Vancouver’s housing crisis not caused by dirty money, inquiry finds
- Three-year inquiry investigated money laundering in Canada’s British Columbia
- Cost of housing in Vancouver has soared to levels unaffordable for many
A three-year public inquiry into money laundering in a western Canadian province, prompted in part by public speculation that criminals were driving up housing prices in Vancouver, has found that dirty money didn’t cause the region’s unaffordability crisis.
The inquiry, led by British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen, was widely anticipated among local politicians, media and housing advocates, who in recent years have blamed the nation’s most expensive property market on criminal money – in particular, from Asia.
Cullen’s exhaustive report, more than 1,800 pages long and based on testimony from 188 witnesses and more than 1,000 exhibits, countered those assumptions.
“Money laundering is not the cause of housing unaffordability,” the report said.
“There are strong reasons to think that fundamental factors such as supply and demand, population increase, and interest rates are far more important drivers of price,” Cullen said in the report. “Steps taken to counteract money laundering should not be viewed as a solution for housing affordability.”
In the last two decades, the price of a benchmark Vancouver home has roughly tripled, coinciding with a surge in so-called millionaire migrants from Asia drawn by Canadian immigration policies designed to attract the rich.