Long-Nosed Leadership: The NDP’s Housing Mirage

Falling rents and good housing policy are not the same thing; British Columbians deserve a government that knows the difference.

Goodman Report

“B.C. leads the country in rent decreases,” Minister of Housing Christine Boyle’s office declared again this month. “We continue to see the effects of our efforts to build a historic amount of affordable housing.” The trends are real, but the lessons being drawn from them are dangerously wrong.

According to CMHC, Metro Vancouver’s vacancy rate climbed to 3.7% in 2025, the highest level since 1988. Rentals.ca data suggests rents in Vancouver have fallen on a year-over-year basis for 30 consecutive months; asking rents are now roughly 20% below their 2023 peak. Minister Boyle would have you believe this is the product of nine years of NDP vision and determination.

CMHC’s just-released mid-year rental market update tells a very different story about why rents are falling in British Columbia – and it has nothing to do with NDP housing policy. The data is unambiguous: reduced demand from a sputtering economy and dramatically slower population growth has smacked into a wave of new supply.

Population growth – arguably the single most powerful engine of rental demand – collapsed after the federal government sharply curtailed the arrival of new immigrants. The young adult cohort – those most likely to form new rental households – declined most as international students and temporary workers left the country. So, the demand suppression that is making rents more affordable is a federal policy effect, not a provincial one.

On the supply side, the completions hitting the market today were conceived in 2020 to 2022 when rents were growing, vacancy and interest rates were both at historic lows, and investment demand for rental properties was through the roof. The current government inherited that pipeline, which was built up under entirely different market conditions. And now, while taking credit for its dividends, they have done everything possible to shut off the tap.

There are two areas where the NDP has had a measurable effect on the market, neither of them positive. Their anti-growth policy environment and hostile rhetoric toward investors have accelerated an exodus of mostly young, working-age residents to other provinces, particularly Alberta, shrinking the renter population the government claims to be serving.

At the same time, small-scale rental condominium investors – who, until recently, have accounted for roughly 40% of rental units in Metro Vancouver – have been exiting the market – spooked by rent controls, regulatory uncertainty, and returns that no longer make business sense. In the short term, reduced demand from those investors has led to a glut of unsold strata units, lower prices, and attractive incentives for buyers. But the more consequential impact is on the longer-term pipeline: pre-sale purchases from small investors are what make construction financing possible, and without them, the next generation of projects simply won’t get built.

CMHC’s 2026 housing market outlook makes this risk explicit: the lack of presales and slower rent growth has stalled many projects, with a continuous slowdown in construction of both condominiums and purpose-built rental projects anticipated through 2028.

The NDP government has not made rents more affordable. Rents fell because of a federal immigration cap and a flood of supply that happened in spite of the NDP policy agenda. That same agenda has all but guaranteed future shortages and a return to untenable rental market conditions: tight supply / rising prices. Investors and developers aren’t ideological actors – they respond to incentives – and right now every signal in B.C. is telling them to look elsewhere.

This is the central problem with the NDP’s celebration of falling rents. Misreading cause and effect in housing policy doesn’t just produce bad press releases – it sets the stage for the next shortage.

Once the current pipeline empties and immigration levels normalize – as they inevitably will – B.C. will find itself in an even tighter position, because the government has systematically dismantled the investment environment needed to build the next generation of rental housing.

There is a more fundamental problem here, one that goes beyond any single policy decision. The province is currently led by elected officials whose ideological agenda is matched only by a fundamental lack of understanding of economics. And no good can come from handing complex files to people who don’t – or won’t – understand the underlying issues.

The developers, investors, and economists who operate in this market every day have been consistent in what they’re telling government. The question is not whether that expertise exists; the question is whether anyone in Victoria is willing to listen.

The NDP will continue publishing monthly press releases as long as rents are falling, claiming credit for a trend they did not create and whose reversal their own policies have already set in motion. The real story – the one the data, the market, and anyone outside the minister’s office is telling – is that the supply pipeline is thinning, investor confidence is shattered, and the conditions that produced today’s apparent affordability are already unwinding.

Falling rents are welcome. But affordability built on a temporary population decline and a depleting supply pipeline is not a policy achievement – it is a countdown to the next crisis.