Applying a basic income lens to British Columbia’s demand-side housing programs
In July 2018, the province of British Columbia announced the creation of an expert panel to explore the idea of a basic income guarantee in BC.
The panel’s mandate was to study basic income as a potential policy tool for poverty reduction, assessing its feasibility and its relation to existing income and social supports in BC.
The panel concluded its work in December 2020 and the findings are now publicly available.
As part of the research, Maytree Fellow Michael Mendelson, together with Dr. Jonathan Rhys Kesselman, Professor Emeritus at the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, contributed the research paper “Applying a basic income lens to British Columbia’s demand-side housing programs.”
The paper reviews the reform of BC’s five major demand-side housing programs to conform more closely to basic income principles of autonomy, accessibility, and dignity.