Howard is based in Burnaby and covers real estate, housing policy, and the development industry. You can email him at [email protected] or message him anonymously on Signal at HowardChai.24.
Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs Ravi Kahlon making an announcement on December 5, 2024. / Government of British Columbia, FlickrKahlon discusses the suite of legislation that municipalities spent the past year implementing and what to expect from his ministry in 2025.After being appointed as Minister of Housing in December 2022, Ravi Kahlon spent much of 2023 — particularly the latter half of the year — introducing a suite of legislation focused on housing and development.
In hindsight, is there anything you would've done differently, whether it be the details of the legislation, or the timing, or the implementation? And by the way, it's not just developers who have that concern; not-for-profit housing people have that concern as well, where you have a project that's being approved and then all of a sudden they're told that they have to double the parking or pay more CACs. It's happening to everyone and, quite frankly, in this type of housing environment, that's unacceptable.
You mentioned earlier that this year will be about "execution." Can we also expect any new pieces of legislation this year? Well, it varies from region to region, but I would say that what we heard clearly from people is they want to see more results on the ground. They understood that we've taken action, but they haven't yet seen the housing come online. They haven't seen — at that point — the rents start to stabilize or come down. Even from the election to now, we've seenmonth over month, consistently. We're seeing, continuously, steady housing starts.
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