtors, developers and ready-to-sell property owners would like to tell Simons to mind his own business and peddle his message for Powell River instead.
Simons’ concerns, however, are understandable.
In terms of housing affordability, there’s no question that the Coast will be positioned to take a quantum leap in the opposite direction.
And there’s no question that the region’s water and transportation infrastructure, already under significant pressure, could hit overload very quickly if the Coast is overwhelmed with new developments, higher densities and the resulting heavier daily consumption and traffic.
We thought local governments had their hands full before Tuesday’s budget.
Suddenly, yesterday’s problems look almost quaint.
John Gleeson is the editor of the Coast Reporter in Sechelt, BC.
