B.C. Housing Minister Minister Ravi Kahlon is looking to attract many partners as the company expands a home-purchase finance program.

The government announced plans last Thursday to finance the purchases of 2,600 new homes in a future strata leasehold multi-residential project in Vancouver.

“Our goal is to scale this up,” said Kahlon.

He made the comment in an interview with Connect Canada CRE following a news conference at the proposed Vancouver development site. “If it can be done here, it can be done across the province, but it’ll look different in different projects.”

The program is geared largely toward first-time home buyers and people who have difficulty purchasing a home. If all goes according to plan, each buyer will pay 60% of a unit’s market price, while the province covers the remaining 40%.

The buyer would repay the 40% through a 25-year mortgage or if the owner sells the unit beforehand. The province has estimate that it will invested an estimated $675 million in the Vancouver “attainable housing initiative.”

“This was unique because MST [Development Corporation] came forward with this type of arrangement,” said Kahlon.

Plans call for the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations to provide what are known as the Heather Lands under a 99-year lease. MST Development Corporation, a local joint-venture owned by the three Indigenous groups.

“We’re also talking to different investment firms, investment portfolios, to say: How can you partner with us and government to be able to unlock this type of model going into the future?” said Kahlon. “So it might not exactly look like this everywhere, but the idea of home ownership and making it more attainable is a goal. And so, we’re going to look to see how this goes and add different components with different partners as we go forward.

The proposed Vancouver multi-building development site located on Heather Street between West 33rd Avenue and West 37th Avenue. The government contends that the finance program will provide home ownership for thousands of middle-class people who could not afford to buy them otherwise.

“Not everybody can go to Mom and Dad Bank to get housing,” said Kahlon. “So, this model of only paying 60%, or financing up to 60%, of the home will make [home ownership] more attainable for a lot of people.”

The finance program requires legislative approval before it can be implemented. But there is no guarantee of approval, because Premier David Eby’s B.C. NDP Party must win another election first.

The province announced the Vancouver financing program before the writ was dropped Saturday for the upcoming October provincial election. The writ dropped automatically because B.C. has fixed-date-election legislation that requires voters to go to the polls on October 19, the date on which the governing B.C. NDP Party’s term expires.

Eby still could have opted to call an early election as some pundits thought he might. But he decided to let the term run out. However, the government announced the Vancouver project with Eby in pre-campaign mode.

“We can launch the [buyer] registry before the election because of election rules and marketing,” said Kahlon. “But our goal is to launch a registry for people to register after the election.

“In the next year, we’ll have an independent agency come in that will work with government to make sure there’s oversight in people’s applications.”

A Conservative victory could lead to the proposed finance program being scrapped. Housing will be a main campaign issue.

If the NDP remains in office, the finance program will be implemented next spring. The Vancouver project and the program’s expansion will launch soon afterward.

While multi-residential projects make the most sense in a large market like Vancouver, plans call for housing types to vary by community, said Kahlon.

“It’s not limited to one type of housing over another, but because of the scale of this, 2,600 homes, that is significant for Vancouver [and] for the [Heather Lands] community,” said Kahlon. “It made sense.”

Smaller communities would get smaller projects.The government is “agnostic” on the housing types.

“We’re more keen to find ways to get the affordable homeownership opportunity,” said Kahlon.

(Pictured: Provincial government and City of Vancouver officials; and Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations at the site of the proposed Heather Lands multi-residential development project in Vancouver.)

(Photo: © Monte Stewart. All rights reserved. No republication permitted without prior permission.)