Flanked by towers of unsold million-dollar condos, Mark Carney and David Eby announced that the architects of B.C.’s housing crisis would be given $3.2 billion, buying up their unsold condo stock. This mirrors a similar bailout given in Ontario by the Doug Ford Conservatives.
In Vancouver, workers spend 60 per cent of their incomes on rent, and condos range anywhere from $800,000 to well over $1 million. Needless to say, this is completely unaffordable. Even B.C.’s largest developers’ association recognizes this, confessing, “we no longer build what people can afford.” As one mortgage broker put it, “They minted money like robber barons… for 20 years they reaped the benefits of their sales and kept pushing prices upwards endlessly, and made fortunes.”
This isn’t just the fault of the condo developers, the federal government and every major bank were aware of what was happening, but did nothing to stop it.
High housing costs are the main force behind B.C.’s cost-of-living crisis, which has led to the province’s population contracting as workers move to more affordable areas. At the same time, since May 2025 the number of unsold condos in Vancouver has skyrocketed 76 per cent, now sitting at a whopping 4,376 units with hundreds more set to hit the market. In other words, private developers built housing nobody could afford, and now they’re staring down the barrel of a multi-billion dollar loss.
“Developers are stuck. They don’t want to sell at a loss,” said Carney, feebly justifying the bailout. The government has dressed this up as a way of creating affordable housing, but it rings hollow after the B.C. NDP just slashed $1.4 billion from their affordable housing fund—almost the exact same amount of money they handed the parasitic developers.
In an echo of 2008, Carney and Eby are using billions pulled from the pockets of people suffering from the cost of living crisis to bailout those who have profited the most from it. Chasing the highest profit margins has left Vancouver littered with luxury “shoeboxes in the sky” while the demand for affordable housing never gets met. Although workers can’t afford to buy these condos ourselves, we’re being forced to pay for them anyway.
B.C. Greens leader Emily Lowan is right to say, “We need more housing—but bailing out the developers is just socializing the losses, and privatizing the profits.” Her proposed plan to build thousands of publicly-owned, affordable homes is a step in the right direction, but there are already thousands of units sitting empty that could be housing people today. The problem is they’re owned by corporations that are deemed “too big to fail.” That’s why the communists say if it’s too big to fail, it’s big enough to nationalize.
Nationalizations scare defenders of capitalism who argue that they have a “right” to private property because capitalists take on all the risk—but where’s the risk if as soon as you face a loss, the government bails you out? If developers know that they will simply be bailed out by the government, they will not sell their properties at a lower cost, they will simply wait around for another bailout.
In response, Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and B.C. Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay denounced the bailout. Findlay argues that instead “market forces will cause the prices to lower until people can afford them.” But she has no intention of letting developers fail. Instead of a bailout, Findlay is calling on the government to lower taxes on developers, making it easier for these parasites to turn a profit.
Both sides of this debate faithfully respect the rights of private developers, who have driven up the price of homes. Eby and Carney propose to bail them out, Findlay and Poilievre propose to cut their taxes.
There couldn’t be a better example of the crisis of capitalism than thousands of empty condos sitting there empty while we face a housing crisis. By expropriating the parasitic private developers and investment firms and putting housing development under a socialist plan, not only could we eliminate homelessness overnight, but we could guarantee housing for all.
Expropriate the parasites!
Too big to fail? Big enough to nationalize!
For a socialist housing plan!
