However those numbers are for home sales overall, not a survey of who owns unoccupied homes. In addition, in many ways it's not much better if a house is foreign-owned or not if it's empty, since it still takes much-needed property supply off the market and artificially drives up housing prices.
Just out of curiosity are you Canadian, from the US, or other? I ask because there is a cultural difference between what people in the US and Canada expect from their government.
The essence of the problem is the low occupancy rate and rapid inflation of housing prices in Vancouver, fueled largely by foreign nationals buying Vancouver property as an investment rather than actually living there. This prices Canadians out of the market.
Generally the Canadian attitude to government focuses on asking it to solve these kinds of problems in an "interventionist/activist" model: intervene in the market to affect change.
In the US, I found people generally prefer the government to focus on "freedom-to": erring on the side of providing people with too much liberty to do as they please, rather than too little.
I think this is just a cultural difference and not so easy for Americans to understand. I hope this comment was helpful in conveying the Canadian perspective.
Why would that be the case? These places are currently not being rented at all. Why would people favour short-term arrangements? I own 2 apartments and rent one of them (mostly to students). I look for tenants who can stay for longer periods so I don't have to spend a lot of my time finding new people.
You're definitely right with the overall numbers: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/bc-government-releases-p...
However those numbers are for home sales overall, not a survey of who owns unoccupied homes. In addition, in many ways it's not much better if a house is foreign-owned or not if it's empty, since it still takes much-needed property supply off the market and artificially drives up housing prices.