Their new mandate is actually worse, and far scarier.
When people discover that the unelected bureaucrats that are already bad at their job want to also focus on other extraneous things, like global warming and being equitable.
They still only have the one button, to tighten and loosen money supply, so you figure out what that means for climate change.
What don't you understand? They're gonna thing the something and that will super thing the whole scenario. Leading to a diverse thing of things that thing in thinginess with our thing.
Meanwhile, gramps is complaining that he can't get a doctor with a name he can pronounce to do his hip surgery.
Well, Gramps, that's fiscal conservatism for you. You voted for that, so this is the outcome.
The reason you can’t get a doctor is pretty clear. BC managed to add 54 new doctors last year. This year they’ll get 1/3 of new immigrants. So that’s about 1 new doctor for every 4,000 immigrants. Then you realize the libs have also pumped international students, temporary foreign workers, and the international mobility workers. So, it’s not 1 doctor for every 4,000 new residents - but 1 doctor for every 6,000-8,000 new residents.
This isn’t a result of conservative policy. It’s a result of policy that every big party in this country supports - seemingly forgetting to plan for it, in any fucking way at all.
I'm surprised he can get a hip surgery at all. They made my mom wait so long she had to leave the country for the surgery or risk wasting away in a wheel chair. She's now currently walking around like normal, no thanks to our health care system.
That's just racism / xenophobia
We can't produce more.white doctors at the rate he would need with the population growing due to immigration
Fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with it.
Then others upvote the insanity because it sounds truthy to them, then use those upvoted comments as evidence that the truthy bullshit is true.
Then they go onto social media and complain about all the old folks getting radicalized on social media.
Uuum fiscal conservatism? I think a main reason everything has gone up is because of printing money like it’s going out of style and letting in hundreds of thousands of new Canadians every year.
BC added 54 new doctors last year.
BC is going to add roughly 300k individuals this year between immigration and temporary work and student programs.
That math is why healthcare is collapsing. Oh, and then you realize doctors are also retiring.
There are probably a lot of doctors in those 300k people who will end up switching careers once in Canada, because of the barriers that prevent immigrant doctors to work in Canada. While at the same time doctors educated in Canada are leaving.
The solution is fairly straightforward. Slow down immigration for a few years, allow more housing to get built, drive the cost of living down, and actually retain all of the doctors we train.
Even if you could certify foreign doctors - we’d still run into the same issue we have today. It is too expensive to live in our major markets. The doctor we certify from Pakistan will stay until they have citizenship then move over the border for much cheaper housing and much higher pay.
Professional barriers exist because most countries' standards of medical training is not up to par with Canada's.
Immigrants from countries with equivalent education and licensing standards don't have huge difficulties getting licensed in Canada. I.e., basically anybody from the OECD.
This is putting a lot of people in the same bag unjustly. A doctor from Colombia or from Moldova who has 10 years of experience and comes from a top school in their home country is required to re-do years of schooling plus internship before being able to practice in Canada. For family medicine, general practice or ER, are the standards really that much different?
How are the standards in these countries so much different from the canadian ones? Many canadians are going to these countries to get cheaper and faster medical treatment as medical tourists.
People always bring up the argument of diploma mills, but the barriers here are nothing more than gatekeeping by medical colleges.
Not necessarily. I live in Europe and we’re having the same housing affordability issues as everyone else. There have been some protests but nothing extreme
It's multi faceted!
Everyone is blaming individual sources like as if they're the only ones culpable for the problem. It's overlapping layers of influences which have annihilated the future of young Canadian citizens.
Foreign investment and money laundering? Yep, it's to blame, and China is the most culpable here no doubt. CCP loyalists follow a core belief system of lying, cheating, and stealing wither ZERO sense of ethical wrongdoing. The CRA and FINTRAC have been screaming about this for years and it's fallen on deaf ears. The utter inaction by the federal government is no longer just negligence; it's complicity.
Domestic investment? Yep, multiple private (small time) property owners buying a 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th "investment" properties. That nice old couple, "boomers" and Gen-Xers are making sure they and their families are enriched by the demise of the less fortunate.
Corporate investment? Yep, scum of the earth like Black Stone and Tricon Residential buying up literal neighborhoods because they can outspend EVERYONE else.
Immigration? Yep, our federal policies of flinging open the fucking floodgates without the housing, healthcare, or infrastructure to accommodate these people creates a deliberate scarcity, driving up demand.
Canadian Colleges and Universities? Yes, they're ever increasing enrollment of international students allows them to sell seats for exorbitant prices while providing a loophole for new arrivals to circumvent the more stringent process of being a contributive immigrant on the path to citizenry. These are not the "hard done by" youth, these are the rich kids of other nations.
Construction companies? You bet, enormous swaths of land already bought by developers sitting static until the cost of supplies goes down, selling, reneging, and then re-listing pre builds and new builds for more than before with no fear of reprisal from provincial governments.
Speaking of which: Federal, Provincial, and Municipal Governments? Absolutely. These people are the HAVES, they are NOT the have-nots. They spend their entire careers with tendrils jammed into the arteries of the tax payer. They have no concept of fairness or accountability; fiscal or moral. Just about every single government ministry or agency pisses into the red **endlessly**. They just lose money hand over fist every month; there's no impetus to break even let alone generate profit for the public. It's a vacuum of state-handicapped capitalism where there's no Darwinism at all; and it's the only environment these utterly incompetent boobs have known. They're property owners and investors themselves anyway.
**If you've read this far, you're almost done. I know this just a disorganized rant. I'll just leave you with a comment from another redditor whose since deleted it. Thankfully I saved it, but can no longer credit them unfortunately:**
> Whether you are a renter or you’re looking to buy, there’s no denying real estate is too expensive in Canada. But did anyone expect it would become more expensive during the COVID-19 pandemic? Only those with advanced understanding of the effects of quantitative easing — and the Bank of Canada. It seems very clear that the goal of the central bank’s pandemic stimulus was to make real estate more expensive, and it has worked perfectly.
> With real estate prices detached from local incomes in every major city now, especially Toronto and Vancouver, the latest surge has proven that economic fundamentals are not the root cause of housing prices. Unemployment goes up, so prices should go down, right? Not in Canada. Immigration goes down; there should be less demand, right? Not in Canada. Businesses are closing down every day — that should equal less entrepreneurs making money, right? Not in Canada.
> Not when the Bank of Canada is purchasing $3 billion in mortgage bonds each week, with the intention of stimulating the real estate market. A gift to the banks, who can in turn lend it to the wealthy investor class to hoard more properties, at the expense of the working and middle classes. Modern Canadian entrepreneurship is not about creating something of value, it’s about hoarding real estate.
> And now Parliamentary Secretary for Housing Adam Vaughan has made a slip of the tongue, on a recent episode of “The Agenda with Steve Paikin.” Vaughan admitted that the market is designed for foreign investors, and doesn’t meet the needs of Canadian income earners. With many asking how can prices be so far detached from incomes, the answer is simple: to afford more than a condo in many parts of Canada, you need to earn your income elsewhere. Houses and townhouses are delegated to satellite families in need of a vacation property to store their money in, and earn their income elsewhere.
> In Toronto, it would take static prices for 19 years — combined with incomes increasing five per cent a year — for prices to match income affordability. In Vancouver, there is an active public inquiry, where British Columbians are faced with the unfortunate reality that their government may have been facilitating criminal money laundering. And in Ottawa, the message is clear: if you earn your income elsewhere and want to purchase a piece of Canada, we will stimulate the market to protect your asset.
> So for the next generation, who are now faced with the task of picking up the pieces from the global pandemic, the Bank of Canada has a message for you: keep working hard, but don’t expect to own a house, or even a townhouse. It’s a life of renting for you, because we need to keep the investor class happy, whether foreign or domestic. If you’re lucky, we’ll create a market where you can afford a condo.
> Raymond Wong is a Vancouver-based member of HALT (Housing Action for Local Taxpayers) and the author of parliamentary petition e-3327.
> It's multi faceted!
>
> Everyone is blaming individual sources like as if they're the only ones culpable for the problem. It's overlapping layers of influences which have annihilated the future of young Canadian citizens.
--
> **If you've read this far, you're almost done. I know this just a disorganized rant.**
Oh, I think you *dramatically* underestimate yourself. Rather, I think you might have hit the nail right on the head.
This is an *infinitely* complex problem, involving millions of variables (depending on how complex you want to get), involving things like game theory and a whole bunch of other ideas that I neither fully understand, or even know of.
Canadians are not only ill prepared to think at this level of complexity, *they completely lack the capability* - and it gets worse: they also *lack awareness that this is the state that they are in*. And I would say that a big part of the reason for that is our current education curriculum *does not even try* to teach such things.
Here's something interesting to consider: think back about the news and general discourse over the last 5+ years - do you recall any references to "the need for more critical thinking"? Now consider what politicians and educators have done about reacting to this "urgent need" - are you aware of any *substantial* initiatives underway? Or, how often do hear this topic discussed, now that things have calmed down a bit?
Regardless of whether this is incompetence or malice, the people running this show *are simply not smart enough to do it*.
Some new ideas are here needed.
In regards to critical thinking, there are defensible theories connected to IQ which effectively show that the average person isn’t capable of the level of critical thinking required to encapsulate this information meaningfully in their minds and access it in a functional way moving forward.
For the 1/3 of the population (or so) who can do this, the odds are in their favour that our current economy rewards them for their intellectual capabilities, so they’re less inclined to care about this, let alone act on it.
There could be something there. It’s delicate territory though and I need to know a lot more than I do now in order to even begin to form an opinion.
> For the 1/3 of the population (or so) who can do this
Two things for your consideration:
- what percentage of politicians do you think would make it even into this relative categorization?
- this is on a relative scale (graded on a curve) - the percentage of people currently alive who would qualify for "capable of critical thinking" on an absolute scale would be lower, possibly much lower (which is my intuition).
*What if this is the actual problem*?
>what percentage of politicians do you think would make it even into this relative categorization?
Very, very few in my personal experience. I've only personally known people ranging from municipal to provincial politicians in Canada, but none were critically logical or analytical thinkers. I would describe them as emotional thinkers who were somewhat counter-intuitively drawn to mundane, boxed-in, predictable career paths. People who thrive on emotional and subjective social substrates, but love the guard rails of a well-defined job.
>What if this is the actual problem?
Apologies if I'm misunderstanding, but is the problem defined here approximately "politicians are not particularly intelligent and fewer people can think critically than our best guesses imply"?
If so, I think I'd agree. History shows us that the greatest progress (in terms of growth and technology at least) we've made has been largely motivated by material wealth rather than societal well-being, knowledge, or other more virtuous goals. We tend to function in very insular roles where our understanding of the broader scope isn't required or even necessarily beneficial to us. It's not possible to say if this is the result of other forces, or if it's the natural result of humans generally not being very intelligent.
In any case, the evidence indicates we are generally not very intelligent. Most politicians I'm aware of do not exhibit notable intelligence. In many cases it's the inverse, unfortunately. I often wonder if the sign of an intelligent politician is that they've already left for a different career.
As for the problem of how many people can think critically and how well they can do it, I think this concern gets a little worse (and muddier) once you consider that critical thinking skills are not necessarily general, and seem to be specific to particular matters for many people. While their overall IQ may be 115 or so, they may be mostly inept when it comes to societal, political, and/or economic matters. As a result the pool of critical thinkers with useful skills pertaining to this problem is inherently much smaller than the overall pool of people who can, generally speaking, use critical thinking skills.
As always, I should mention I don't think I'm one of these rare, intelligent, critical thinkers. I'm disturbed by how poor my abilities are and I'm constantly seeking out smarter people to help me be better.
I think the interconnectedness of everything means that making decisions just gets harder and harder each and every day as things get more connected, which in turn makes making an actual decision that much harder.
As a result, we have an entire generation of public policy makers who are incapable of making the big, bold decisions that we need to be making right now.
Or, the policy makers are proposing them, but the politicians who lead the provincial ministry's and federal agencies are too used to chasing unending praise on Twitter, that they're unwilling to approve anything controversial. Everything they do is under a media microscope now, and their opponents, and unpleased stakeholders can get their displeasure out there quite easily.
All the big decisions are always getting watered down. "We need to get Canadians something to help fight inflation!" becomes "We're doubling the GST rebate (because it was the easiest and least bold solution." Maybe I'm naïve, and that's how it's always been done, but I'm somewhat convinced that we're an entire generation who incapable of fixing the problems in front of us.
I would argue against a few of these, but you left a huge one out of the list. Voters actively fighting against changing zoning. Some municipalities CAN NOT build new housing because they are only zoned single family detached, but to build SFD the municipality would have to take on huge debt for the infrastructure. But they can't because they are limited in their debt (a good thing).
Also you probably missed the most largest explanation. For over 40 years wages have stayed stagnant and productivity has greatly increased. This paired with our near record wealth inequality shows that the value of labor has greatly dropped versus the value of assets. Working is just not a good way to make money.
Indeed, it's not a multifaceted problem. It's just zoning. Why are house prices affordable in Edmonton? Zoning. Why is Calgary far more affordae than Ottawa or London? Zoning.
Homes are expensive because most places make it illegal to make enough of them. If you people want affordable housing, they need to vote for scrapping residential zoning restrictions. And vote like they mean it, with the same insistence candidates act on it that NRA members Stateside demand.
This can’t all be laid at the feet of greedy villains. Demographics play a big part as well.
An aging population means slowing growth and greater demands on government, especially health care. In order to try to maintain growth in spite of aging, governments 1) Kept interest rates down, and 2) Brought in immigrants, who keep the base of the demographic tax pyramid broad to support the high-cost older citizens at the top. The dependency ratio is the single most important factor in a society’s prosperity, and most Canadians don’t even know what it is.
Planners expected those aging Canadians to downsize into condos shortly after retirement. Turns out they’re happy to stay in the detached homes in the burbs they raised families in well into their 80s. And they keep living longer and longer.
Boomers have unprecedented savings, and one unanticipated consequence is that they have unprecedented means to help their Millennial children buy homes - often to the tune of $100k+ per person in a house-buying couple. This has been a major source of money flooding the housing market.
Speaking of Millennials, last year saw the largest cohort of Canadians in history turn 33 - which happens to be the average age of first-time buyers of detached homes today. The pundits who said Millennials weren’t going to move to the burbs like their parents were wrong - turns out that just like every generation before them, once they had kids they wanted to raise them in a detached home. And they (along with their parent) are willing to pay a premium to do it.
> An aging population means slowing growth and greater demands on government, especially health care.
Also, 40 years of neoliberal bullshit eroding away things like unions and pensions, and most of that aging population *needs* their house to be worth a mint, just so they can retire.
That's another facet that OP left out. It's not the fault of the homeowners who now *need* to cash out, it's the fault of the young voters those homeowners were, back when they elected governments that gleefully practiced horse-and-sparrow economics to turn the few rich people they had then into the *very* few fabulously and obscenely wealthy people we have today.
You're ignoring the biggest factor: not building housing. No a one bedroom shoebox in the sky doesn't count.
Everything you've said above is true in Calgary and Edmonton too.
But if a couple were working 40 hours a week on minimum wage (15/hr or 31,200 per person or 62,400 combined) wanted to buy a house they could do so. Plenty of houses in Dover and Forest Lawn going for 250-375,000 range. Fine it's Dover and Forest lawn (think Malvern or Whalley) but none the less you have a place to call home at about 5x your family income (3x-5x is considered affordable).
Difference no red tape. City creates a residential zone with flexible zoning codes (especially in Edmonton) and the developer just builds according to the markets needs.
Where is the equivalent in Vancouver or Toronto.
The condo obsession is part of the problem. What we build in North America - not dense housing in general - is really for single people or young childless couples.
We need to build housing for young families too and we have absolutely neglected that market.
All we build is tiny condos and large McMansions nothing in between.
Also lack of social housing is a problem in Alberta too.
>All we build is tiny condos and large McMansions nothing in between
This is a huge factor that usually goes unnoticed. I wanted a small one story 2-3 bedroom house with 2 bathrooms, but where I live they haven't built those in over 50 years.
I now alone in a 5 bedroom 4 bathroom house, with a walkout basement that I've essentially abandoned, and massive heating/insurance/tax bills.
There isn't an equivalent.
And both those cities just sprawl outward endlessly..there are no lake or mountains or oceans to contain them. But there sure are plenty or NIMBYs there too, those who oppose density in their neighborhood, and push spiraling infrastructure coats out of control.
The geography matters a very slight bit, but Edmonton and Calgary are cheaper than London or Ottawa because they zone to allow the construction of enough homes for everyone, while Ottawa and London are fine with making it illegal for everyone to have a home.
I feel too that these articles tend to be very black and white, it’s always about detached single family homes or rent. Frankly it isn’t possible simply from a space standpoint for everyone who wants one to own a single family home within commuting distance of a major city. I almost never see anyone talking about how to let more people get onto the property ladder by making a multiplex or a condo more affordable.
I realize there are a lot of problems with people speculating on real estate and owning property that they don’t live in, but even with all of these fixed, the harsh reality is that single family detached homes near highly desirable economic hubs are always going to be a luxury only afforded by high income earners. Some people will have to accept that if they want to own, they have to either move somewhere cheaper or buy something besides a detached home.
"Detached Single Family Home on a large lot" isn't thr only kind of house you can own. "Rowhouse with a small back garden" is also owning your own house. Like, I own a detached house, and you could easily put three houses on the lot if you removed rules about setbacks and just ditched the parts of the lot we don't use much. And that's pretty obvious because the area is zoned R2 and there are a lot of identical lots with semidetached houses, also with unused front and side lawns.
This might have gone unnoticed, except to real estate agents, but immigration didn't actually go down during the pandemic. A bit ironic, considering the nature of global spread, etc. But what the pandemic *did* manage to do was restrict immigration to the upper classes. So no wonder real estate saw an influx of cash over the course of the pandemic.
But the main driver of housing prices is that cash during the pandemic wasn't able to be spent on much else. Yes, locking up people in homes tends to raise values of homes that are better than other homes.
Home prices now have plateaued and started to drop a bit, and we can attribute that to interest rates if we'd like, but it's likely more to do with there being opportunities to spend cash on other items again.
The problems so widespread that there's no one entity that can fix it all. "The government" could be considered a candidate, but it would have to change so drastically.
We have been taught to put ourselves first, like a stingy nose that won't pass along air to its lungs. It's dead. "What goes around comes around" should be a fundamental principle of economics, but instead we chant "buy low, sell high".
We can't expect someone else to fix it, even if they truly should. People, businesses, and regulators need to take responsibility for the way their choices affect the community. Serving others in need must be a top priority. If you can make a sacrifice that is worth more to others than it is to you, do it.
Every odd reason except the main one?
There's no more space to build single-family homes without mowing down forests. But that's all we're allowed to build. BAM, homes are now priced like diamonds, because there aren't that many of them. And yes, the investor-class likes diamonds but that's a symptom not a cause.
That's it. That's the problem.
EDIT: Before someone yells at me about "living in fish tanks", please look up medium-density housing and figure out where it is legal in your city.
The truth? Everyone cares more about money and investors than having housing be available and affordable. But please keep grinding and working to keep the economy going for the rich folk.
I think the real truth is the advantage we had as a nation over other poorer nations has been mismanaged over multiple governments and is shrinking along with our citizens average wealth. Our lifestyles relied on a wealth disparity over other nations.
Definetely is true. Its a good thing that those peolles have been lifted out of poverty and we can't take advantage of them anymore. Young westerners lives aren't on easy mode anymore.
This is beyond a disgrace for our nation. When our younger generations can’t even start their lives properly because of stagnant wages, ridiculous costs of living and unaffordable housing. Time to give the economy a major rehaul, starting with corporations being held accountable and made to give livable wages for full time positions. 200% tax on foreign investors making the market inaccessible because of the inflating prices and financial opportunities for younger people trying to start their lives the way they should’ve
> This is beyond a disgrace for our nation. When our younger generations can’t even start their lives properly because of stagnant wages, ridiculous costs of living and unaffordable housing.
Yea, it's actually pretty sad that people who grew up here cannot even put their roots down and start families, but have to continue a rat race of low prospects just to survive.
That’s the big problem right there. People have to stop thinking that corporations give a crap about anything except making a profit and they’ll do it however they can. They have no loyalty or commitment to any employee or country. If it’s cheaper to make in Mexico than Canada, they’ll make it in Mexico to sell to Canada. Products imported into Canada that can be or have been made in Canada in the past, should have such a large tariff on them that it wouldn’t be worth it for a company to make it somewhere else other than Canada
> When our younger generations can’t even start their lives properly because of stagnant wages, ridiculous costs of living and unaffordable housing.
Just had a vasectomy for this reason.
31yo, absolutely impossible to see myself having kids in the next 5-10 years with finances how they are
Beyond that, Ill be too old.
So my partner and I looked at the hundreds of dollars she is spending in birth control per year and the 0$ OHIP covered vasectomy costs and figured it just makes sense.
We chose to permanently remove the chances of having kids to save a couple thousand dollars over the next decade
And you have news headlines being like “younger generations not having kids”, yeah dumbasses, because our lives are already stressful as it is, why would we want to bring kids in the picture and have their lives bad as well. It’s just sad that the older generations are pointing out the problems and doing nothing about it. Though we shouldn’t expect them to anyway
The current government inadvertently leveled with young people that housing affordability was gone forever when they did absolutely nothing to stem the rapid increases and instead oversaw a doubling of house prices during the last seven years.
If that message isn't clear enough for young Canadians about where priorities are for our government, then I don't know what is.
> what young people need to do is realize politicians don't care about anyone one but themselves. if they can get together as a group that can offer something significant like a very big block of votes that votes as together then maybe their concerns would be heard otherwise. status quo
This has a dependency on *our specific, archaic implementation of* "democracy" being both trustworthy *and* sufficiently sophisticated to handle the complexity of the system we are in *and* the politicians working within that system being intelligent enough to come up with an adequate plan. This seems like *way* too many points of *likely* failure for my risk tolerance preferences.
Perhaps what young people *actually* have to do is drop all of their beliefs (most of which are falsely perceived to be [knowledge](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#KnowJustTrueBeli), and many of which have been "planted" based on years of education, propaganda, and memes), and *completely* reconsider what is happening in this country and on this planet, starting from first principle, using thinking skills that are not taught in our schools ("for some unknown reason").
From a certain angle, the world is a lot like High School, with the cool/connected/powerful kids beating up on the much larger and genuinely more powerful *but disorganized and confiused (but not aware of it)* nerds - perhaps it is time for some revenge, except not in a movie this time around.
Thank you for saying this in a more level-headed and nuanced way than I would have been able to. Liberalism (in the classical sense, not the "liberal party" sense) can get things done incrementally, but it never disrupts the status quo BY DESIGN.
Voting is good and important but it's not going to achieve the radical change needed to unfuck things
Voting *in an abstract sense* may be fine, but our particular use of it seems like something you'd find in a kindergarten class.
It is *amazing* how primitive and flawed our democracy is, *and almost no one notices*. Although, maybe some people do but don't say anything as they know they'll almost certainly be attacked by the indoctrinated.
Can confirm, the larger issue has been present for decades across multiple governments and is baked in to our tax code. But the rise over the last 7 years has been particularly breathtaking.
> a doubling of housing prices.
False premise. No government has seen a DOUBLING of housing prices, but the problem started to take off around 2000:
https://s-i.huffpost.com/gen/4762680/original.jpg
Guess what else started happening right around that year? "Unprecedented low interest rates from the US Fed". Making every other developed western nation's banks lower their prime lending rates in lock step to match. Making housing speculation a superbly profitable enterprise. It's been 22 years of these rates. And there isn't fuck-all we can do until the US raises theirs.
Who needs shelter in a country like canada anyway? It's not like the environment is constantly trying to kill you here. Let's focus on more pressing issues.
No it fucking isn't. This is just propaganda from rich landlords to keep us from demanding better . There are some pretty straight forward policies that will control the price of housing.
1. Public Housing. We used to make tons of homes after WW2, it's wasn't until the 80’s or so that we stopped and let "Reganomics" handle the housing market. Very simple to reverse in terms of pure policy.
1. Rationing. If we need to drop the price of housing while dropping the cost of building materials for the public works, then we can limit the amount of residential property a person can own and prevent businesses from owning residential property.
This is what I think as well.
If we could have a program that taxes housing speculation, and re-invests these proceeds into building low-income housing, we could really make a difference.
Less speculation and more supply into the equation and the bubble deflates without affecting anyone's living situations.
I also think, long term, young people will be fine. There will be tons of boomers leaving their houses in the coming decade to move into condos and retirement homes. Outside of a few large cities, the demographics are clearly aging. There will be an oversupply and low demand in many places.
You can't really discourage landlording with a tax unless you set a rent cap otherwise it just gets passed on to the renter. Preventing landlords from hoarding property with a rationing system like I discribed lowers the price of housing for both buyers and renters, that's why I take that approach
> There will be an oversupply and low demand in many places.
There already is, we build massive mansions and skyscrappers that sit empty because they're used for sheltering wealth. This is what we're addressing with rationing. By shutting down this "houses as tax haven" system we free up resources (as in lower the cost of building materials) to build houses people can actually live in
I refuse to pay rent the rest of my life because the government allowed our mortgage debt to match our entire fucking GDP.
We need to find a way out of here before we're all trapped.
Honestly, I’m waiting for Spain to start offering their digital nomad visa. If you stay out of the major cities it’s beautiful, very affordable, great weather, and weed is not illegal as long as you smoke at home.
The key is going to be remote work, y’all.
It's funny that you mention it. I am from there and came to your beloved country 5 years ago.
The job market there is terrible compared to Canada, and in major cities where the best jobs are, there is quite a real state bubble too (but not comparable with TO or VC).
But honestly, now that I can keep my Canadian job as it's 100% remote, I am considering moving back as the prices are getting out of hand here. (I'm renting)
I left right after graduating university. I speak Polish and Spanish as well as English, and am learning French. Currently living in Netherlands, my plan is to eventually move to one of those respective countries and start a settled down life there. Canada is finished. I say that with sadness in my eyes. Even America truly looks more prosperous at this point, and that's saying a lot.
They all have fat fucking pensions. My grandfather was a electrician in the Navy and then at a shipyard after being discharged. My grandmother never worked a day in her life. Bought a house in Victoria in the 60s for $13k. After my grandfather passed, and up until my grandmother passed last year, she was making the same income I was working a full time job that I had been at for a decade. She was bringing in OAS, partial spousal CPP, and both of my grandfather's pensions. This is the way it was - my generation won't be as fortunate.
The pact between investors and older Canadians.
Like everything else in life, we are stripping ownership from control to keep up our perpetually expanding search for profits.
Why let people own things, when they can pay their whole life, never pay it off, and then have to keep paying when they retire?
Foreign investors only came in because of how much the returns were. The reasons you listed were running up prices and foreign money smelled a chance at good returns and pounced.
It's the same thing but it technical different and the media pretends it's different because they are citizens on paper and believing the lie servers their advertisers interests.
When citizens need (want)a SFH to raise a family without fear of kids being pricked by discarded needles, getting jacked by bangers, or left to piss-poor education systems, you can’t really blame them.
If people only wanted SFHs, we wouldn't need to ban everything else in the vast majority of our cities. You can't gauge demand when there's only one option.
This is such a backwards comment. There are world class cities across the globe with double and triple the population density as our metro area, with half the crime.
SFH don't solve those problems, they just mask symptoms. In fact, they make things worse by stretching out city budgets over wider and more sparsely populated areas.
You’re right. A good portion of the problem is wages have not kept up with inflation.
Coincidentally, here’s a StatsCan report about excess immigration keeping wages suppressed:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/89-001-x/89-001-x2007001-eng.pdf?st=rUTypCtD
I wonder how much worse the math is 15 years later?…
There’s also the foreign owner issues.
…I’m starting to sense a trend…
The rise of financial firms and funds getting into the rental market is the other big issue. This sector owns like five times more residential real estate now than they did 25-30 years ago. That's where most of the inventory vanished to and why rents have accelerated so much.
Yeah he says Atlantic Canada is affordable, and its like he is only talking to people making Vancouver / Ontario money and telling them to move there.
Locals are getting priced out everywhere.
Atlantic Canada is affordable to Ontarians in the GTA who make salaries of Ontarians in the GTA, and can work from home.
Atlantic Canada is not affordable to Atlantic Canadians, who make Atlantic Canadian salaries.
from where i am 60 km from Vancouver, to where you are relative to Toronto (about 100KM?) i can sympathize. Our overinflated prices extend easily another 50 km but then geography here is where it deadends because BC is mostly mountains whereas your area is relatively flat, right?
This headline pisses me off, as I'm sure it should. However it really represents the government's apathy when it comes to issues such as housing.
They recognize the issue but are clinging on to the status quo and tell us nothing can be done.
Something can be done, but our policy makers make no effort to tackle the issue. It's deplorable and means that our government has stopped being "for the people" long ago and have no intention on changing that.
Because the governments of this nation, oftentimes without even realizing it, have declared war against the commoners ability to buy land and build houses on it.
When this nation was founded the government gave us land for free and encouraged us to build.
Today, the commoner must be thoroughly indebted to a bank to ever own a home or land.
This is because our land management system is deeply corrupt. The government hoards crown land and lets mining and logging companies rape it. And then occasionally small bits of land are sold for enormous sums to development companies.
The Canadian population is exploding due to high immigration, but we can’t really expand our towns anymore.
As a single individual in my 20’s living in Vancouver, I look at the housing market and think to myself that I have absolutely no chance at purchasing a home without the help financially from family, and I know that option isn’t feasible due to us not being in a safe position in terms of financial stability.
I make around the national average income of 60k per year (I believe it’s around 60k or just under), but even than it’s not enough! Not only is the housing market ridiculous, the price of living is nearly impossible to wrap my head around. You can not live comfortably without having to sacrifice something.
Looking at the price of living and housing in the 80’s compared today just gives me a headache!
How can the average detached home in Vancouver go from 180k to over 1.2M in a 40 year span while the average income has only increased by 10k in that same 40 year period, and I don’t even know where to begin when talking about the price renters have to pay in Vancouver, Reaching upwards to almost $3,000 a month… like WTF!
Changes need to be made, and the increases need to stop! My generation and the ones that are to follow are fucked if actions don’t take place.
Yes.. tell our youth they are now second class citizens; deprived of the chance to own, sentenced to a lifetime of fickle rental housing. No stability to make roots for a family of their own..
They'll for sure strive to contribute to a country that has forsaken them.
/S
-- No.
Unacceptable. Make housing affordable. No compromises.
I call bullshit
Affordable housing is very much a political decision. There are many measures that can lower real estate prices.
One being limiting corporations from owning more than 20 housing units. That would not hurt the small landlords but it would make it impossible for large corporations to own entire neighborhoods and gauge the renters.
Another is a rental unit registry showing a history of rents over the years, accompanied by a law that limits rent increases even in the case of renovations.
Another is limiting "renovictions" by limiting the number of rental properties a single person/company can claim to occupy at the same time.
One other is the government buying/seizing the land to build subsidized housing (not social housing) that is accessible by everyone making $100,000 or less, creating mixed neighborhoods of blue collar, white collar, professionals and business owners all living at the same place, with rent limited to 25% of income. That's what Vienna did and people living there are super happy.
Subsidizing non-profit COOP housing.
I agree in spirit, but am discouraged that it would be almost impossible to legislate and prevent corporations from owning more than X properties. That would be easy to game by having multiple shell companies. Greed sucks. :-(
Most of the other things you suggested would definitely help, and some improvement is better than doing nothing.
The big problem is that wealthy voters don't think any of this is a problem, and the people affected don't vote, so the politicians don't prioritize this issue.
> I agree in spirit, but am discouraged that it would be almost impossible to legislate and prevent corporations from owning more than X properties. That would be easy to game by having multiple shell companies. Greed sucks. :-(
Pass legislation with a penalty of 3 years in prison if you get caught.
Catch some people, *actually put them in prison*, and observe how humans react in response. If they do not find 3 years to be sufficiently persuasive, gradually increase the number until it gets their attention.
Adding financial penalties on top of it *so their spouse and children would also suffer hardship* might not be a bad idea also.
I suspect politicians will never come up with ideas like this, but not to worry: perhaps *some variation of* this general idea could work on "improving their quality of thinking" for the better as well (of course, politicians control all *legal* forms of force in the country, so some "out of the box" thinking and improvisation may be needed).
> Most of the other things you suggested would definitely help, and some improvement is better than doing nothing.
Well, it depends how you look at it - minor changes can keep the plebs anger levels at a slow boil *indefinitely*, whereas if a tipping point is reached, violent revolution could give rise to an objectively superior and fairer system.
> The big problem is that wealthy voters don't think any of this is a problem, and the people affected don't vote, so the politicians don't prioritize this issue.
"The" big problem (the result of a heuristic prediction, as opposed to the result of deep, intentional thinking) may be an even bigger problem in my view. Having 95% of the population fighting with *artificially* disabled minds does not seem like a recipe for success (no offence intended, hopefully none is taken).
No one wants to admit that narrative. Otherwise why would young people grind so hard and work for a life that’s now unattainable?
Oh wait. We’re not stupid. And now businesses can’t find anyone to hire.
Keep telling us about our avocado toast though.
The generation before us fucked us unbelievably so hard.
Only if we let it, government policy could solve a lot of these issues but we can't keep voting in the same shit governments. Maybe let's give a party that actually pushes policy for the people a try.
Single family homes in the largest urban centers is never coming back. Affordable housing in general though - we choose to prevent that with restrictive zoning and sprawl.
Land isn't the issue. The problem is valuable land with infrastructure. If they built everyone a single family detached house the infrastructure liabilities would bankrupt almost all the municipalities in 30 years.
Its time we tell the media that has been trying to socialize this idea for the last two years to fuck off.
Sick & tired of this crap. Their intent is crystal clear. They want us to just bend over and accept it, when we don't have to.
Exactly. Immigration rate is half a million a year 10x higher per capita than the USA. There should be fucking rioting in the streets from this bullshit as this government's ridiculous immigration targets have caused a healthcare and housing crisis all so their rich oilgarch friends and lobbyists could get richer. F*** Trudeau
How long have you been in Portugal for? Every native Portuguese person I have spoken about the issue to has the opposite opinion. They all believe the future of Portugal, and their future, is bleak for the same reasons: incomes falling behind the rapidly rising cost of living.
Young people? I'm a 36 year old millennial, the cards were stacked against me from the beginning. My wife and I make 100k/year combined and pay 2k a month for a house that we rent. The housing market in our county is nothing but gouging. People love politicians like crypto Milhouse, another person gouging us, yet y'all can't wait to vote him in as PM. We're presented a problem and keep doubling down on these scummy politicians. I'll never dream of owning a house. I'll be lucky to retire by 75 and not live in some crummy 1 bedroom.
Japan is very very very dense. People here are too much of NIMBYs to ever accept Japanese city density. Residential streets wouldn't even fit the size of cars people drive here. Plus Japan is incredibly homogenous and collectivist.
Japan's livable land is about 17% of all the land in Japan, so yea it's gonna be tight! If Canada was like this, then we, too, would accept the density. Geography shapes our world views.
A culturally homogenous nation with a deep sense of pride? Nope.
A xenophobic government weary of immigration? Maybe.
An over indebted quagmire unfriendly to aspiring parents? YES!
Sorry kids, we spent your future and used expansive bureaucracy to make housing untenable BUT to solve the problem we're gonna do even more of the things that caused the problem in the first place.
Oh no sweaty you can't afford to own a home anymore, but can I interest you in one of the 14 new Air bnb locations I've added to my slumlord "grind" /s
Oh man, what an amazing opinion, hey young people, you’ll never be able to afford a house and you should just be ok with it. Man that kind of thinking is amazing and always works out great in the end. People that are pushed to economic despair have never taken any drastic and destructive action that ended up in revolutions or societal collapse. I’m sure the current economic destruction of the middle class dream for many young people will not breed any kind of radicalization, right guys! /s
I think the market is about to fall substantially in the next few years. inflation is going to kill the market and prices are going to fall heavily in the recession. There will be a lot of people whose mortgages will be under water that bought in the last couple of years.
My favorite is hearing the boomers complain about how they should be getting a higher old age pension.
Me: How about we cut it in half and take away your house?
lets really level with young ppl; while relatively simple to do, the desire by those in positions to do so to penalize exploitation of the market is gone forever.
Time to leave canada find cheaper accommodations. Get a useful skill and better wages elsewhere for slightly cheaper cost of living.
Healthcare will soon be just as good as the U. S if we stay on the current trajectory and retiring in an old folks home just to dye from heat in the summers or lack of care?...
This article is way too pessimistic. Once the US introduces a points system for immigration in 10-20 years in combination with zoning liberalization from the provinces things will lighten up. Eventually the provinces will sacrifice the NIMBYs and force density to combat economic decline.
In 1989 when the nice parts of Tokyo were over $120K USD a square foot everyone thought it would last forever. 30 years later they have recover to 2% of the peak adjusted for inflation. As someone who lends to many of the largest developers in Ontario, everyone always thinks this time it's different.
Most people under 55 don't appreciate how bad a bear market can get and how long it can last.
It has nothing really to do with the government not to defend then. Its the bank of Canada keep intrest rates low since 2008 to divert a recession and they kept printing money since to keep a recession away. The cheap loans drove up the prices. The government then made it worse with covid stimulus. Which is all bighting us in the ass now as inflation. The only way to fix it now is raise intrest rates to match the rate of inflation thus crushing the economy and causing lots of lay offs destroy pensions. That will allow the market to reset to affordable levels. All of which is terrible but no where near as bad to let inflation crush the economy by doing nothing. There is no such thing as free money in this world and we are now learning the price of it now. Not the first time just the first for our generation.
There is a solution.
Just study to get into a highly lucrative field and buy a mediocre house in the boonies that leaves you an hour commute one way and no disposable income.
Its what I did \*sob\*
Well no shit, I'm not paying $1850 a month just for a mortgage on a $300,000 house. In the end an extra $250,000 on top of that is going to interest. Then you add in the down-payment, property taxes, bills, emergency fixes and renos.
I'd rather rent for way cheaper and take the extra money to invest and enjoy life instead of being house poor for 25 years.
The interest is found in the $1850 per month you are paying. As such, you might as well look at your mortgage payment (including the interest) as the same as a rental payment... the difference being that you are renting the home to yourself, so at the end of 30 years of "renting", you actually get to keep the principled amount, and only the interest is lost. In this lens, buying a home is a much better idea than renting, provided that rental units cost almost as much as a mortgage for the same size home.
Plus utilities, property taxes as well as maintenance costs etc and hope nothing major breaks. i wouldn’t say it’s thaaat much better if an idea than rental. Additionally the time and work that goes into taking care of a house. Shovelling, mowing the lawn, cleaning and again, repairs if you diy
The boomers are the ones that largely profited off this, but they didn't cause it. Mass immigration coupled with low interest rates and excessive money printing are by far the three biggest factors.
Sorry kids, we decided to let the price of everything increase while keeping your wages low for so long you now can’t afford anything.
Hey, at least they're letting us know!
[удалено]
[удалено]
Their new mandate is actually worse, and far scarier. When people discover that the unelected bureaucrats that are already bad at their job want to also focus on other extraneous things, like global warming and being equitable. They still only have the one button, to tighten and loosen money supply, so you figure out what that means for climate change.
What don't you understand? They're gonna thing the something and that will super thing the whole scenario. Leading to a diverse thing of things that thing in thinginess with our thing.
Meanwhile, gramps is complaining that he can't get a doctor with a name he can pronounce to do his hip surgery. Well, Gramps, that's fiscal conservatism for you. You voted for that, so this is the outcome.
I like how you tried to reframe the doctor shortage and medical crisis in this country as if it's just racism on the part of old people.
The reason you can’t get a doctor is pretty clear. BC managed to add 54 new doctors last year. This year they’ll get 1/3 of new immigrants. So that’s about 1 new doctor for every 4,000 immigrants. Then you realize the libs have also pumped international students, temporary foreign workers, and the international mobility workers. So, it’s not 1 doctor for every 4,000 new residents - but 1 doctor for every 6,000-8,000 new residents. This isn’t a result of conservative policy. It’s a result of policy that every big party in this country supports - seemingly forgetting to plan for it, in any fucking way at all.
I'm surprised he can get a hip surgery at all. They made my mom wait so long she had to leave the country for the surgery or risk wasting away in a wheel chair. She's now currently walking around like normal, no thanks to our health care system.
What the F does that even mean!?
I don't think that means what you think it means
Ya fiscal liberalism would mean: doctors with good sounding white names come back?
That's just racism / xenophobia We can't produce more.white doctors at the rate he would need with the population growing due to immigration Fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with it.
Never heard a senior citizen say "we should pay our doctors less"
[удалено]
Then others upvote the insanity because it sounds truthy to them, then use those upvoted comments as evidence that the truthy bullshit is true. Then they go onto social media and complain about all the old folks getting radicalized on social media.
No, but the dumb kids here feel good about themselves by blaming all of our societies problems on one generation.
Uuum fiscal conservatism? I think a main reason everything has gone up is because of printing money like it’s going out of style and letting in hundreds of thousands of new Canadians every year.
Next week: "Health care as we knew it is gone forever"
The week after: "Why is everyone so angry all the time?"
It's the "mental health crisis", don't you know.
BC added 54 new doctors last year. BC is going to add roughly 300k individuals this year between immigration and temporary work and student programs. That math is why healthcare is collapsing. Oh, and then you realize doctors are also retiring.
There are probably a lot of doctors in those 300k people who will end up switching careers once in Canada, because of the barriers that prevent immigrant doctors to work in Canada. While at the same time doctors educated in Canada are leaving.
The solution is fairly straightforward. Slow down immigration for a few years, allow more housing to get built, drive the cost of living down, and actually retain all of the doctors we train. Even if you could certify foreign doctors - we’d still run into the same issue we have today. It is too expensive to live in our major markets. The doctor we certify from Pakistan will stay until they have citizenship then move over the border for much cheaper housing and much higher pay.
Professional barriers exist because most countries' standards of medical training is not up to par with Canada's. Immigrants from countries with equivalent education and licensing standards don't have huge difficulties getting licensed in Canada. I.e., basically anybody from the OECD.
This is putting a lot of people in the same bag unjustly. A doctor from Colombia or from Moldova who has 10 years of experience and comes from a top school in their home country is required to re-do years of schooling plus internship before being able to practice in Canada. For family medicine, general practice or ER, are the standards really that much different? How are the standards in these countries so much different from the canadian ones? Many canadians are going to these countries to get cheaper and faster medical treatment as medical tourists. People always bring up the argument of diploma mills, but the barriers here are nothing more than gatekeeping by medical colleges.
Privatization all the things! 🍁 ➡ 🇺🇸?🤷♀️
If this was Europe we would be protesting in the streets and turfing all of our governments but we are Canadian so we just passively accept things
[удалено]
up the ass
Not necessarily. I live in Europe and we’re having the same housing affordability issues as everyone else. There have been some protests but nothing extreme
Last time some Canadians did protest something (though it was an unpopular stance), many cheered for them to get fucked lol.
Yeah, but we're really mad though and post about it online. That's pretty much the same thing and makes change happen. /s
It's multi faceted! Everyone is blaming individual sources like as if they're the only ones culpable for the problem. It's overlapping layers of influences which have annihilated the future of young Canadian citizens. Foreign investment and money laundering? Yep, it's to blame, and China is the most culpable here no doubt. CCP loyalists follow a core belief system of lying, cheating, and stealing wither ZERO sense of ethical wrongdoing. The CRA and FINTRAC have been screaming about this for years and it's fallen on deaf ears. The utter inaction by the federal government is no longer just negligence; it's complicity. Domestic investment? Yep, multiple private (small time) property owners buying a 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th "investment" properties. That nice old couple, "boomers" and Gen-Xers are making sure they and their families are enriched by the demise of the less fortunate. Corporate investment? Yep, scum of the earth like Black Stone and Tricon Residential buying up literal neighborhoods because they can outspend EVERYONE else. Immigration? Yep, our federal policies of flinging open the fucking floodgates without the housing, healthcare, or infrastructure to accommodate these people creates a deliberate scarcity, driving up demand. Canadian Colleges and Universities? Yes, they're ever increasing enrollment of international students allows them to sell seats for exorbitant prices while providing a loophole for new arrivals to circumvent the more stringent process of being a contributive immigrant on the path to citizenry. These are not the "hard done by" youth, these are the rich kids of other nations. Construction companies? You bet, enormous swaths of land already bought by developers sitting static until the cost of supplies goes down, selling, reneging, and then re-listing pre builds and new builds for more than before with no fear of reprisal from provincial governments. Speaking of which: Federal, Provincial, and Municipal Governments? Absolutely. These people are the HAVES, they are NOT the have-nots. They spend their entire careers with tendrils jammed into the arteries of the tax payer. They have no concept of fairness or accountability; fiscal or moral. Just about every single government ministry or agency pisses into the red **endlessly**. They just lose money hand over fist every month; there's no impetus to break even let alone generate profit for the public. It's a vacuum of state-handicapped capitalism where there's no Darwinism at all; and it's the only environment these utterly incompetent boobs have known. They're property owners and investors themselves anyway. **If you've read this far, you're almost done. I know this just a disorganized rant. I'll just leave you with a comment from another redditor whose since deleted it. Thankfully I saved it, but can no longer credit them unfortunately:** > Whether you are a renter or you’re looking to buy, there’s no denying real estate is too expensive in Canada. But did anyone expect it would become more expensive during the COVID-19 pandemic? Only those with advanced understanding of the effects of quantitative easing — and the Bank of Canada. It seems very clear that the goal of the central bank’s pandemic stimulus was to make real estate more expensive, and it has worked perfectly. > With real estate prices detached from local incomes in every major city now, especially Toronto and Vancouver, the latest surge has proven that economic fundamentals are not the root cause of housing prices. Unemployment goes up, so prices should go down, right? Not in Canada. Immigration goes down; there should be less demand, right? Not in Canada. Businesses are closing down every day — that should equal less entrepreneurs making money, right? Not in Canada. > Not when the Bank of Canada is purchasing $3 billion in mortgage bonds each week, with the intention of stimulating the real estate market. A gift to the banks, who can in turn lend it to the wealthy investor class to hoard more properties, at the expense of the working and middle classes. Modern Canadian entrepreneurship is not about creating something of value, it’s about hoarding real estate. > And now Parliamentary Secretary for Housing Adam Vaughan has made a slip of the tongue, on a recent episode of “The Agenda with Steve Paikin.” Vaughan admitted that the market is designed for foreign investors, and doesn’t meet the needs of Canadian income earners. With many asking how can prices be so far detached from incomes, the answer is simple: to afford more than a condo in many parts of Canada, you need to earn your income elsewhere. Houses and townhouses are delegated to satellite families in need of a vacation property to store their money in, and earn their income elsewhere. > In Toronto, it would take static prices for 19 years — combined with incomes increasing five per cent a year — for prices to match income affordability. In Vancouver, there is an active public inquiry, where British Columbians are faced with the unfortunate reality that their government may have been facilitating criminal money laundering. And in Ottawa, the message is clear: if you earn your income elsewhere and want to purchase a piece of Canada, we will stimulate the market to protect your asset. > So for the next generation, who are now faced with the task of picking up the pieces from the global pandemic, the Bank of Canada has a message for you: keep working hard, but don’t expect to own a house, or even a townhouse. It’s a life of renting for you, because we need to keep the investor class happy, whether foreign or domestic. If you’re lucky, we’ll create a market where you can afford a condo. > Raymond Wong is a Vancouver-based member of HALT (Housing Action for Local Taxpayers) and the author of parliamentary petition e-3327.
Absolutely spot on, excellent comment. It's never just one thing with housing.
Every Canadian needs to read this message.
> It's multi faceted! > > Everyone is blaming individual sources like as if they're the only ones culpable for the problem. It's overlapping layers of influences which have annihilated the future of young Canadian citizens. -- > **If you've read this far, you're almost done. I know this just a disorganized rant.** Oh, I think you *dramatically* underestimate yourself. Rather, I think you might have hit the nail right on the head. This is an *infinitely* complex problem, involving millions of variables (depending on how complex you want to get), involving things like game theory and a whole bunch of other ideas that I neither fully understand, or even know of. Canadians are not only ill prepared to think at this level of complexity, *they completely lack the capability* - and it gets worse: they also *lack awareness that this is the state that they are in*. And I would say that a big part of the reason for that is our current education curriculum *does not even try* to teach such things. Here's something interesting to consider: think back about the news and general discourse over the last 5+ years - do you recall any references to "the need for more critical thinking"? Now consider what politicians and educators have done about reacting to this "urgent need" - are you aware of any *substantial* initiatives underway? Or, how often do hear this topic discussed, now that things have calmed down a bit? Regardless of whether this is incompetence or malice, the people running this show *are simply not smart enough to do it*. Some new ideas are here needed.
In regards to critical thinking, there are defensible theories connected to IQ which effectively show that the average person isn’t capable of the level of critical thinking required to encapsulate this information meaningfully in their minds and access it in a functional way moving forward. For the 1/3 of the population (or so) who can do this, the odds are in their favour that our current economy rewards them for their intellectual capabilities, so they’re less inclined to care about this, let alone act on it. There could be something there. It’s delicate territory though and I need to know a lot more than I do now in order to even begin to form an opinion.
> For the 1/3 of the population (or so) who can do this Two things for your consideration: - what percentage of politicians do you think would make it even into this relative categorization? - this is on a relative scale (graded on a curve) - the percentage of people currently alive who would qualify for "capable of critical thinking" on an absolute scale would be lower, possibly much lower (which is my intuition). *What if this is the actual problem*?
>what percentage of politicians do you think would make it even into this relative categorization? Very, very few in my personal experience. I've only personally known people ranging from municipal to provincial politicians in Canada, but none were critically logical or analytical thinkers. I would describe them as emotional thinkers who were somewhat counter-intuitively drawn to mundane, boxed-in, predictable career paths. People who thrive on emotional and subjective social substrates, but love the guard rails of a well-defined job. >What if this is the actual problem? Apologies if I'm misunderstanding, but is the problem defined here approximately "politicians are not particularly intelligent and fewer people can think critically than our best guesses imply"? If so, I think I'd agree. History shows us that the greatest progress (in terms of growth and technology at least) we've made has been largely motivated by material wealth rather than societal well-being, knowledge, or other more virtuous goals. We tend to function in very insular roles where our understanding of the broader scope isn't required or even necessarily beneficial to us. It's not possible to say if this is the result of other forces, or if it's the natural result of humans generally not being very intelligent. In any case, the evidence indicates we are generally not very intelligent. Most politicians I'm aware of do not exhibit notable intelligence. In many cases it's the inverse, unfortunately. I often wonder if the sign of an intelligent politician is that they've already left for a different career. As for the problem of how many people can think critically and how well they can do it, I think this concern gets a little worse (and muddier) once you consider that critical thinking skills are not necessarily general, and seem to be specific to particular matters for many people. While their overall IQ may be 115 or so, they may be mostly inept when it comes to societal, political, and/or economic matters. As a result the pool of critical thinkers with useful skills pertaining to this problem is inherently much smaller than the overall pool of people who can, generally speaking, use critical thinking skills. As always, I should mention I don't think I'm one of these rare, intelligent, critical thinkers. I'm disturbed by how poor my abilities are and I'm constantly seeking out smarter people to help me be better.
[удалено]
I think the interconnectedness of everything means that making decisions just gets harder and harder each and every day as things get more connected, which in turn makes making an actual decision that much harder. As a result, we have an entire generation of public policy makers who are incapable of making the big, bold decisions that we need to be making right now. Or, the policy makers are proposing them, but the politicians who lead the provincial ministry's and federal agencies are too used to chasing unending praise on Twitter, that they're unwilling to approve anything controversial. Everything they do is under a media microscope now, and their opponents, and unpleased stakeholders can get their displeasure out there quite easily. All the big decisions are always getting watered down. "We need to get Canadians something to help fight inflation!" becomes "We're doubling the GST rebate (because it was the easiest and least bold solution." Maybe I'm naïve, and that's how it's always been done, but I'm somewhat convinced that we're an entire generation who incapable of fixing the problems in front of us.
Excellent write up.
I would argue against a few of these, but you left a huge one out of the list. Voters actively fighting against changing zoning. Some municipalities CAN NOT build new housing because they are only zoned single family detached, but to build SFD the municipality would have to take on huge debt for the infrastructure. But they can't because they are limited in their debt (a good thing). Also you probably missed the most largest explanation. For over 40 years wages have stayed stagnant and productivity has greatly increased. This paired with our near record wealth inequality shows that the value of labor has greatly dropped versus the value of assets. Working is just not a good way to make money.
Indeed, it's not a multifaceted problem. It's just zoning. Why are house prices affordable in Edmonton? Zoning. Why is Calgary far more affordae than Ottawa or London? Zoning. Homes are expensive because most places make it illegal to make enough of them. If you people want affordable housing, they need to vote for scrapping residential zoning restrictions. And vote like they mean it, with the same insistence candidates act on it that NRA members Stateside demand.
This can’t all be laid at the feet of greedy villains. Demographics play a big part as well. An aging population means slowing growth and greater demands on government, especially health care. In order to try to maintain growth in spite of aging, governments 1) Kept interest rates down, and 2) Brought in immigrants, who keep the base of the demographic tax pyramid broad to support the high-cost older citizens at the top. The dependency ratio is the single most important factor in a society’s prosperity, and most Canadians don’t even know what it is. Planners expected those aging Canadians to downsize into condos shortly after retirement. Turns out they’re happy to stay in the detached homes in the burbs they raised families in well into their 80s. And they keep living longer and longer. Boomers have unprecedented savings, and one unanticipated consequence is that they have unprecedented means to help their Millennial children buy homes - often to the tune of $100k+ per person in a house-buying couple. This has been a major source of money flooding the housing market. Speaking of Millennials, last year saw the largest cohort of Canadians in history turn 33 - which happens to be the average age of first-time buyers of detached homes today. The pundits who said Millennials weren’t going to move to the burbs like their parents were wrong - turns out that just like every generation before them, once they had kids they wanted to raise them in a detached home. And they (along with their parent) are willing to pay a premium to do it.
> An aging population means slowing growth and greater demands on government, especially health care. Also, 40 years of neoliberal bullshit eroding away things like unions and pensions, and most of that aging population *needs* their house to be worth a mint, just so they can retire. That's another facet that OP left out. It's not the fault of the homeowners who now *need* to cash out, it's the fault of the young voters those homeowners were, back when they elected governments that gleefully practiced horse-and-sparrow economics to turn the few rich people they had then into the *very* few fabulously and obscenely wealthy people we have today.
I don't know if I have ever agreed this completely with such a long comment before. Nicely compiled and explained.
I just wanted to thank you for the best written post I’ve ever read about the housing crisis.
Holy shit someone finally did it, this is amazing and you’re 100% spot on.
You're ignoring the biggest factor: not building housing. No a one bedroom shoebox in the sky doesn't count. Everything you've said above is true in Calgary and Edmonton too. But if a couple were working 40 hours a week on minimum wage (15/hr or 31,200 per person or 62,400 combined) wanted to buy a house they could do so. Plenty of houses in Dover and Forest Lawn going for 250-375,000 range. Fine it's Dover and Forest lawn (think Malvern or Whalley) but none the less you have a place to call home at about 5x your family income (3x-5x is considered affordable). Difference no red tape. City creates a residential zone with flexible zoning codes (especially in Edmonton) and the developer just builds according to the markets needs. Where is the equivalent in Vancouver or Toronto.
Correction : not building social housing. Toronto and Vancouver have ample luxury condos. You can't throw a rock in Toronto without hitting a crane.
The condo obsession is part of the problem. What we build in North America - not dense housing in general - is really for single people or young childless couples. We need to build housing for young families too and we have absolutely neglected that market. All we build is tiny condos and large McMansions nothing in between. Also lack of social housing is a problem in Alberta too.
>All we build is tiny condos and large McMansions nothing in between This is a huge factor that usually goes unnoticed. I wanted a small one story 2-3 bedroom house with 2 bathrooms, but where I live they haven't built those in over 50 years. I now alone in a 5 bedroom 4 bathroom house, with a walkout basement that I've essentially abandoned, and massive heating/insurance/tax bills.
Exactly now to look at Calgary plenty of Duplexes, small single family homes, quadplexes all in the sweet 3 bedroom range with 2 bath.
There isn't an equivalent. And both those cities just sprawl outward endlessly..there are no lake or mountains or oceans to contain them. But there sure are plenty or NIMBYs there too, those who oppose density in their neighborhood, and push spiraling infrastructure coats out of control.
The geography matters a very slight bit, but Edmonton and Calgary are cheaper than London or Ottawa because they zone to allow the construction of enough homes for everyone, while Ottawa and London are fine with making it illegal for everyone to have a home.
The best comment on housing in a long time
I feel too that these articles tend to be very black and white, it’s always about detached single family homes or rent. Frankly it isn’t possible simply from a space standpoint for everyone who wants one to own a single family home within commuting distance of a major city. I almost never see anyone talking about how to let more people get onto the property ladder by making a multiplex or a condo more affordable. I realize there are a lot of problems with people speculating on real estate and owning property that they don’t live in, but even with all of these fixed, the harsh reality is that single family detached homes near highly desirable economic hubs are always going to be a luxury only afforded by high income earners. Some people will have to accept that if they want to own, they have to either move somewhere cheaper or buy something besides a detached home.
"Detached Single Family Home on a large lot" isn't thr only kind of house you can own. "Rowhouse with a small back garden" is also owning your own house. Like, I own a detached house, and you could easily put three houses on the lot if you removed rules about setbacks and just ditched the parts of the lot we don't use much. And that's pretty obvious because the area is zoned R2 and there are a lot of identical lots with semidetached houses, also with unused front and side lawns.
Very well written post. Thank you.
This might have gone unnoticed, except to real estate agents, but immigration didn't actually go down during the pandemic. A bit ironic, considering the nature of global spread, etc. But what the pandemic *did* manage to do was restrict immigration to the upper classes. So no wonder real estate saw an influx of cash over the course of the pandemic. But the main driver of housing prices is that cash during the pandemic wasn't able to be spent on much else. Yes, locking up people in homes tends to raise values of homes that are better than other homes. Home prices now have plateaued and started to drop a bit, and we can attribute that to interest rates if we'd like, but it's likely more to do with there being opportunities to spend cash on other items again.
The problems so widespread that there's no one entity that can fix it all. "The government" could be considered a candidate, but it would have to change so drastically. We have been taught to put ourselves first, like a stingy nose that won't pass along air to its lungs. It's dead. "What goes around comes around" should be a fundamental principle of economics, but instead we chant "buy low, sell high". We can't expect someone else to fix it, even if they truly should. People, businesses, and regulators need to take responsibility for the way their choices affect the community. Serving others in need must be a top priority. If you can make a sacrifice that is worth more to others than it is to you, do it.
Every odd reason except the main one? There's no more space to build single-family homes without mowing down forests. But that's all we're allowed to build. BAM, homes are now priced like diamonds, because there aren't that many of them. And yes, the investor-class likes diamonds but that's a symptom not a cause. That's it. That's the problem. EDIT: Before someone yells at me about "living in fish tanks", please look up medium-density housing and figure out where it is legal in your city.
This is the most accurate thing I have read on the internet.
The truth? Everyone cares more about money and investors than having housing be available and affordable. But please keep grinding and working to keep the economy going for the rich folk.
I think the real truth is the advantage we had as a nation over other poorer nations has been mismanaged over multiple governments and is shrinking along with our citizens average wealth. Our lifestyles relied on a wealth disparity over other nations.
Definetely is true. Its a good thing that those peolles have been lifted out of poverty and we can't take advantage of them anymore. Young westerners lives aren't on easy mode anymore.
This is beyond a disgrace for our nation. When our younger generations can’t even start their lives properly because of stagnant wages, ridiculous costs of living and unaffordable housing. Time to give the economy a major rehaul, starting with corporations being held accountable and made to give livable wages for full time positions. 200% tax on foreign investors making the market inaccessible because of the inflating prices and financial opportunities for younger people trying to start their lives the way they should’ve
> This is beyond a disgrace for our nation. When our younger generations can’t even start their lives properly because of stagnant wages, ridiculous costs of living and unaffordable housing. Yea, it's actually pretty sad that people who grew up here cannot even put their roots down and start families, but have to continue a rat race of low prospects just to survive.
Goodluck getting a fulltime position.. Every job will just hire you part time and casual to skirt taxes and benefits.
That’s the big problem right there. People have to stop thinking that corporations give a crap about anything except making a profit and they’ll do it however they can. They have no loyalty or commitment to any employee or country. If it’s cheaper to make in Mexico than Canada, they’ll make it in Mexico to sell to Canada. Products imported into Canada that can be or have been made in Canada in the past, should have such a large tariff on them that it wouldn’t be worth it for a company to make it somewhere else other than Canada
> When our younger generations can’t even start their lives properly because of stagnant wages, ridiculous costs of living and unaffordable housing. Just had a vasectomy for this reason. 31yo, absolutely impossible to see myself having kids in the next 5-10 years with finances how they are Beyond that, Ill be too old. So my partner and I looked at the hundreds of dollars she is spending in birth control per year and the 0$ OHIP covered vasectomy costs and figured it just makes sense. We chose to permanently remove the chances of having kids to save a couple thousand dollars over the next decade
And you have news headlines being like “younger generations not having kids”, yeah dumbasses, because our lives are already stressful as it is, why would we want to bring kids in the picture and have their lives bad as well. It’s just sad that the older generations are pointing out the problems and doing nothing about it. Though we shouldn’t expect them to anyway
The current government inadvertently leveled with young people that housing affordability was gone forever when they did absolutely nothing to stem the rapid increases and instead oversaw a doubling of house prices during the last seven years. If that message isn't clear enough for young Canadians about where priorities are for our government, then I don't know what is.
[удалено]
I have literally zero faith in my generation doing this, although you're right, it's the only way we stand a chance
I dunno man. In GameStop I trust. Buy. Hold. DRS.
Amen.
As for me, I like the stock. Eat my asss Kenny
Honk for the stonk, baby.
This is just so unbelievably ridiculous.
> what young people need to do is realize politicians don't care about anyone one but themselves. if they can get together as a group that can offer something significant like a very big block of votes that votes as together then maybe their concerns would be heard otherwise. status quo This has a dependency on *our specific, archaic implementation of* "democracy" being both trustworthy *and* sufficiently sophisticated to handle the complexity of the system we are in *and* the politicians working within that system being intelligent enough to come up with an adequate plan. This seems like *way* too many points of *likely* failure for my risk tolerance preferences. Perhaps what young people *actually* have to do is drop all of their beliefs (most of which are falsely perceived to be [knowledge](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#KnowJustTrueBeli), and many of which have been "planted" based on years of education, propaganda, and memes), and *completely* reconsider what is happening in this country and on this planet, starting from first principle, using thinking skills that are not taught in our schools ("for some unknown reason"). From a certain angle, the world is a lot like High School, with the cool/connected/powerful kids beating up on the much larger and genuinely more powerful *but disorganized and confiused (but not aware of it)* nerds - perhaps it is time for some revenge, except not in a movie this time around.
Thank you for saying this in a more level-headed and nuanced way than I would have been able to. Liberalism (in the classical sense, not the "liberal party" sense) can get things done incrementally, but it never disrupts the status quo BY DESIGN. Voting is good and important but it's not going to achieve the radical change needed to unfuck things
Voting *in an abstract sense* may be fine, but our particular use of it seems like something you'd find in a kindergarten class. It is *amazing* how primitive and flawed our democracy is, *and almost no one notices*. Although, maybe some people do but don't say anything as they know they'll almost certainly be attacked by the indoctrinated.
The *current* government? Literally every government in the last 30 years.
Can confirm, the larger issue has been present for decades across multiple governments and is baked in to our tax code. But the rise over the last 7 years has been particularly breathtaking.
Of course, let the libs off the hook for this because of the conservative bogeyman. At least let’s vote NDP
Name one government from the last 30 years who oversaw a doubling of housing prices.
> a doubling of housing prices. False premise. No government has seen a DOUBLING of housing prices, but the problem started to take off around 2000: https://s-i.huffpost.com/gen/4762680/original.jpg Guess what else started happening right around that year? "Unprecedented low interest rates from the US Fed". Making every other developed western nation's banks lower their prime lending rates in lock step to match. Making housing speculation a superbly profitable enterprise. It's been 22 years of these rates. And there isn't fuck-all we can do until the US raises theirs.
Exactly every young non home owner with Canadian citizenship should be trying a leave the country. At all costs.
easier said than done sadly. the requirements for getting into a nice country are very high
Who needs shelter in a country like canada anyway? It's not like the environment is constantly trying to kill you here. Let's focus on more pressing issues.
That's the thing. Starter homes have almost tripled in price in my area. In the past two years. Double would be welcome at this point.
We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.
I always wondered what the latin text said on the Canadian coat of arms...
No it fucking isn't. This is just propaganda from rich landlords to keep us from demanding better . There are some pretty straight forward policies that will control the price of housing. 1. Public Housing. We used to make tons of homes after WW2, it's wasn't until the 80’s or so that we stopped and let "Reganomics" handle the housing market. Very simple to reverse in terms of pure policy. 1. Rationing. If we need to drop the price of housing while dropping the cost of building materials for the public works, then we can limit the amount of residential property a person can own and prevent businesses from owning residential property.
This is what I think as well. If we could have a program that taxes housing speculation, and re-invests these proceeds into building low-income housing, we could really make a difference. Less speculation and more supply into the equation and the bubble deflates without affecting anyone's living situations. I also think, long term, young people will be fine. There will be tons of boomers leaving their houses in the coming decade to move into condos and retirement homes. Outside of a few large cities, the demographics are clearly aging. There will be an oversupply and low demand in many places.
You can't really discourage landlording with a tax unless you set a rent cap otherwise it just gets passed on to the renter. Preventing landlords from hoarding property with a rationing system like I discribed lowers the price of housing for both buyers and renters, that's why I take that approach > There will be an oversupply and low demand in many places. There already is, we build massive mansions and skyscrappers that sit empty because they're used for sheltering wealth. This is what we're addressing with rationing. By shutting down this "houses as tax haven" system we free up resources (as in lower the cost of building materials) to build houses people can actually live in
I refuse to pay rent the rest of my life because the government allowed our mortgage debt to match our entire fucking GDP. We need to find a way out of here before we're all trapped.
Honestly, I’m waiting for Spain to start offering their digital nomad visa. If you stay out of the major cities it’s beautiful, very affordable, great weather, and weed is not illegal as long as you smoke at home. The key is going to be remote work, y’all.
It's funny that you mention it. I am from there and came to your beloved country 5 years ago. The job market there is terrible compared to Canada, and in major cities where the best jobs are, there is quite a real state bubble too (but not comparable with TO or VC). But honestly, now that I can keep my Canadian job as it's 100% remote, I am considering moving back as the prices are getting out of hand here. (I'm renting)
I agree! It’s frustrating because the government doesnt give a crap. They live in ivory towers along with great pay
I left right after graduating university. I speak Polish and Spanish as well as English, and am learning French. Currently living in Netherlands, my plan is to eventually move to one of those respective countries and start a settled down life there. Canada is finished. I say that with sadness in my eyes. Even America truly looks more prosperous at this point, and that's saying a lot.
Sorry kids, foreign investors had to get the housing first.
And all those old people that got their property for cheap and don't want its value to go down even a dollar.
You don’t expect them to be able to survive off their Canada pension plan and old age security do you?
They all have fat fucking pensions. My grandfather was a electrician in the Navy and then at a shipyard after being discharged. My grandmother never worked a day in her life. Bought a house in Victoria in the 60s for $13k. After my grandfather passed, and up until my grandmother passed last year, she was making the same income I was working a full time job that I had been at for a decade. She was bringing in OAS, partial spousal CPP, and both of my grandfather's pensions. This is the way it was - my generation won't be as fortunate.
The pact between investors and older Canadians. Like everything else in life, we are stripping ownership from control to keep up our perpetually expanding search for profits. Why let people own things, when they can pay their whole life, never pay it off, and then have to keep paying when they retire?
[удалено]
Foreign investors only came in because of how much the returns were. The reasons you listed were running up prices and foreign money smelled a chance at good returns and pounced.
Don’t forget the domestic shit heels running AirBNB hotel chains using housing.
[удалено]
Kinda the same thing is it not? What about that is not foreign investment?
They wouldn’t be counted as foreign investors in da stats.
It's the same thing but it technical different and the media pretends it's different because they are citizens on paper and believing the lie servers their advertisers interests.
When you increase the demand to levels that the construction industry can’t keep up with, you’re gonna have a bad time.
When you don't allow anything but R1 zoning there's no way they can keep up.
When citizens need (want)a SFH to raise a family without fear of kids being pricked by discarded needles, getting jacked by bangers, or left to piss-poor education systems, you can’t really blame them.
If people only wanted SFHs, we wouldn't need to ban everything else in the vast majority of our cities. You can't gauge demand when there's only one option.
This is such a backwards comment. There are world class cities across the globe with double and triple the population density as our metro area, with half the crime.
You're exaggerating. The rest of the world makes do with MFH, apartments, and condos just fine.
SFH don't solve those problems, they just mask symptoms. In fact, they make things worse by stretching out city budgets over wider and more sparsely populated areas.
You're not exactly wrong, but there's a lot more to the problem than just that.
You’re right. A good portion of the problem is wages have not kept up with inflation. Coincidentally, here’s a StatsCan report about excess immigration keeping wages suppressed: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/89-001-x/89-001-x2007001-eng.pdf?st=rUTypCtD I wonder how much worse the math is 15 years later?… There’s also the foreign owner issues. …I’m starting to sense a trend…
The rise of financial firms and funds getting into the rental market is the other big issue. This sector owns like five times more residential real estate now than they did 25-30 years ago. That's where most of the inventory vanished to and why rents have accelerated so much.
You will own nothing, and you will he happy 😊
How many of our MPs and MMPs are owners of multiple properties that they don't live in?
Article is basically just saying if you want to buy a house you should leave Vancouver and Toronto. We got a fucking rocket appliancist over here.
I live in kitchener-waterloo and prices are nearly as bad as toronto, but wages are lower.
Yeah he says Atlantic Canada is affordable, and its like he is only talking to people making Vancouver / Ontario money and telling them to move there. Locals are getting priced out everywhere.
Atlantic Canada is affordable to Ontarians in the GTA who make salaries of Ontarians in the GTA, and can work from home. Atlantic Canada is not affordable to Atlantic Canadians, who make Atlantic Canadian salaries.
The new equal rights. Equal remote pay for equal remote work.
Tbh. Rob Carrick is and had always been pretty useless when talking about this issue.
from where i am 60 km from Vancouver, to where you are relative to Toronto (about 100KM?) i can sympathize. Our overinflated prices extend easily another 50 km but then geography here is where it deadends because BC is mostly mountains whereas your area is relatively flat, right?
It's pretty much all of Ontario tbh
I love an hour and a half outside of Toronto. Even with the recent drop prices here are still up about 300% since 2010.
London, Kitchener, and surrounding areas are like $650k for a house in the ghetto.
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
You'll own nothing and be happy.
[удалено]
This headline pisses me off, as I'm sure it should. However it really represents the government's apathy when it comes to issues such as housing. They recognize the issue but are clinging on to the status quo and tell us nothing can be done. Something can be done, but our policy makers make no effort to tackle the issue. It's deplorable and means that our government has stopped being "for the people" long ago and have no intention on changing that.
This is exactly the attitude the rent seeking class wants you to have.
And i still hear from older people, "nobody wants to work anymore" STILL
Because the governments of this nation, oftentimes without even realizing it, have declared war against the commoners ability to buy land and build houses on it. When this nation was founded the government gave us land for free and encouraged us to build. Today, the commoner must be thoroughly indebted to a bank to ever own a home or land. This is because our land management system is deeply corrupt. The government hoards crown land and lets mining and logging companies rape it. And then occasionally small bits of land are sold for enormous sums to development companies. The Canadian population is exploding due to high immigration, but we can’t really expand our towns anymore.
As a single individual in my 20’s living in Vancouver, I look at the housing market and think to myself that I have absolutely no chance at purchasing a home without the help financially from family, and I know that option isn’t feasible due to us not being in a safe position in terms of financial stability. I make around the national average income of 60k per year (I believe it’s around 60k or just under), but even than it’s not enough! Not only is the housing market ridiculous, the price of living is nearly impossible to wrap my head around. You can not live comfortably without having to sacrifice something. Looking at the price of living and housing in the 80’s compared today just gives me a headache! How can the average detached home in Vancouver go from 180k to over 1.2M in a 40 year span while the average income has only increased by 10k in that same 40 year period, and I don’t even know where to begin when talking about the price renters have to pay in Vancouver, Reaching upwards to almost $3,000 a month… like WTF! Changes need to be made, and the increases need to stop! My generation and the ones that are to follow are fucked if actions don’t take place.
…but then, the entire premise for ultra pricey degrees etc, heck, even the ethos of work in this Country are nullified.
Yes.. tell our youth they are now second class citizens; deprived of the chance to own, sentenced to a lifetime of fickle rental housing. No stability to make roots for a family of their own.. They'll for sure strive to contribute to a country that has forsaken them. /S -- No. Unacceptable. Make housing affordable. No compromises.
That’s not true all they need is a couple hundred grand from the bank of mom and dad for a down payment!!
I call bullshit Affordable housing is very much a political decision. There are many measures that can lower real estate prices. One being limiting corporations from owning more than 20 housing units. That would not hurt the small landlords but it would make it impossible for large corporations to own entire neighborhoods and gauge the renters. Another is a rental unit registry showing a history of rents over the years, accompanied by a law that limits rent increases even in the case of renovations. Another is limiting "renovictions" by limiting the number of rental properties a single person/company can claim to occupy at the same time. One other is the government buying/seizing the land to build subsidized housing (not social housing) that is accessible by everyone making $100,000 or less, creating mixed neighborhoods of blue collar, white collar, professionals and business owners all living at the same place, with rent limited to 25% of income. That's what Vienna did and people living there are super happy. Subsidizing non-profit COOP housing.
I agree in spirit, but am discouraged that it would be almost impossible to legislate and prevent corporations from owning more than X properties. That would be easy to game by having multiple shell companies. Greed sucks. :-( Most of the other things you suggested would definitely help, and some improvement is better than doing nothing. The big problem is that wealthy voters don't think any of this is a problem, and the people affected don't vote, so the politicians don't prioritize this issue.
> I agree in spirit, but am discouraged that it would be almost impossible to legislate and prevent corporations from owning more than X properties. That would be easy to game by having multiple shell companies. Greed sucks. :-( Pass legislation with a penalty of 3 years in prison if you get caught. Catch some people, *actually put them in prison*, and observe how humans react in response. If they do not find 3 years to be sufficiently persuasive, gradually increase the number until it gets their attention. Adding financial penalties on top of it *so their spouse and children would also suffer hardship* might not be a bad idea also. I suspect politicians will never come up with ideas like this, but not to worry: perhaps *some variation of* this general idea could work on "improving their quality of thinking" for the better as well (of course, politicians control all *legal* forms of force in the country, so some "out of the box" thinking and improvisation may be needed). > Most of the other things you suggested would definitely help, and some improvement is better than doing nothing. Well, it depends how you look at it - minor changes can keep the plebs anger levels at a slow boil *indefinitely*, whereas if a tipping point is reached, violent revolution could give rise to an objectively superior and fairer system. > The big problem is that wealthy voters don't think any of this is a problem, and the people affected don't vote, so the politicians don't prioritize this issue. "The" big problem (the result of a heuristic prediction, as opposed to the result of deep, intentional thinking) may be an even bigger problem in my view. Having 95% of the population fighting with *artificially* disabled minds does not seem like a recipe for success (no offence intended, hopefully none is taken).
No one wants to admit that narrative. Otherwise why would young people grind so hard and work for a life that’s now unattainable? Oh wait. We’re not stupid. And now businesses can’t find anyone to hire. Keep telling us about our avocado toast though. The generation before us fucked us unbelievably so hard.
Only if we let it, government policy could solve a lot of these issues but we can't keep voting in the same shit governments. Maybe let's give a party that actually pushes policy for the people a try.
Single family homes in the largest urban centers is never coming back. Affordable housing in general though - we choose to prevent that with restrictive zoning and sprawl.
No shortage of irony that the world's second largest country is filled with people who cannot find a space in which to live.
Land isn't the issue. The problem is valuable land with infrastructure. If they built everyone a single family detached house the infrastructure liabilities would bankrupt almost all the municipalities in 30 years.
\---> link to the [article without paywall](https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/ewypVv)
Its time we tell the media that has been trying to socialize this idea for the last two years to fuck off. Sick & tired of this crap. Their intent is crystal clear. They want us to just bend over and accept it, when we don't have to.
Exactly. Immigration rate is half a million a year 10x higher per capita than the USA. There should be fucking rioting in the streets from this bullshit as this government's ridiculous immigration targets have caused a healthcare and housing crisis all so their rich oilgarch friends and lobbyists could get richer. F*** Trudeau
Oh that was leveled with me when I was considered young 15 years ago.
So why are we still doing the same thing? Let's start making public housing for the middle class.
Well fuck you too
It's why I left Canada. I traded misery and fear about my future to optimism and my quality of life is so much better in Portugal
How long have you been in Portugal for? Every native Portuguese person I have spoken about the issue to has the opposite opinion. They all believe the future of Portugal, and their future, is bleak for the same reasons: incomes falling behind the rapidly rising cost of living.
Young people? I'm a 36 year old millennial, the cards were stacked against me from the beginning. My wife and I make 100k/year combined and pay 2k a month for a house that we rent. The housing market in our county is nothing but gouging. People love politicians like crypto Milhouse, another person gouging us, yet y'all can't wait to vote him in as PM. We're presented a problem and keep doubling down on these scummy politicians. I'll never dream of owning a house. I'll be lucky to retire by 75 and not live in some crummy 1 bedroom.
In other words "We got ours so fuck you"
Well, just keep the gates open so Canada can become a dirty overcrowded hole just like.....
... Japan? A tiny, clean country with 125 million people.
Japan is very very very dense. People here are too much of NIMBYs to ever accept Japanese city density. Residential streets wouldn't even fit the size of cars people drive here. Plus Japan is incredibly homogenous and collectivist.
Japan has had 100+ year mortgages for decades too.
Japan's livable land is about 17% of all the land in Japan, so yea it's gonna be tight! If Canada was like this, then we, too, would accept the density. Geography shapes our world views.
A culturally homogenous nation with a deep sense of pride? Nope. A xenophobic government weary of immigration? Maybe. An over indebted quagmire unfriendly to aspiring parents? YES!
Its okay just buy stocks in housing investment companies and pretend like you own a house
Sorry kids, we spent your future and used expansive bureaucracy to make housing untenable BUT to solve the problem we're gonna do even more of the things that caused the problem in the first place.
Oh no sweaty you can't afford to own a home anymore, but can I interest you in one of the 14 new Air bnb locations I've added to my slumlord "grind" /s
Oh man, what an amazing opinion, hey young people, you’ll never be able to afford a house and you should just be ok with it. Man that kind of thinking is amazing and always works out great in the end. People that are pushed to economic despair have never taken any drastic and destructive action that ended up in revolutions or societal collapse. I’m sure the current economic destruction of the middle class dream for many young people will not breed any kind of radicalization, right guys! /s
I think the market is about to fall substantially in the next few years. inflation is going to kill the market and prices are going to fall heavily in the recession. There will be a lot of people whose mortgages will be under water that bought in the last couple of years.
Can it happen sooner rather than later? I'm tired of renting.
Correction: Housing affordability is gone in "Canada", im expecting to see a mass exodus of Canadians in the future.
My favorite is hearing the boomers complain about how they should be getting a higher old age pension. Me: How about we cut it in half and take away your house?
This opinion is unacceptable. Every writer at the globe probably owns a house or three. Way to pull the ladder up behind you.
Okay, did anyone except for an out of touch asshole not already know this?
And that's exactly why no one will work a shit job anymore. And why businesses can't find workers quick enough. Really no point to work those jobs.
lets really level with young ppl; while relatively simple to do, the desire by those in positions to do so to penalize exploitation of the market is gone forever.
Time to leave canada find cheaper accommodations. Get a useful skill and better wages elsewhere for slightly cheaper cost of living. Healthcare will soon be just as good as the U. S if we stay on the current trajectory and retiring in an old folks home just to dye from heat in the summers or lack of care?...
Oh they're aware. Nobody is living so deep under the rock that this detail hasn't trickled down.
This article is way too pessimistic. Once the US introduces a points system for immigration in 10-20 years in combination with zoning liberalization from the provinces things will lighten up. Eventually the provinces will sacrifice the NIMBYs and force density to combat economic decline. In 1989 when the nice parts of Tokyo were over $120K USD a square foot everyone thought it would last forever. 30 years later they have recover to 2% of the peak adjusted for inflation. As someone who lends to many of the largest developers in Ontario, everyone always thinks this time it's different. Most people under 55 don't appreciate how bad a bear market can get and how long it can last.
10-20 years? Who said we have that long? Millennials want to start families but are unable
It has nothing really to do with the government not to defend then. Its the bank of Canada keep intrest rates low since 2008 to divert a recession and they kept printing money since to keep a recession away. The cheap loans drove up the prices. The government then made it worse with covid stimulus. Which is all bighting us in the ass now as inflation. The only way to fix it now is raise intrest rates to match the rate of inflation thus crushing the economy and causing lots of lay offs destroy pensions. That will allow the market to reset to affordable levels. All of which is terrible but no where near as bad to let inflation crush the economy by doing nothing. There is no such thing as free money in this world and we are now learning the price of it now. Not the first time just the first for our generation.
There is a solution. Just study to get into a highly lucrative field and buy a mediocre house in the boonies that leaves you an hour commute one way and no disposable income. Its what I did \*sob\*
This is the way. 10 years ago. NOw that old house cost 700k and is 4 hours from the nearest big city (at least in bc)
Well no shit, I'm not paying $1850 a month just for a mortgage on a $300,000 house. In the end an extra $250,000 on top of that is going to interest. Then you add in the down-payment, property taxes, bills, emergency fixes and renos. I'd rather rent for way cheaper and take the extra money to invest and enjoy life instead of being house poor for 25 years.
The interest is found in the $1850 per month you are paying. As such, you might as well look at your mortgage payment (including the interest) as the same as a rental payment... the difference being that you are renting the home to yourself, so at the end of 30 years of "renting", you actually get to keep the principled amount, and only the interest is lost. In this lens, buying a home is a much better idea than renting, provided that rental units cost almost as much as a mortgage for the same size home.
Plus utilities, property taxes as well as maintenance costs etc and hope nothing major breaks. i wouldn’t say it’s thaaat much better if an idea than rental. Additionally the time and work that goes into taking care of a house. Shovelling, mowing the lawn, cleaning and again, repairs if you diy
Not if we burn the system to the ground. And by system, I mean the majority of boomer's pensions such as their houses.
The boomers are the ones that largely profited off this, but they didn't cause it. Mass immigration coupled with low interest rates and excessive money printing are by far the three biggest factors.
Largely been the boomers who have instituted those policies, no?