1 on 1 with BCREA CEO Trevor Koot

“If we believe in housing, we have to stand up for it on principle, and we have to insist that it get built.” – BC Premier David Eby

We find ourselves in an environment in BC, in Canada, around the world, where a main topic of conversation of course is housing. And it’s not just housing in the form of real estate or development or investment. It’s accessibility. It’s affordability. It’s availability of housing for everyone – everyone across the housing continuum.

Everyone has a role to play in that conversation, but what we find happening is everyone is trying to scramble for solutions to a problem that is going to take years if not decades to solve.

“I’m Kevin Falcon, leader of BC United, and this is your average one-bedroom apartment here in Vancouver.” – Kevin Falcon

We see announcements coming out from government on a regular basis – a very regular basis – that becomes challenging for people to navigate. There’s sometimes unintended consequences as a result of some of those announcements.

Everybody has a voice. Everybody has a stake in where all of this is going. The challenge is that there’s no one solution. And we see that in the headlines all the time. We hear the announcements from the politicians. We hear an announcement that is a solution and then we see a headline that says, “This critic says this isn’t a solution” and “There is no solution.

There is an environment that is extremely tenuous for everyone involved where we have to work together. We have to come together. We have to figure out what the commonalities are. When there is an idea, it has to be vetted through a series of people. There has to be stronger collaboration to achieve an outcome that quite frankly everybody wants – and that is a province housed.