Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to discuss an important issue for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

We have an affordable housing crisis in my constituency. Our region has had a rapid rise in home prices and rental costs. It is the inevitable consequence of skyrocketing house prices in Vancouver and people moving to the island. It is also related to speculation and money laundering in B.C. real estate. As houses are sold, renovated and flipped, the price of rental stock has gone up along with the cost of buying homes. The most vulnerable people in our community, low-income renters, people with disabilities, low-income seniors and single-parent families, are forced to move and are finding it increasingly difficult to find affordable places to rent.

For the last three years, I ran employment skills training programs for young people with barriers to employment. Of the 60 people I had in my 15-week program, six experienced homelessness while they were in the program. The homes they were living in were sold or renovated and they could not find affordable places to live. I have heard similar stories from seniors.

During the Nanaimo—Ladysmith by-election, I heard over and over again that people were struggling with the cost of housing. I met a young single mother with two children who lived in a campground last summer. She found a place to live in the fall and had that home sold out from under her six months later. She has been dealing with a housing cycle like that for several years. There is no stability for her children.

This is simply not acceptable in a country as wealthy as Canada. We have homeless people living in our parks and bushes around the community. There are people who are couch surfing and homeless. On any given evening, we can see people sleeping in cars in parking lots and on the street.

Last summer, we had a major homeless camp in downtown Nanaimo with hundreds of people living there. Many of the people living in this camp were indigenous, and there were a number of people with mental health and addiction issues. A few of the homeless people who were desperate and in survival mode engaged in criminality. There was a growing community backlash to the camp. Homeless people were threatened and bottles thrown at them in the camp at night. Some were physically attacked in the streets. We had the Soldiers of Odin marching in our streets and threatening vigilante action against the people in the camp. The businesses in the downtown core suffered from a loss of revenue as people avoided our downtown.

B.C. Housing set up emergency temporary housing for people in the camp, but the homeless people who were not in the camp did not get the same access to this emergency housing. This emergency housing is only a band-aid, but it does not cover the whole wound. The homeless situation in my constituency is exacerbated by a lack of mental health and addictions services.

We need help in Nanaimo—Ladysmith. We need more purpose-built, affordable, energy-efficient housing. Developers and builders are not going to create low-income housing without incentives from the government. They are in business. Affordable rental units cannot compete with the margins available for market housing.

We could really use some co-operative housing in our community. Co-op housing is an excellent model for affordable housing. Co-ops are owned by the community they are in and they are not susceptible to real estate speculation, changing ownership or rent evictions. People pay rent based on their incomes. If they start to earn more, they pay more. If people lose their jobs they do not lose their homes. Seniors can age in place. The federal government needs to support co-op housing the way it did decades ago.

The City of Nanaimo is struggling with this affordable housing crisis. I would like to know what the government can do now to help our community with this crisis. What emergency measures is the government prepared to take to help with this crisis right now, not next year, not in two years or four years, but now?

Paul Manly

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