Canada's NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was in Coquitlam this morning, March 12, to announce his party's plan to ensure a national Rental Protection Fund is part of the next federal budget.
Singh, the Burnaby South MP who was joined by Port Moody–Coquitlam MP Bonita Zarrillo at a news conference at the Tri-Branch Co-op, said his party will use the B.C. Rental Protection Fund model to expand the program across the country.
The fund would be used to help nonprofits buy affordable housing when it’s on the market and keep it affordable for renters in those buildings.
He said tenants in rental units shouldn't have to live in fear, thinking one day their complexes will be sold to corporations and developers.
Julianne "Jewels" Cressman, the president of the Tri-Branch Co-op on Packard Avenue in Coquitlam, told Singh her members — as well as those in the sister building across the road, at Garden Court — had been worrying for years about losing their units as their lease came up.
But, last month, at Garden Court, Premier David Eby said Tri-Branch and Garden Court would be the first in B.C to receive up to $71 million from the province's new $500-million Rental Protection Fund.
That money will be used by the Community Land Trust of B.C. to purchase the two co-ops that were built more than 40 years ago by the federal government.
Without the contribution, the 290 affordable units in the two buildings “would have been lost forever,” Eby said.
Singh said the B.C. fund is an example the federal NDP will follow to "empower community to keep affordable housing affordable."
“This housing market — designed by Liberals and Conservatives to make rich investors rich — is not working for people,” Singh said.
“It’s not working for everyday folks and it means for everyday folks a constant fear: A constant fear that your rent is going to go up; a constant fear that your mortgage is going to go up; a constant fear that you’re going to lose your home and that’s how the people here at Tri-Branch felt. They lived in constant fear for years where they did not know what was going to happen to their housing. They did not know there was going to be a place called home.”
Zarrillo said if Tri-City residents get “renovicted,” displaced or priced out of the market, there’s no where to go locally as Coquitlam has vacancy rates as low as 0.3 per cent.
“Having a decent, affordable place is an absolute necessity,” she said, “and the fear of losing your home needs to stop.”
“Right now,” she continued, “due to the rising rental prices, there are tenants in our community — right here in the Tri-Cities — spending 100 per cent of their income on rent. This is untenable. No one in this country should have to live like that with those worries.”
