BEFORE WE CALL GOVERNMENT PLAN TO BUY EMPTY CONDOS A BAILOUT, LET'S LOOK AT THE MATH

Originally published in the Vancouver Sun on July 8, 2026.

By National Bank’s measure, nowhere in Canada is housing less affordable than in B.C. Yet the province is also sitting on thousands of empty new homes. According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. data, B.C. had 5,849 finished, unsold condos in May — up sharply over the past year. Homes built, empty and waiting, in the very place people say they can’t find one.

That isn’t just a contradiction, it’s an opportunity. Picture a pantry full of food about to spoil while people go hungry at the door. Handing it over won’t end hunger — but it puts something real to good use and helps people who need it. That is the spirit of what the federal and provincial governments are trying: buy the empty units and turn them into affordable, rent-to-own homes. It’s opportunistic in the best sense of the word. And our position is simple: Don’t shut down a promising, innovative idea before you do the math.

Here’s the plan, without the noise: According to the two governments, they will spend roughly $1.45 billion to convert more than 2,200 vacant units into rent-to-own homes, bought below the cost of construction. Before we go much further, one thing is worth pointing out, because much of the coverage didn’t: this is separate from the $3.2-billion cut to development charges announced the same day. And while the story is often illustrated featuring Vancouver’s priciest towers, Premier David Eby says the deal won’t include the City of Vancouver — the empty units are mostly in Burnaby and Richmond.

More remedial math: Of the announced $1.45 billion, only about $300 million is direct government money — roughly $135,000 per unit. The rest is financing and, as Eby notes, the mortgage becomes an asset the public holds, not money spent. Building the same homes from scratch would cost more and take years, but these are ready to house people now. There is a knock-on effect, too — fill 2,200 units and you free up as many as 2,200 rentals for the next family down the ladder.

There is a catch, and it’s real. New condos like these run at an average of $1.1 million, according to analyst Mark Goodman — so 2,200 at market prices would cost $2.2 billion to $2.5 billion, well above the $1.45-billion budget. Obviously, the math only works if governments buy at a deep discount. And that will be the number to judge — not a reason to reject the idea before we’ve seen it.

To be clear, this is where this proposal succeeds or fails.

Pay yesterday’s prices and taxpayers lose. Force developers into fire-sale prices and you risk discouraging the very investment needed to build tomorrow’s housing. Somewhere between the two extremes lies a fair price — one that reflects today’s market rather than yesterday’s expectations.

Let’s not forget millions of Canadians have built their lives around the value of a home. They don’t want governments artificially inflating housing prices. Neither do they want governments engineering a collapse. They simply want confidence that the rules remain fair. That concern deserves respect.

So does the frustration of young families watching home ownership drift further out of reach.

The challenge isn’t choosing one side over the other. It’s finding a deal that turns empty condos into homes — without making a worse mess.

Critics ask a fair question: Does this scheme make housing more affordable? Honestly, not in the way people usually mean — it won’t push prices down. But getting 2,200 families out of the rental scramble and into homes where they can build equity now is worth doing on its own.

Maybe this turns out to be a bailout. Maybe it becomes one of the largest affordable-housing efforts in the province’s history. At last Thursday’s news conference, Eby said, “When you buy something that’s on liquidation, you don’t say to yourself ‘I’m supporting a bailout for the store.’”

But really, we can’t know until the details land — so the worst thing we can do is kill it prematurely on a slogan. As the prime minister put it, judge it on the economics, not the politics. The housing crisis is real. This is one idea worth testing, among the many we will need.