Populist "rent freeze" catch phrase may bring unintended consequences

Again, I don't want to minimize the struggle by middle and modest income earners who already struggle to pay rents in BC, but this call for a 'rent freeze' by some civic political candidates I believe is misguided and fraught with risks.

A Rent Freeze by definition is a price control mechanism. BC already has a rent control device, which apparently is inadequate for it to allow a 4.5% annual maximum increase for 2019. Its true that the regulatory framework that the Residential Tenancy Branch uses to establish such rate controls could use some reform.

But to arbitrarily freeze rates would open a can of worms that I believe are unintended consequences of their intended goal. In real world experiences where this has been done, its triggered an ironical result of higher rent increases and a drop in rental supply; almost the same result as general price controls in the early 70's in the OPEC Oil embargo, fuel shortages were triggered. I haven't signed up to the neo-liberal economic philosophy, but I respect facts.

But there's another problem.

If we're to fight income inequality just through a rent freeze, we've completely missed the point. We didn't arrive at un-affordable rent overnight. This is the result of planning and the unintended consequences of ideals of the BC Liberal government. Theirs were variations of trickle-down applied in different areas. It was a 16 year war on middle and modest income earners to the gain of the 1%. As it turns out, when folks expected to be the working class of an economy cannot afford to live in the region their paycheques are supposed to sustain, then the model is broken. Or rather, doing exactly as intended.

To impose a rent freeze is to let the BC Liberals off the hook for their catastrophic failure to manage the economy in the last 16 years. Right now, the BC Liberals are goading the NDP into doing such a freeze, knowing exactly where it would lead.

Advice: don't take the bait.

What the NDP can do; increase the minimum wage, spend on public owned rental stock, invest in skills training and apprenticeships. This adds supply to the market (and, as its public sector, its non-profit), and increases wages and income levels.

The current income inequality gap is most profound in BC today because the BC Liberals abandoned a whole generation of BC workers and youth when they gutted the apprenticeship and training programs. This wasn't for lack of demand: the need for trained blue collar trades is evident as major construction projects relied more and more on temporary foreign workers instead of our own citizens.

So younger BC workers drifted from one low wage job to another, paying high tuition rates and student loans while your BC government went elsewhere to find workers to work in middle class careers.

To be fair, income inequality isn't a thing invented solely by the BC Liberals. But their so-called leadership in the last 16 years and their abandoning of public responsibilities to invest in our youth to build and maintain the economy for the future has made it worse.

And we haven't even discussed the BC Liberals deregulation of the real estate market, ineptitude regarding the 'liberal' flow of #dirtymoney into the market that lead to the hyper explosive growth in prices - making expensive homes completely out of range for all but the 1%.

These were made possible by political decisions by the government of Christy Clark and Gordon Campbell. Undoing this damage isn't going to be done overnight, but remember how we got here.

May this never be allowed to happen again.

My 2 bits

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