Reading Time: 3 minutes Property tax rates are much higher for businesses than home owners, which can cause serious problems, particularly when the economy falters
Author: Josef Filipowicz
Josef Filipowicz is a local government and housing policy specialist with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. He holds an M.A. in Political Science from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning from Ryerson University. From September 2014 to April 2020, Josef was a policy analyst at the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Municipal Studies, where he was the author of more than 15 studies on land-use regulations, housing affordability, property taxation, and municipal finance. He also commented frequently on policy issues in these fields, notably through radio and television interviews, panel discussions, public presentations, and more than 140 blogs and op-eds.
Feds should stop trying to fix Canadian housing markets
Reading Time: 3 minutes That’s a job better left to municipal and provincial governments, which can actually have an impact on supply and demand
A tale of two cities and their wildly different spending habits
Reading Time: 3 minutes Vancouver taxes and spends far more than neighbouring Surrey. But do Vancouverites get value for their greater investment?
City hall holds the key to solving Canada’s urban housing crisis
Reading Time: 3 minutes As centres for jobs, education and innovation, municipalities play an outsized role in Canada’s continued prosperity
B.C. wants more rental units; will municipalities follow through?
Reading Time: 3 minutes New zoning powers for local governments will only meaningfully affect rental vacancy rates if cities streamline approval processes
In Florida, they’re snowbirds, in B.C., they’re speculators
Reading Time: 3 minutes Penalizing foreign homebuyers fails to address the fundamental problem: a lack of available houses
How B.C. can escape its painful housing trap
Reading Time: 3 minutes Instead of targeting affordable housing, B.C. government should be targeting housing affordability
The urban squeeze myth laid bare
Reading Time: 3 minutes Concerns about density are misplaced – Toronto and Vancouver have plenty of room to grow up and grow more affordable
Market factors, not national strategies, make housing affordable
Reading Time: 3 minutes As homes age, they should filter through various socio-economic strata. But construction approval roadblocks slow that process to a crawl
Open the door to more affordable housing in Calgary
Reading Time: 3 minutes Calgary’s new city council must encourage secondary suites, remove parking requirements and streamline permit processes