Vacant Housing Tax

July 14, 2021 –  Councillor McAlpine and I moved a motion asking staff to investigate the feasibility of implementing a vacant tax in Markham, similar to the City of Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto. This would help increase the housing supply by making vacant homes available for rent or sale, which means people will actually live in them.

Vacant Housing Tax-motion – (click here to see motion)

This topic is not new – In 2016 we had a discussion about licensing, absentee landlords, long term rentals and vacant homes – In 2017 we discussed a vacancy tax on unoccupied homes and directed staff to examine what the City of Toronto was pursuing relative to a vacancy tax on unoccupied homes and to consider all potential aspects.

Since then, the housing issue has become worse – we have a lack of affordable and rental housing.

According to census data from statistics Canada in 2016 there were 1.34 million empty and temporarily occupied homes in Canada.  These vacant homes are a potential source of housing supply.

No one solution will solve the housing market crisis that we have – building more units will help but new housing as we know takes time – we have homes that are already built, ready to move in condition, but are unoccupied – encouraging owners to bring these homes to the market either for sale or for rent will increase the number of homes available for residents that want to live in Markham.