The already dire housing crisis in Vancouver is about to worsen with the mass expiration of funding and operating agreements for twenty-five thousand social housing units. By 2033, 99% of operating agreements across the country will have expired if current austerity measures are not reversed, amounting to $3.5b of reduced government expenditures annually.[1] Presently there are no federal or provincial plans to initiate new or extend existing operating agreements. The forecasted federal funding for non-profit housing providers in BC for the year 2030 is zero.[2] This process of funding-expiry has already begun, with tenants experiencing the first wave of this unprecedented withdrawal of public housing funds. Unless a popular struggle takes shape, the entire country will move in the direction of a massive loss of public housing.

Neoliberal policy makers and urban think tanks have framed this mass expiry in optimistic terms. The disappearance of funding is presented as an “emerging opportunity,” to quote a recent report by the BC Non-Profit Housing Association. [3]  In the report, the Association explores how the opportunities of austerity can be “capitalized” upon, paving the way for the implementation of disaster capitalism. As it has often been proven under neoliberal governments, the deployment of a shock becomes the necessary grounds for the introduction of market reforms, with the ultimate goal of privatizing public assets and services.[4] In the case of affordable and non-market housing, the disaster comes in the form of a funding expiry, for which the recommended strategies of “ensuring future viability” entail the introduction of market reforms. In a drastic change in direction, not-for-profit housing operators are slated to be phased out to make way for pro-market operating bodies.