Frankly Speaking

Assessments on Surrey homes rose dramatically, due to a red-hot real estate market in the first part of 2016. Assessments are based on the actual value of homes as of July 1, 2016. It is a rare occasion when the homeowners’ grant becomes a hot political issue, but it was shaping up to do so in the run-up to the May 9 provincial election - until today. The reason is that many Metro Vancouver home owners, including a substantial number in Delta, Surrey and Langley and an even higher percentage in high-demand areas like White Rock, South Surrey, Tsawwassen and Fort Langley, could have lost their homeowner grants due to soaring assessments. In many areas of the South Fraser region, assessments rose close to 40 per cent over the 2016 figures. Some homeowners saw their assessments rise by much higher amounts. On Tuesday morning, the provincial government eased that possibility. (In my own neighbourhood, assessments rose dramatically. Interestingly, on one side of the street, the...

The July 25 introduction of a 15 per cent property purchase tax on foreign buyers by the provincial government surprised many observers, and shocked the real estate industry. In particular, foreign buyers with transactions in progress were caught in a dilemma. If they were able to move the completion date up, they could avoid the tax. Some did so. Others walked away from signed contracts, forfeiting deposits which in some cases were substantially lower than the tax bill would have been. Philip Dumoulin of Sotheby’s International Realty in South Surrey said one realtor lost three buyers and a fourth asked for a referral to Toronto, planning to buy there instead of in the Greater Vancouver area. Foreign buyers have had less direct impact in Surrey than in some other parts of Greater Vancouver, such as the City of Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and areas of the North Shore. However, there have been a significant number of such buyers in South Surrey and White Rock, and it is like...

The City of Surrey has more clout than it realizes in the year leading up to the provincial election. Thus far, it has been reluctant to use it. Mayor Linda Hepner, somewhat belatedly, realized that there was a problem with school capital funding. She only seemed to realize the depth of the problem after the Surrey Board of Education voted on April 21 to ask the city to suspend development applications in three fast-growing areas. She offered the board some support, saying a month later that the city and school district had to come up with “their own plan.” Hepner said the city will no longer sit idly in the face of school construction delays, saying “The formula is broken. We’re going to develop (a formula) ourselves and present it to the minister.” Surprise, surprise. The province was receptive to the issue, and indeed almost fell over backwards to accommodate the school district. The BC Liberals won five of the eight Surrey seats in the 2013 election, and at least two of ...

A series of stories published in The Surrey-North Delta Leader on Friday, Feb. 26 (also available online at http://www.peacearchnews.com/news/370284771.html ) is called “No Fixed Address.” It sheds some welcome light on a challenge which Surrey and many other cities all across North America are struggling with. Most importantly, it features stories and photos of individuals who are or have been homeless. These allow readers to identify with and understand these individuals as people, who face very real challenges. The stories also point out that the road which leads to homelessness, and the road out of it, is complex and involves many very different factors. As is ever the case with human beings, each person’s story is unique. Each set of circumstances is unique. And solutions to this problem for each individual are also unique, which is one of the reasons the problem remains so intractable. Surrey’s response to homelessness has been somewhere in the middle of the pack, whe...