Housing might not be Trudeau's sole responsibility, but it's his problem | CBC News
Housing might not be Trudeau's sole responsibility, but it's his problem | CBC News
It would be nice if liberals acknowledged that non-market housing exists, and the government is allowed to build it. Market rate housing will not help people if they can't afford the market rate.
This is very important. There are multiple very good ways to handle this, but what the market would do if left to its own devices is to build a bunch of luxury houses and condos, and then do the classic classist blame-shift and say people who can't afford it for "not working hard enough." (Also, putting them in historically more affordable neighbourhoods will create further tensions.)
Honestly, this is dependent on the amount of land available to high density housing. Imagine if all low density housing zoning is immediately changed to high density zoning in each city?
In the short term, of course you'll get nothing but expensive condos for the wealthy. But as more and more of these lands are bought up and used for buildings that support at least ten times the population as before, the prices will eventually start to fall and the newer developments will start catering to less and less wealthy individuals and families.
Of course, this does depend on development outpacing population increases, but that's the point of making so much existing land be rezoned.
Historically, the federal government played a huge role in housing. Even just talking about it more can give a sense of urgency, helping to change the culture of complacency, which is the least a leader can do. I think this is more lack of will than a lack of power.
The lack of leadership here by the feds is honestly disgusting.
The lack of leadership on things that aren't driven by personal profits that is.
The federal government has tax incentives for home buyers (a tax write-off for interest on a primary residence) and sellers (lowered capital gains).
They could cool the market by adjusting those incentives. Or, like everyone else is saying, build more housing.
Trying to cool the market isn't going to reduce the need. When vacancies for residential rental properties are sitting at 5% or less for just about every major city in Canada, residents are seeing one of two options: pay more than you want to for a house or pay more than you want to for a rental unit. The demand isn't going away, so the only options are to increase the supply or reduce the capacity for people to buy personal residences.
Best to plug the hole in the boat before you start bailing. New stock coming on the market is being bought up by investors at record levels.
Heaven forbid we follow other countries leads and just have heft graduated taxes beyond primary residences (like Singapore). But we wouldn't want to lose the wealthy landlord vote now would we?
The solution, Moffatt says, is for everyone to sit down and agree to move in concert.
Elsewhere Mike Moffat (who does awesome analysis) has stated that the lack of coordination on immigration is also an issue. The federal government sets immigration targets without coordinating with provinces on necessary infrastructure.
This is really the root cause of most of our major issues. Healthcare, housing, public transportation, wages, they're all "provincial responsibilities" so it's not the federal government's problem when they over run everything with massive immigration. I'm all for immigration as a concept and I do believe there is some legitimate need for certain skills, but we should be way more selective and cut back until things are under control.
Coordination is a hassle, but it doesn't seem impossible.
The city of Ottawa maintains twenty year plans that include population growth and housing changes. I'm guessing other governments do the same.
When the feds want to crank immigration, they would need to check the appropriate plans, warn cities and provinces with enough time for them to create infrastructure, etc.
It would make it harder for the governing party to decide stuff unilaterally, but for a country that prides itself on “Peace, order and good government” it seems reasonable.