(Councillors Bruce Findlay and Tek Manhas with Becky Hogg at Chemainus all-candidates meeting.)
North Cowichan byelection candidates debate Becky Hogg claim more housing means lower taxes
Experts tell sixmountains.ca the link is neither straight forward nor assured
There’s a lot at stake in the North Cowichan byelection.
And two standing-room-only, all-candidates meetings — in Maple Bay and Chemainus — are evidence that residents are taking it seriously.
One of the biggest questions to emerge is the extent to which council should cater to developers and accelerate development in North Cowichan.
Senior municipal staff have warned that North Cowichan is flooded with “unprecedented” numbers of development applications. Modelling suggests infrastructure capacity can handle 4,200 units, but current applications exceed 10,000 units.
Byelection candidate Becky Hogg told a March 18 all-candidates’ meeting in Maple Bay: “If we had more housing, more development, pushing permits through a bit quicker, that offsets property taxes as they are paying more property taxes."
Asked Thursday in Chemainus to support that claim, Hogg offered only a simple analogy.
“If you’re in a bus, and you’re with 20 people and the bus is $400, you put more people on that and it’s going to break down that price.”
Hogg, the co-owner of a hair salon, is politically aligned with pro-development councillors Tek Manhas and Bruce Findlay and is the biggest supporter of more development among five candidates.
Byelection candidates Joanna Lord and David Bellis disagreed with Hogg’s assessment.
Lord, an adult basic education instructor at Vancouver Island University, said the solution is more industry along planned areas consistent with the Official Community Plan.
(Joanna Lord speaks at all-candidates meeting in Chemainus.)
“We need more industry into North Cowichan in order to bring in more money for the tax base,” she said, adding that sprawl only increases the cost of infrastructure.
Bellis, a retired school teacher/administrator and self-described centrist, said that in 2009 the residential portion of the municipal tax base totalled 48 per cent compared with 42 per cent for light and heavy industrial.
“You know what it is today?” Bellis said. “Residential is 68 per cent of the tax base. Heavy and light industry, 18 (per cent). So, it’s a great theory, but it’s not working.”
(The municipality confirms the figures to be accurate).
Bellis later stated what many people are thinking. “When is enough enough?” he said. “When are we going to have a vision that says, ok, this is our population cap? Is that a reasonable thing to ask?”
Of the remaining candidates, Johanne Kemmler, a former school trustee, also said she believes more housing results in lower taxes. But she later told sixmountains.ca: "More homes and businesses mean more demand for services, so the goal is to make sure new development brings in enough revenue to cover those costs."
Raymon Farmere, a customer care agent for Freedom Mobile, said the answer is not clearcut. He supports small businesses and clinics under new apartment complexes to reduce peoples’ carbon footprint and bring more revenue into the municipality.
The Vancouver Sun this month published an article showing how increased density adds “population pressure on the city’s schools, parks, community centres, and taxpayers.”
The article by Douglas Todd notes that property taxes in New Westminster and Vancouver — the two densest cities in Canada — increased 23 and 21 per cent, respectively, over the last three years.
(https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/new-westminster-is-now-second-densest-city-canada )
Experts agree there is no simplistic answer.
Tom Davidoff, an associate professor and director of the University of BC's Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, said: “If you think expenditure need — how much government needs to spend, e.g on police and fire — per capita is fixed, then property taxes rise or fall with new housing depending on whether the new homes are more or less expensive than the average property, including commercial.
(Tom Davidoff, UBC photo)
“So, replacing single with multi-housing will very likely increase property taxes.” He said Hogg’s bus analogy “assumes costs don’t increase much with population. That could be right in some circumstances, but certainly not all.”
Paul Sullivan, a property tax expert with Vancouver-based Ryan ULC, said: “People say a lot of things politically because they’re trying to get elected and they don’t know how it actually works.”
He said the annual assessment rolls consider two factors: “market movement,” based on property values going up or down; and “non-market movement,” based on new construction and rezoning that creates new value.
The issue, Sullivan said, is that municipalities “bank the new revenue” generated by non-market movement. “You’d think it’s creating less property taxes for everyone else but it’s not, it’s creating new revenue for the municipalities….”
Teri Vetter, North Cowichan’s director of financial services, disputed the comment, saying, in part Friday: “The revenue generated from non-market changes is typically used to fund municipal services and infrastructure improvements, rather than being ‘banked.’ The overall goal is to balance the budget and meet the community's needs.”
Patrick Condon is a UBC professor of urban design who spoke to North Cowichan council in 2021 on the fallacy that more housing results in lower home prices.
He told sixmountains.ca this week: “The evidence is clear in BC that removing controls on new housing does not lead to lower prices.”
(A related US study released this month: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33576/w33576.pdf )
On the issue of denser housing resulting in lower taxes, Condon said: “Generally, it is felt that adding residential does not pay for itself in new taxes, but new commercial and industrial does.”
He added: “The tax issue is not as clear as the home price issue.”
The byelection stems from the election of Debra Toporowski as Cowichan Valley MLA and takes place on April 12 — with the balance of power on council on the line.
Since their election in 2022, councillors Manhas and Findlay have consistently supported development applications to council, often with the support of councillor Mike Caljouw.
Last Nov. 20, all three councillors, along with Chris Istace (a former provincial Green candidate) voted to amend the OCP to allow a major development north of Herd Road in the Bell McKinnon area.
Hogg alone among the five byelection candidates says unequivocally she would have voted to amend the OCP and allow the development.
On February 5, senior staff warned council of a looming crisis due to a flood of development permits. Chief Administrative Officer Ted Swabey said the servicing challenges faced by North Cowichan “are one of the most pressing issues I’ve seen during my eight years in the municipality and 35 years in local government.”
(Read about Bill 44: https://www.cowichanvalleycitizen.com/home/north-cowichan-takes-exception-to-comments-made-by-provinces-housing-minister-7809620 )
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— Larry Pynn, March 28, 2025
