Article content continued

“I’m beside myself because I’m looking at maybe another 20 years here and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to afford that tax,” the 72-year-old said. “We’re going to be taxed to death and we’ll be forced to move. My whole standard of living is shrivelling before my eyes and it’s all a result, in my mind, of inept political decisions.”

Tha said he may now have to defer his property taxes until he sells his house or he and his wife die and it comes out of their estate. It’s an option he hasn’t used before and that he resents having to consider.

“Essentially, what this punitive tax increase is going to do is make me go back into debt and have debt on the house, something that I have been working 40 years of my working life to make disappear, and indeed thought that I had,” he said. “It’s an option, but it’s a very sad option as far as I’m concerned.”

Those kind of examples are why Premier John Horgan should be clearer about his intentions for his housing reforms, said Opposition critic Shirley Bond.

“People do not understand what the intended outcomes are and has there been a really good look at what the unintended consequences might be,” said Liberal MLA Bond.

“You think of a senior sitting in a home they worked hard to acquire, what will be the impact on them? That new homebuyer, will they lose equity because of government policy?”

Bond said the government’s goal of tackling housing affordability is laudable, and admitted the previous Liberal government attracted criticism for not taking enough action. But she said there should have been clear modelling within the Finance Ministry of the consequences of the move, as well as a public explanation of the goals of the tax.