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Affordable
Housing A Distant Memory
http://www.wcr.ab.ca/columns/editorials/2007/editorial052107.shtml
Week of May 21, 2007
Private property is an essential part of a healthy
social order and a democratic society. But the right
to own private property is not absolute and
untouchable. It is subordinate to the right of all to
a fair share of the goods of creation. In fact,
private property needs to be regulated in order to
ensure that all people have access to their rightful
share of society's goods. That, in a nutshell, is the
Catholic teaching on private property. While it is a
teaching that can be explained in terms of divine
revelation, it is at heart based on natural justice.
If we want a good society, private property cannot be
abolished. Nor can it be allowed to take priority over
meeting human needs.
This social teaching is of great relevance to the
current skyrocketing housing prices and rental costs
in Alberta. The ability of middle and low-income
Albertans to find and keep affordable housing has been
seriously compromised by a booming economy. Sale
prices for homes in the province's major centres have
shot through the roof over the last couple of years,
seriously impairing the ability of people to buy their
own homes. Rents have also skyrocketed, in some cases
by $1,000 or more a month. In one well-publicized
case, the rent on a basement suite for a low-income
couple was cranked up from $495 to $1,695 a month.
Likely the majority of landlords have avoided giving
their tenants outrageous increases. But some have been
openly exploitive of a situation of low vacancy rates
combined with growing numbers of well-paid workers.
The ability of middle and low-income Albertans to find
and keep affordable housing has been seriously
compromised by a booming economy.Meanwhile, the
likelihood of more rental units being built in a
climate of high construction costs is low. Relief for
tenants is nowhere in sight.
The provincial government, while not turning a blind
eye, has responded ineffectually. It has set aside
$285 million for affordable housing for low-income
people and has talked of refusing government funds to
landlords who treat tenants unfairly. Its free
enterprise ideology has kept it from taking the
obvious step of imposing rent controls, even though
the vast majority of Albertans favour such controls.
Rent controls need not be the ham-fisted vehicle they
are often portrayed as. Apartment owners can still be
allowed a reasonable profit and allowances can be made
for larger rent increases when landlords upgrade their
properties. Government has a responsibility to defend
the weakest, most defenceless members of society, a
responsibility this government is currently failing to
exercise. The deeper issue is that of the over-heated
economy itself. The premier has said he will do
nothing to slow the pace of tar sands development in
northern Alberta. Yet this untrammelled economic
growth is the root cause of skyrocketing housing
prices.
Truth be told, it is also having serious environmental
costs, is an engine driving large hikes in property
taxes and has even coincided with sharp increases in
sexually-transmitted diseases.
The tar sands are not going away. They have covered a
quarter of Alberta for tens of thousands of years. Nor
is the world demand for oil going to disappear in the
foreseeable future. A more measured and regulated
development of the tar sands would be in both the
short-term and long-term interests of the people of
Alberta.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of The Church
says, "Those people and societies that go so far as to
absolutize the role of property end up experiencing
the bitterest type of slavery" (no. 181). Slavery is
an overly harsh term to describe what Alberta is now
undergoing. But our priorities are seriously out of
whack.
Greater government oversight and control of the pace
of growth and its undesirable effects would not be a
step towards socialism. Rather, they would move us
towards ensuring the people of Alberta can afford
basic necessities and have a fairer chance at having a
good quality of life.
- Glen Argan |
