Human Resources committee  I think reducing costs is definitely important. If we want to have housing that's less expensive, it doesn't make sense to replace older housing with new housing that, after you subtract all the costs of constructing it, including taxes and development charges, is worth less than what was there before.

Human Resources committee  Think of the housing system as a ladder. When we don't have enough housing at whatever level of the ladder—when we have this overall housing shortage—it's definitely going to be worse for people near the bottom of the housing ladder. You get trickle-down evictions as people are looking for a place to live.

Human Resources committee  The other thing I would say is that in order to get the.... I'm sorry. Should I stop?

Human Resources committee  I would say we are strong supporters of both market and non-market housing. The thing about non-market housing is that, even when funding is available, it tends to run into exactly the same barriers with respect to approvals as market housing. We had a situation a little while back where the provincial government was saying it was willing to give us funding to build 600 non-market apartments, putting them pretty close to the downtown area.

Human Resources committee  Locally, in metro Vancouver, there was actually a big fight over this issue. The Metro Vancouver Regional District, which is responsible for water and sewer infrastructure, decided to lower the burden on property taxpayers from, I don't know, 12% or something to 1%, thus raising the DCCs on new housing at exactly the same time the federal government was taking away the GST on rental housing.

Human Resources committee  I think it's fair to say that the federal government, B.C. government and Ontario government have all been pushing municipalities to try to either slow down increases, freeze development charges or reduce development charges. The new Canada infrastructure fund has some conditions.

Human Resources committee  Yes, for sure.

Human Resources committee  That's why I was talking about Machiavelli. You need persuasion. I think the fact that we're talking about this, that Sean Fraser highlighted this and that there are all of these conditions we're trying to put on to say—

Human Resources committee  Thank you. Hello. My name is Russil Wvong. I'm a volunteer with Abundant Housing Vancouver. I don’t work in development or in policy. I just read all the reports. I’d like to focus on three things. We have increasing homelessness because we have an overall dire shortage of housing, and it's worse for the people who are poorest.