After days of questions, Premier David Eby and Prime Minister Mark Carney provided more details Thursday on a new program to buy up empty condos and use them as affordable housing. But some experts say it is still unclear how the program will work.

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According to Eby and Carney, Ottawa and the province will provide $145 million each towards the program’s total $1.45 billion cost, with the rest coming through “financing.” Neither provided any details about how this financing would come about.

Carney said the governments were targeting “distressed condos” that could be bought at a discount.

“What we see as an opportunity right now is the chance to buy condos below the cost of construction, below the cost of what government can build it for, and make them available through a rent-to-own program for British Columbians,” said Eby.

Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley said the program still sounds like a bailout, although if the province and Ottawa can get condos at 70 cents on the dollar that might make it a bit more palatable.

Eby did say the focus of the program will be on areas outside of city of Vancouver, though some other parts of Metro Vancouver could be eligible.

“The numbers don’t work in Vancouver, but they do work in places like the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island, and the Okanagan.”

Units purchased will be entered into a rent-to-own program, typically where residents put part of their rent payments towards a down payment on a mortgage. No details have been provided by either Ottawa or the province on how this program will use that concept.

Eby admitted that it would have been wise for the province and Ottawa to have hammered out more of the details before the announcement last week with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

He took issue with the opposition B.C. Conservatives and housing experts who have called it a bailout for developers who built thousands of condos in places like Vancouver and now can’t sell them.

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“The proposal being advanced by the developers themselves is that we eliminate the GST on people who already own homes that are seeking to buy another home, and that’s just not our priority. That would be a bailout,” said Eby.

“The market is going to correct in Vancouver. This program will not assist Vancouver developers.”

Carney said Thursday that the program was something that B.C. asked for, not a program planned out by the federal government. He also said it was not something lobbied for by developers.

“The province of British Columbia, which initiated the idea, sees an opportunity, potentially given what’s happening in that market, to convert some of these condos that are lying unsold to affordable housing, particularly rent-to-buy affordable housing … people who don’t have money for a down payment but can build that equity over time,” said Carney.

Andy Yan, director of the City Program at SFU, said there remain many unanswered questions about how the rent-to-own program will actually work.

Yan said that most of the empty condos the province could buy are in cities like Burnaby and Richmond, where prices remain high despite the market downturn. He also said that many of these condos are on the smaller side and may not be suitable for many families.

“These condos, a majority of them are actually about half a million to a million bucks. OK, well, that’s going to be typically around studio and one-bedroom, maybe some two-bedrooms mixed in there,” he said.

“It’s a rent-to-own, is the province going to provide the down payment? But then are you paying rack rates at a time when you should let the market decide what the values are? Many of these units would have become rental housing anyways as investment units.”

UBC professor Tom Davidoff said the government should be focused on making sure people living on the streets can afford housing and thinks that a rent-to-buy scheme isn’t really the way to do that.

Hurley said that the province seems to be backing away from programs like the Community Housing Fund that build social and non-profit housing in favour of handouts to developers who made bad investments.

“If they’re even considering paying market, what the developers would see as market, I think that’s just wrong, so you know it feels very much like a bailout of some developers who have got themselves into trouble,” said Hurley.

UBC political scientist Stewart Prest said the way this program has rolled out is a problem for the government and a challenge for Eby, who seems to be in a place where everything he touches turns to mud.

He said the government is also trying to place a floor on how far housing prices can drop after years of trying to make housing more affordable in an effort to not alienate older voters who are both more likely to vote and more likely to own their homes.

“There is a lack of trust with the premier at this point and an inclination to treat anything he says with suspicion, and if that’s the case, the NDP has a real problem in its path,” said Prest.

With files from Christopher Nardi

alazenby@postmedia.com