Vacancy Tax and Affordable Housing

Emma Buchanan interviewed Omar Ha-Redeye in the Ryersonian, in City offers vacancy tax solution to improve the future of affordable housing,

Toronto estimates the tax could make $55 to $66 million in revenue. The city’s news release says the money will be used to “fund affordable housing projects.” 

“To introduce a vacant home tax at this particular juncture is a little bit strange,” said Omar Ha-Redeye, executive director of Durham Community Legal Clinic & Access to Justice Hub and law professor at Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management. “I think any measure that would improve the affordability of housing for students and for others is a good thing… I just don’t think that everybody is convinced that the vacant home tax is the way to do it.”

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Ha-Redeye said that because of the enormous backlog and confusion in hearings from the last eviction ban, “the last thing in the world that you want at this point in time… is to have your tenancy dragged before the Landlord and Tenant Board.”

Ha-Redeye added that both the vacancy tax and the rent freeze are not long-term solutions because of the exemptions and ways property owners can get around them. He said measures instead need to challenge the assumption that building more will bring prices down.

“We have to reimagine how we’re doing things,” he said, “[and] really have to look at housing in a different way. It’s not simply a matter of increasing the surplus.”