One of the issues that has come up in this election is housing, especially rental units. Right now, the province has the second lowest rental units per capita. The Association of Saskatchewan Realtors is proposing a tax incentive to increase the number of rental units.
Len Wassill with the Saskatchewan Association of Realtors says while the rental situation isn't as bad as it could be, it's time to start looking at ways to increase the rental stock in order to prevent a problem from happening.
"I don't think it's a crisis, but we do believe we have to look long term. As Saskatchewan grows and continues to get more people we are going to wind up in a situation where we just don't have enough rental units for the people who are coming here. It's better to be proactive than reactive," he says.
For a short term solution, Wassill suggests more flexible local rules for secondary suites in homes, but the focus needs to be on multi-unit rental units. The solution involves making the development of new rental buildings appealing to investors, Wassill suggests.
He says there should be a tax incentive which would see a percentage of the investment returned to investors who develop either new buildings or do significant renovations to old buildings which allow people to move in.
One thing that the association doesn't see helping development is rent control. Wassill says he believes getting more units on the market is the primary goal of any programs designed to help with housing.
"Rent control doesn't solve the problem. We feel that the market will solve the problem by bringing more units on to the marketplace."
He notes that there were rent controls in Saskatchewan around 20 years ago, and they curbed the development of new multi-unit residential buildings, and this lead to the problems in rental supply today.
"By capping off rents and not allowing the market to set rents, investors backed off and went to other places where they could get a decent return."
Wassill notes that the association isn't endorsing either political party, and he says they have a good working relationship with both the Saskatchewan Party and the NDP.
The goal of this proposal is to simply present ideas for keeping the people of the province in good homes.
Wassill says he has recently been to places where the housing shortage is more pronounced than in Saskatchewan, with people resorting to living in mobile homes, and he says this is a solution to help this province avoid that fate.
"I think we want every person who lives in our province to have a nice, clean, solid, warm place to call home, not have to sleep on the street or live in an old mobile home. Somewhere they can call home that's a bit better," Wassill concludes.
