- What The Liberal party released its platform last weekend
- Why It included plans for building purpose-built rentals
- What next The platform promised to relaunch the MURB program of the 1970s
Following is Green Street News’ analysis of the Liberal Party’s platform relating to housing. Read about the Conservative Party’s platform here.
The Liberal Party of Canada, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, will facilitate converting existing structures into affordable rentals and will create tax incentives to build rental housing, according to its platform released last weekend.
Canada’s election campaign is heading into its final stretch and, though it is overshadowed by trade tensions with the United States, the nation’s housing crisis remains a campaign issue.
Rent and the cost of buying homes have risen beyond the reach of many over the last five years, with many saying the federal government has not reacted to the crisis.
Mike Moffatt, founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative at the University of Ottawa, said there hasn’t been much focus on the rental side of the housing equation in the election campaign, mainly because more recently the federal government already has made some headway with its efforts to build more rentals.
“For the most part it does seem that the focus is on ownership,” Moffatt said. “Not on policies like trying to lower development charges, which kind of affect ownership and rental somewhat equally.”
The return of MURB
But there is one nod to rental housing concerns in the Liberal platform: the promise to bring back the Multi-Unit Rental Building policy, known as “MURB.”
The program is credited by many for spurring the construction of tens of thousands of rental homes across the country via tax incentives for developers.
The platform did not provide further details on what incentives would be put in place.
Tony Quattrin, a Vancouver-based vice chair of capital markets for CBRE, said the program was effective in the 1970s.
“It was really a tax flow-through program designed to attract capital into the residential multifamily market,” Quattrin said.
The policy allowed those invested in MURBs to apply tax deductions from other income to their developments, taking away some hesitancy to invest in rental housing.
Quattrin said such programs and other tax easements around housing are a way forward in the housing crisis.
“Anything that does that will definitely help,” he said.
Rentals complicated in larger cities
Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, said financial constraints on renters in Canadian cities make the drive for purpose-built rentals more complicated.
“It’s interesting seeing the Liberals attempt to focus on that kind of building,” Yan said. “But then also seeing the limits of what can be built for purpose-built rentals given the profiles of purpose-built renters in Canada.”
In British Columbia, for instance, the average renter earns about $63,000 annually, and newer purpose-built rentals are too expensive for them to afford. The average homeowner earns $100,000 annually.
Tax-forgiveness measures focused on creating rental spaces historically determine the success of such programs, he said.
The MURB program, for example, resulted in large amounts of rental housing being built by smaller investors and developers.
But, Yan said, whether the model will work as well in the modern era, and whether it can be implemented successfully across differing Canadian markets, are open questions.
“This is of course the biggest challenge, we’re talking about what was built in the 1970s, is it applicable to 2025?” Yan said.
