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Horgan makes a house call in Burnaby

It had all the right political props for a campaign stop to highlight the NDP’s housing platform. A home with a $1.2-million price tag on it, young families having to move to another province because they can’t afford to buy a home in B.C.
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During a campaign stop in Burnaby Wednesday, B.C. NDP leader John Horgan talks to North Burnaby resident Tiffany Ottahal, holding her two-year-old son, while Janet Routledge, NDP candidate for Burnaby-North looks on. Horgan made a campaign stop at a single-family home on Oxford Street to talk about housing affordability.

It had all the right political props for a campaign stop to highlight the NDP’s housing platform.

A home with a $1.2-million price tag on it, young families having to move to another province because they can’t afford to buy a home in B.C., and a class of local kids eager to question the NDP leader, John Horgan.

Horgan spoke with residents Wednesday in front of a house on Oxford Street while the media ate it up.

He outlined the party’s housing platform, including a promise to build 114,000 units over the next 10 years in co-op, rent-purpose, not for-profit and market-priced housing. Horgan suggested Premier Christy Clark’s positions and responses to housing in the province are influenced by her campaign donors.

“Over the last two years, the benchmark price for housing in the Lower Mainland has gone up over $600,000,” he said. “Whose interest is it to see housing prices go up? Not the families that I’m with today, not the communities they want to live in. It’s in the interest of wealthy developers, and those are the ones who have been bankrolling the B.C. Liberals.”

Party supporter Ian Reeve attended with his partner and said he is moving to Ottawa where he can afford to buy a home.

“There’s nowhere anywhere near the places that we work, the places I grew up, where we can afford to buy a home,” he said. “B.C.is an amazing place: I love living here. I’m very sad to leave.”

Reeve said he grew up in the Lower Mainland, and wanted to move back after attending graduate school in Ontario.

Despite both he and his wife finding good jobs and paying off their student loans, he said they cannot afford to buy a home in the area.

“If we’re not careful about what we’re doing here in terms of affordability, in terms of good long-term job-options, we’re just going to lose more and more people,” he said.

Melanie Kuxdorf was there with her husband Zach Rothman and their three-year-old daughter Saskia. She said she feels like she is being forced to leave.

“You see the $1.2 million sign – what are we going to do? We can’t have another kid,” she said. “This is our community. We want to stay in this community. We built roots, we helped make this place, and we feel like we’re getting pushed out.”

Kuxdorf said by the time they were ready to purchase a house, it was too late. “I feel like people are going to start leaving the city. It’s going to become this strange place.”