BY MICHAEL WALL
The Dec. 11, 2024 Driftwood included an article announcing the current living wage for Salt Spring. I found the report disturbing for several reasons. The methodology for calculating this $26.25-per-hour wage is a family of four with both parents working full time. I’m disgusted that this situation has been normalized in the 21st century.
Younger readers will not believe what I experienced as a child: most families in my town lived comfortably, and paid rent or mortgage with only one parent working. This was in an England impoverished by the ravages of World War II. After the war, a new “social contract” was established, by a progressive government, which created the National Health Service so that every citizen could enjoy coverage for health, including dental, optical and prescription drugs. Education was free from kindergarten through Grade 12, and means-tested grants for post-secondary education were available, which covered all tuition and living expenses. I benefitted from the latter and have a degree paid for by the state, for which I am very grateful.
To younger people my childhood circumstances may seem idyllic. So why couldn’t these apply now in a Canada which is infinitely richer than war-torn Britain? And why is it so difficult for them to afford to live and find affordable housing? The answers to these questions are complex, but boil down to this: large corporations and the wealthy don’t pay enough tax.
In the three decades after WWII, corporations, high earners and the wealthy paid taxes at a rate which contributed sufficiently to the wellbeing of all members of society. But by the end of the ‘70s the wealthy were frustrated that they weren’t able to increase their wealth as quickly as they wanted, and they found a new economic doctrine — neo-liberalism — which purported to free everyone from the “straitjacket” of mutual caring. They did a great PR job on this internationally and pretty soon everybody had been sold on the virtues of personal greed, the survival of the fittest and radical reductions in corporate and wealth taxes.
Faced with much smaller tax revenues, governments had to reduce spending, and among the first savings they made in Canada was by stopping the building of public housing, convinced the market would provide it instead. But the market is only interested in building one thing — the wealth of its owners. Developers built housing for a demographic which would give them maximum profits. Affordable housing was rarely built and whenever a commodity is in short supply, its value increases — as did rents. Eventually the wealthy and investment firms discovered that they could buy up multiple housing units and rent them out at high rates of return. Rents rose again and, with competition from multi-home owners, property values also rose, pricing first-time home purchasers out of the market. Then came Airbnb, and owners realized they could make even more money from short-term rentals.
These are the principal reasons for the lack of affordable housing in every jurisdiction across Canada and in other countries. To suggest, as Salt Spring Solutions does, that our housing problems are caused by local government factors or zoning is misguided. The only way out of this housing shortage is for governments to resume creating affordable housing in our communities and assisting non-profits and co-ops to do so, and by reverting illegal short-term vacation rentals back into long-term rentals.