The Hongcouver | Professor retracts controversial plan to fix Vancouver housing affordability by importing rich foreigners and charging them C$1m each

James Tansey deleted proposal to revive Chinese-dominated Immigrant Investor scheme from housing study’s executive summary and conclusions, saying it had become a ‘distraction’ and he ‘overstated’ his confidence the impact of rich newcomers on rising home prices had been exaggerated. But he says it’s still worth considering whether there could be a role for rich immigrants

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Traffic heads over Vancouver's Cambie Street bridge. The city has seen an influx of tens of thousands of wealthy immigrants since the late 1980s, mostly from Hong Kong and mainland China. Photo: Tourism Vancouver

Published: 6:30am, 6 Jun 2018Updated: 2:21pm, 12 Jun 2018

A prominent Canadian academic has retracted his proposal that the country restart a controversial Chinese-dominated millionaire migration scheme by having rich newcomers pay C$1million each to make housing more affordable in Vancouver.

Professor James Tansey, executive director of the Centre for Social Innovation and Impact Investing at the University of British Columbia, said on Monday he felt “almost regret” about including the immigrant investor proposal in last week’s widely reported working paper, that focused on a range of supply-side proposals to alleviate housing woes in one of the most unaffordable cities in the world.

He said he had deleted the proposal to import thousands more millionaires to fund rental housing, because it had become “a distraction” from the rest of the report.

Tansey also deleted sections related to immigrant investors in which he claimed an “authoritative” analysis by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation “shows that their impact on housing prices tends to be exaggerated compared to other factors”.

Professor James Tansey, executive director of the Centre for Social Innovation and Impact Investing at the University of British Columbia. Photo: UBC

The original version of James Tansey's Growing Pains Report by Ian Young on Scribd

In fact, the CMHC study issued in February did not attempt to calculate the impact of immigrant investors, or the wealth brought by immigrants in general, since “there do not appear to be robust data on this issue”.

.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}The Hongcouver | Professor retracts controversial plan to fix Vancouver housing affordability by importing rich foreigners and charging them C$1m each

The Hongcouver | Professor retracts controversial plan to fix Vancouver housing affordability by importing rich foreigners and charging them C$1m each