FILE PHOTO - Kelonwa city councillors Gail Given and Luke Stack are seen in this undated file photo.

(ADAM PROSKIW / iNFOnews.ca)

Kelowna city council and staff have “pulled every lever” to improve housing affordability but can't compete against the real estate market.

At least that’s what city councillors said today, Jan. 10, in response to a staff report that points to Kelowna as one of the most unaffordable cities in the country, if not the world.

“Pretty much every opportunity that‘s available to municipalities these days, we’ve been doing,” city councillor Luke Stack said. He should know, he’s executive director of the Society of Hope the provides affordable housing.

READ MORE: Kelowna is one of the most unaffordable cities in Canada and looking for ways to change

He pointed to tax incentives for developers building rental units, parking concessions for rentals, supportive housing, land the city has provided for affordable housing and more.

“I don’t know if we could have done more,” he said. “The reality is that the market forces are just so big that we can’t out-policy the market. When people come here and are prepared to pay 30% more this year than last year for housing, that’s a market force that I know we can’t respond to.”

Councillor Gail Given echoed those sentiments, talking about how she’s spent her past decade on council trying to make the city a place where her children could live.

“Never did I think that I’d come to this point in time, after all the decisions that we’ve made to support so many programs,” she said. “We pulled every lever to improve affordability. To have seen the news in the last couple of weeks that has, quite honestly, left my kids, who are saving for a down payment on a home, completely deflated.”

READ MORE: 2021 record year for Okanagan real estate sales

The news she referred to included reports on the Association of Interior Realtor’s year-end statistics showing the benchmark price for a single family home rose 31.8% from December 2020 to just over $1 million in December 2021.

B.C. Assessment also released its annual update on assessed values last week that showed a 34% increase in Kelowna.

“It’s market driven,” Given said. “We could cut the DCCs (development cost charges) in half and those units would sell for the very same price. Prices would not be lowered because that’s what the market is wiling to pay.”

READ MORE: House price assessments increase roughly 30 per cent in Kamloops, Okanagan

A city policy to allow four-plexes on single-family lots near downtown simply drove up prices, Given said.

“Developers were knocking on their (homeowner’s) doors driving them crazy and offering them ridiculous prices,” she said. “Homes that people would have expected to receive $400,000 to $500,000 for were seeing offers of $600,000 for their properties because that’s what fit the developers’ pro forma. Those very same properties today, which are basically tear-downs, so the value is in the land, are selling for $800,000 to $850,000. Up-zoning does drive land values.”

She cited the example of Cambridge, Mass. from the report given by staff. That city allowed similar up-zoning but only if some of the units were offered a below market rates.

Councillor Brad Sieben said the levers the city can pull are very small and said the affordability issue was like a huge freighter and the city was a tugboat unable to move it.

He suggested that staff break out various components of the housing picture, such as rentals, first-time home ownership and supportive housing, as separate discussions.

Staff will do a housing needs assessment this year and follow that up with an update to its Healthy Housing Strategy.

Councillor Loyal Wooldridge got council to also support his motion for staff to report back on “key recommendations on financial resources and policies needed for its affordable land acquisition strategy” that was first presented a year ago.

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