A government plan to buy empty condominiums and turn them into affordable housing in British Columbia might be more about stabilizing the financial sector than housing, an urban planning expert says.
Some have criticized the federal and B.C. government's plan to convert unsold condos in a plan that Prime Minister Mark Carney said would use "innovative financial tools" as the most efficient ways to increase housing supply.
Carney said last week that effectively "what you're doing is buying them at a price, spreading out the financing," but details, including whether the condos would ultimately be rented out or resold, would not be released until the fall.
Carney and B.C. Premier David Eby said the plan would involve converting 2,200 unsold condos as part of a larger housing plan worth $5 billion over the next decade.
Andy Yan, the director of the city program at Simon Fraser University, said the proposal may signal to developers and their financial backers that government wants to stabilize the struggling sector.
But Yan said the announcement leaves many questions unanswered, including purchase cost, which condos would be bought and why is government acting now.
"The whole issue is, all these kinds of details, are missing," he said.
He said government did not act like this in the mid-1990s, when the level of unsold condominiums was similar, but back then incomes and housing costs were more closely aligned.
Figures from the Canadian Mortgage Housing show 5,849 unabsorbed apartments across B.C. in May 2026, with 4,376 unabsorbed apartments in Metro Vancouver, accounting for 75 per cent of all unsold units.
In December 1995, there were 3,331 unabsorbed apartments, Yan said, noting that Metro Vancouver's population back then was smaller.
What has happened since is that housing prices have decoupled from incomes, he said.
"It's speculative at this point, (but) you can kind of see this as really trying to get ahead of what happened in the United States," Yan said, referring to the subprime mortgage crisis starting in 2007, where many borrowers couldn't pay their mortgages, triggering a recession.
"Is this the prime minister trying to create a new floor for Vancouver housing prices?" Yan said.
Carney told the news conference last week that with higher interest rates and weaker demand, developers "are stuck," and don't want to sell at a loss.
But B.C. Conservative housing critic Linda Hepner says the housing crisis won't be solved by "wasting taxpayer dollars on artificially propping up developers."
“If prices are set too high for condo units to be sold, market forces will cause the prices to lower until people can afford them," she said in a statement. "But if developers know that the government will simply bail them out if the condos sit vacant long enough, they will never drop their prices, making the housing crisis even worse.”
Yan also said that the program raises questions about government interfering with the market.
Policy-makers and some industry leaders have long told the public that housing has a supply problem, Yan said.
"Now, with this type of housing coming online, the market should allow prices to naturally come down," he said.
It could also set a precedent for other industries to ask for financial help from the public purse, Yan said.
Last week's announcement also raised questions at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities.
Coun. Jenna Stoner said her organization was still trying to figure out what the plan means.
"We are all kind of left scratching our heads a little bit, because there were very few details provided," she said. While the intention was to potentially purchase condos to make them available at below-market levels, it was not clear who would run or own them, she said. "So, really at this point, local governments are taking a wait-and-see approach."
The province, Stoner said, should also explain why the funds announced last week were not being used to support the community housing fund, created in 2018 to help build affordable rental housing.
The provincial government retroactively cancelled its latest call for funding and indefinitely suspended future calls.
"The pullback from the province on that affordable housing program has been a real frustration for local governments," said Stoner, a councillor in the District of Squamish. "There were many projects in the wings … waiting to be funded that were just left stranded by the province."
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
