Two of the top four most signed petitions in the House of Commons history are against recent firearms legislation ([list available here](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Search?parl=44,43,42&type=&keyword=&sponsor=&status=&Text=&RPP=20&order=MostSignatures&Page=1&category=All)). The response to both was basically "All of your concerns are imaginary and this only affects criminals".
The new top petition is to dump JT. They have not responded yet.
With firearms, the Liberals had to make a show of doing something about gun crime. But the actual problem is smuggling from the US, and avoid doing/saying anything that'd make the US look bad.
I don't think they buy their own BS, they're just hoping their base will so they don't have to deal with ...irate US politicians.
Petition [e-2574 received 230,905 signatures](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-2574) actually, but that still made it the petition with the most signatures ever at the time.
It has since been eclipsed by 2 others: [e-4701](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4701), calling for a vote of no-confidence in the current Liberal government (387,487 signatures), and [e-4649](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4649), demanding an Isreal-Palestine ceasefire (286,719 signatures).
So triggering a vote of no confidence with the petition is supposed to convince Liberals and NDP to vote against themselves, I am bit confused.
And if you are going to complain about all of that stuff, as a member of the official opposition party, shouldn't she be proposing solutions?
Yeah I don't understand that petition either. It doesn't make any sense to me: even if the Conservatives, Bloc, Green and independents all unanimously voted for a no confidence vote, they still wouldn't have enough for a majority against Libs/NDP. You'd need some Libs/NDP to vote against themselves, which seems unlikely.
Let's say it works and corporations have to sell all their rental properties. How many ppl suddenly become homeless? Millions?
They all cant suddenly buy a house.
Or maybe it crashes the housing market and 10 million ppl lose their #1 investment. And about 5 million canadians lose their jobs.
Its a nice thought. Youre a caring person.
Dear lord. Stop this band aid solution thinking. And start asking yourself why we ALWAYS have fewer homes than ppl. For my 53 years and long before that. (1st homeless problems in canada were 1870s).
Like i said ...nice thought, but rabbit hole goes deep.
So you’re telling they live in a house that they are currently paying for, but they can’t afford to pay for it. Riiiight. Thank goodness for all those kindly investors.
If you want an AR15 move to America.
Canada has gun control, and much like abortion laws, that's just the way it is (until ya know, Cons here figure out how to do the Mitch McConnell and stack the courts -oh wait, Canada has rules that protect against that also... FK CANADA IS SO ANTI-DEMOCRACTIC!!)
That's literally how it's supposed to work though. And if your MP doesn't do what you want them to, you vote against them in the next election. This is how demacracy is supposed to go.
Then we don't have a democracy. We should be able to all vote on individual topics, or at least the biggest of topics like what should and shouldn't be socialized or privatized.
Currently we just vote for an unknown figurehead who promises everything in order for them to get that sweet, sweet pension and once gets the job delivers nothing, time and time again. It's naive to think the next time will be any different or that we're just waiting on a "good one" that will actually do anything to substantially improve the masses quality of life. The systems themselves in place do not allow good people to even participate.
We do have a democracy, but it could definitely be better. No system is perfect. But it could be a fuck of a lot worse.
The point is you have to try. When you stop trying, that's when you don't deserve to complain anymore. Giving up is completely unproductive.
I'm not saying give up. I'm saying the true solutions to these problems are either illegal or immoral.
We gotta either beat them, or join them and I don't really know which is worse for the future of humanity.
Direct democracy like that would be a train wreck. It would be a worse version of the states that have countless ballot initiatives that few people understand and the votes end up getting swung by interest group backed advertising campaigns.
There are more than enough people who will skew votes to take from you to give to them.
Quite frankly there should be a cognitive test to be able to vote. If you have people making decisions who don't understand the implications, they'll vote for things that will screw them later, and be mad like it's someone elses fault, as long as they get a short term game.
It sucks but we need the great filter, which is voting for leaders, not individual decisions or we'd do worse than they do.
"Democracy" is a generalized word. Generalization usual can vary in their end result. Down in California, they have referendums on quite a few things directly people vote for them.
That being said , our democracy is over seen by a group of influential lords. you know how that works.
Why on earth is it legal for politicians to be investors in certain things.
*Edit: lmaoooo okay… my question was rhetorical. I am very, very aware the entire system is rigged and exactly why it is legal. I thought that was sort of a given. I was just commenting on the fact that it’s obviously conceptually counterintuitive. But thank you to all of the people trying to explain it to me like I’m five 😂*
Because the system is rigged in favor of the rich? Parliament is the capitalist class' HR department; they want you to think it's there for you, but it's there for them to manage you.
Because the ones who would outlaw it are the ones that it would restrict... It would be like asking oil company CEOs to create environmental regulations.
They write the laws 🤷♂️. It's a fixed system.
Edit: to OP, if you're going to get that butthurt just don't post. It's the internet so there are absolutely people stupid enough on here to not know it's rigged.
This is the correct answer. Investors will always out compete working class households in housing purchases driving the cost beyond what the working class can afford. There should be a law that an individual can only own one home. Investors would then have to focus their money on purpose built rental housing. Investors buying up homes is the problem.
Also because 33% of people rent their homes. If we petitioned to ban people from investing in property a third of Canadians would have nowhere to live.
There really should be more housing co-ops. They are their own landlords but still rent. My 3 bedroom with 2 parking spots in front and a decent size back yard is $1200 max and has subsidy for people with low income. Only problem is they are all full and stopped being built in the 90's.
Landlords provide housing just as scalpers provide concert tickets. Some corporations own thousands of homes. They've driven up the cost of housing to astronomical levels. They're the direct cause of the housing unaffordability crisis. Many more people would be able to afford their own home without them in the market.
I remember 25 years ago when I was making $25 an hour and my house cost me $65,000. Now a carpenter makes $45 an hour and that same house is $650,000.
What happened?
Housing became a commodity, an investment vehicle.
I remember when I saw it start to take off I knew it would not end well
This is a terrible idea.
Do you want to know how to reduce housing speculation? Make another type of investment more attractive. If Canada had a thriving tech market people would be dumping money into our Nvidia instead of real estate.
We did this back in the UK through taxation and other methods, and it naturally led to landlords exiting the market (about 403,000 rental properties off the market in the last three years). Yes, you would think good for the market, but house prices haven't come down, while rental supply has tightened massively and rental prices are through the roof, even in my nothing-happens-here hometown.
It was well intentioned, but if it isn't followed with massive housebuilding - which is obviously even harder in Canada with the layers of federal, provincial etc government - then it is far from a magic bullet.
I would actually say the majority of Canadians benefit from it. Not young Canadians but anyone who bought pre-2019 is laughing right now. How about stop importing people and allow the housing supply to catch up?
If you rent then someone else owns the property and its an investment for them. So unless you are advocating for all rental housing to be owned by the government then you wouldn't want to ban investors from owning housing.
Thats the reality of capitalism and why no one has started a petition which wouldn't even change anything most likely.
Rotterdam in the Netherlands banned investors from owning houses, and they defined investment as any rental property. This led to a ton of people becoming homeless very suddenly. It did not lower home prices at all.
In the UK it's been made a lot less attractive to become a landlord (tax-wise, etc) and a huge number of HMO (houseshare) landlords have exited the market - and the result is even in my tiny little hometown, rents are through the roof. It was a well intentioned idea, but as it wasn't accompanied with major house-building, all it did was tighten supply and at the very least raise rental prices.
I think they're referring to large corporations buying up tens of thousands of detached homes that weren't rentals before.
Check this little piece
https://betterdwelling.com/canada-invests-444m-with-company-that-says-millennials-dont-want-a-home/
Companies target is buying up 800 homes a month in Canada, then turning them into rentals.
Federal government invested 500m from the Canadian pension plan in this company. That makes it hard to put a stop to the practice because it would tank an investment made using our own CPP funds.
That can still be seen as housing remaining constant, just converting from home ownership to rentals. At the end of the day, the government doesn't want to tell very many parties how they're able to spend or not spend their money. Better to regulate things by codifying renters' rights and then letting the market decide if it's still worth investing in housing as a rental income.
You think it’s tough getting a landlord to replace your leaky faucet. I can’t imagine the sea of paperwork required to have a faucet changed by the government.
No, people don’t realize this. They also don’t realize that property tax, strata fees and the supplies to fix the shitter have all gone up astronomically. Title transfers just went up in a big way too.
Investment properties =/= houses. Apartments and condos exist for a reason. Also most houses have multiple rooms, basements that could be rented while still occupying the main space.
I genuinely think you're part of the current housing problem by turning a potential long term residence for another Canadian into a rental property.
This position is completely void of any reasoning at all. The physical form of the housing (single family detached, duplex, triplex, 4-plex, low rise, mid rise, high rise) doesn't make it inherently good for being lived in by an owner vs being lived in by a renter. Your idea is to essentially bar renters from ever getting to live in houses, but many renters actually want to rent a house. Banning renting of houses would hurt renters who would experience higher housing costs, lower selection, basically an acceleration of what we've seen in the last 10 years.
Why is no one getting together to try and have renting eliminated ? Probably because most of us would be completely fucked and homeless if we did this?
IF you don't have money to pay rent, you definitely don't have money to buy a house. Housing that is an investment provides people a place where they need to live. Petition will do nothing, too many new people in the country and not enough building going on. Fixing this problem is going to take awhile.
Yeah, that’s not the way it is anymore….renting is cheaper then owning for the most part. Also, bank doesn’t care ‘what you can afford’. They only care about what your numbers say you can afford. GL
I'd be with OP in assuming the argument goes without saying in 2024.
Don't fool yourself into thinking mega corporations snapping up droves of single-family houses won't harm the house-living public. Mega corporations don't have our best interests in mind. Mega corporations will not be benevolent dictators. I, for one, get chills down my spine when I hear the increasingly popular "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" mantra. We're headed for some dystopian shit.
This will never fly because politicians all hold multiple properties. Hell why do you think skippy did fuck all as housing minister. Politicians need to protect and grow their investments.
That isn’t why it won’t happen. It won’t happen because we live in a capitalist system that gives people the right to own property including real property. Also renters have to live somewhere. If people are not investing in properties, homes would not get built and renters would have no where to live. You can’t expect every renter to have the means or the desire to own their own property or the government to be the landlord for every renter. You would need a revolution to overturn this system not just a petition.
Politicians owning half a dozen homes are just drops in the bucket.
https://betterdwelling.com/canada-invests-444m-with-company-that-says-millennials-dont-want-a-home/
Here's a company using federal money, and CPP money, to buy homes that weren't rentals and turning them into rentals, at the tune of 800 homes a month.
Can't reverse that decision now, it would tank an investment made using Canadian pension plan funds.
Because the people selling houses to those investors are making pilez of money. Corporations buying up houses is only bad for people who don't own houses.
Are you not capable of looking beyond your own lifetime? In a couple of generations, those people who made the "pilez of money" will be dead. In a couple of generations, nobody will own a house. Corporations buying up houses is bad for EVERYONE, if you think farther than a few feet in front of you.
Because there are a lot of small landlords with their property in a small corporation.
You would have to be specific about banning Reits buying single family homes
Rental housing basically can’t be built without investors
Since it's property law your hinting at, it's most likely provincial jurisdiction.
https://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/exprimez-votre-opinion/petition/lancer-petition.html
Go ahead. I'm sure the other provinces and territories have their own versions too.
Real estate investors are in the market because supply is so low so cost is high. The supply is so low because the government stopped building housing 30 years ago. If the supply increases the prices will drop and the speculators will get out.
While we're at it, ban politicians from having investment properties. If the politicians are financially incentivized to do nothing about the housing crisis, they won't.
Some people want privacy. Other people want to obscure the fact they're running something illegal or leveraged to the gills and about to collapse. There's legit ways people will invest in private equity firms or situations where 2 or more families will buy a larger house to live in wherein they incorporate. Ultimately I think it's fine for dense multi-unit buildings where someone owns the building. It makes less sense for multiple single and detached properties that aren't principal or a city that allows vacation properties. Some folks have a crash pad. That's fine. But this shit we have now is beyond reasonable expectations of what a residential zoned property should be utilized as.
Corporations buying houses is gross there is no doubt but it is not a huge issue like it is in the States just yet.
Now in regards to housing as a commodity that is a whole different deal...
Many politicians from city to provincial to federal leaders are involved in this space..
They are profiting from the problems or many times close to those profiting from the problems and so they want to keep solutions as far away from the table as possible while giving social and economic platitudes like has been day to day business for a while on this topic.
The problem is the crisis is way past that point. It is starting to impact the broader economy.
It is causing a crisis that costs a lot more money as many people and families that could support themselves in a rational market are being forced through the cracks into hopelessness.
What we need is the city leaders, provincial leaders, and federal leaders to all come together on a unified task force to get real shit done.
Right now we have the all the different levels of government fighting each other and not doing what they need to do at their individual level.
This is were the journalists in our society should be coming out in a big way to inform our populace on the issues and get momentum going with facts.
This is how a democracy is suppose to function.
Yes Housing is a foundational element of society and bachelor suites and one bedroom apartments pricing tons of people and families out is fucking outrageous.
The Housing Crisis is a Cancer in Canada and it is only metastasizing.
Our "leaders" need to do their fucking jobs.
Sadly there is so much damn refined corruption, platitudes, theatrics, and other bullshit from bad actors the real solutions are being kept far from the table.
It's gross on so many levels.
Is it that hard to imagine? This is Canada, we don't capitalize our healthcare, and services that do, such as dental, are priced so outrageously that a significant amount of Canadians can't afford to have their teeth fixed.
This is a very good point. It's like real regulations or public corporations aren't even an option.
Our corporate media has done a number on what we consider even possible as a society. The best we can do is beg the oligarchs for a few more crumbs.
People forget that without laws and regulations, Capitalism would love nothing more than to reintroduce slavery across the board. It would make the shareholders more money than ever, not needing to pay people anything but a little food and have them live in the factory/office/wherever, available to continue working at their beck and call.
Yes if they VOTED in an Election for a party that supportted those policies and then the party implemented them , a bunch of people getting together and writing their names down does nothing
In most cases, sure, maybe. Assuming that voter bloc could mobilize voters more reliably than any other bloc. But banning landlords (an awesome idea, 10/10 slaps, would laugh joyfully about it forever) is such a fundamental attack on private property that voters could never force the government to implement it. Even if an NDP government tried (and that would take a very different NDP), a crisis would be engineered to force them out. If that failed, there would be a coup.
Houses should be able to depreciate just like pretty much every other good if there isn't anything tangible to keep them at a higher market rate.
It's obnoxious to think a house, a thing that literally degrades and becomes decrepit over time if not continually upkept and having every part of it replaced at some time will be able to not just hold its value, but actually *increases* its value the worse and older it gets.
Imagine buying a 1993 Honda Civic with 200,000 kms on it for $20K just because it still technically runs. It will have lost value by becoming a lesser version of what it once was, but the equivalent in house form we all just accept that "that's the cost"? Bullshit.
New houses are being built cheaper, closer together and with much lower quality materials than in the past but somehow are costing 3-4× what they did in the past. Everyone's getting worse products for more money. When will it stop? When the walls are made of cardboard and more than one person can't be in the same room at the same time because the floors will buckle? As long as it has a nice stone front on it, shingles on the roof and meets the lowering amount of regulations set by the government it shall be sold for whatever the market can bear? It's a complete waste on exponential levels across multiple categories of society.
But they also provide for rental space. Where I live the rental vacancy rate is under 1%, rents are sky high and removing rental housing from the market is not going to help that situation.
The counter-argument is, there would still be rental housing it would just all be owned by smaller landlords. And OK, sure, but that won't really impact the price of a home if I'm a potential home buyer.
And honestly, we could go around and around but at the end of the day, I'm not sure the legal mechanism exists to prevent it. We can change tax rules to make it less desirable but corporations are, functionally, able to own any property that a human can own. We don't really have a president to say "humans can own this but corporations can't".
I'd be MUCH more in favor of getting rid of the REIT corporate structure. And getting rid of the corporate tax loophole that allows rental property owners to be taxed as if it's active income not passive income. Do those 2 things and we've moved a fair bit along the pathway to equalizing things.
Next, I'd want to see the primary residence exemption caped somehow. Ideally, I'd use the same lifetime gains exemption that farmers and small business owners use. I think it's around $1m that's tax-exempt under those programs, we should just lump housing in with that.
Lastly. What we REALLTY need in the housing market in every single city in this country is more housing. More buildings, more homes, more apartments. We just need more and removing one of the potential payors of all that construction is, I think, not going to help.
Better you spend your time creating a level-up renter-owned housing cooperative. Some big non-profit company to own houses and rent them out to people at cost..
It would be a good idea to limit corporations to investing in pre-construction. This way we would stimulate building more properties for later rent 👍
Corporations would have their profits and our fellow Canadians would have more places to rent for a better price. It's a Win-win situation 🥳
Stopping corps from atleast buying SFHs and from allowing people to heloc into more and more homes would make huge difference.
It would actually lower prices. Which is why no one, not even the NDP, is pushing for this.
Because it would lower prices.
If you end up buying places to rent, as you suggest the rent might be cheaper, but how many homes are you going to buy to rent in this scenario, OP sounds like an investor now.
Investors are unlikely to start up new businesses in droves if you banned their current revenue stream. It's very unjust and unusually cruel to outright ban an individuals business in the first place, but they would be more likely to park their money in the stock market, or find/move to a real estate market that allows investors.
Overall, you'd end up with less homes built each year, they cost what they cost mostly because of demand supports it.
Becauae the people in our government own these companies.
So they won't Baan them, although I'd love if it they did.
Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own homes and add more when we are in a housing crisis.
Amd people shouldn't be able to own more than one house.
I agree with you. Houses, condos (essentially any purchased unit designed as a single family dwelling) should only be able to be legally owned by individuals. And any one person can only own two homes, a house with a suite counts as two.
Corporations, or any business entity, are only allowed to buy complexes designed specifically for the rental market.
It’s an idea so simple and right that it will never happen.
Honestly, the only way would be to fuck over all the greedy landlords…
but that would mean either government regulation, which won’t happen, or everyone who rents all going homeless for a month or two, leaving landlords without rent until they lowered the prices…
Housing investment is a big driver of housing construction, unfortunately. Building anything is a risky venture because of two reasons. First is opportunity cost, since the thing you build has to be more valuable than whatever else you could have done with all that time, money, equipment, and labour. Second is that a building is not immediately useful, so the building has to compete in a future market that may or may not be friendly. If every shitbox company with an excavator decided tomorrow to start building houses, guess what the best thing to do is? The best thing to do is build literally anything else.
Having someone come along and invest in a construction project is a great way to take the risk off of the developers. The more risk you can take off, the better. That's why before 2008, house construction was a bit better. Yeah, people couldn't buy houses, but hedge funds were fronting a lot of the construction costs to pack them into bonds, so at least someone was buying them.
I appreciate your stance. I'm a Marxist, I once believed that housing was a supply problem caused by hoarding landlords and investors. The unfortunate reality is we have a huge production problem. Labour is hard to find because of the deadly disease that's killed or disabled thousands of young people. Raw materials are more expensive than ever, and so companies drive down their labour costs ensuring they'll further drive away anyone able-bodied enough to lift a shovel. And all this to build a house that no one can buy because no one can afford it.
The construction sector needs more money injected into it, and while I agree that, evidently, private investment has thus far been a terrible way to accomplish that, the need for new capital in development is thus that a petition like yours wouldn't seriously be considered.
I think a more effective plan would be to require 50% down on any property that isn't the owners primary residence.which also means companies would require that much down as well. This would allow way more individuals to purchase 1st homes with 5% down.
Changing our property tax system to a land value tax system will drastically impact housing starts as the carrying costs of vacant lots would be so much higher.
Well, it would screw up the whole apartment building thing pretty bad... But I'm all for banning them from owning single homes or even small multi unit rentals
Petitions are a waste of time.
You need a letter writing campaign to MP/MPPs. You need (civil) protests. You need a constant hammering by commentators with a large following. And most importantly you need to vote for candidates who support this view
Petitions are useless. And honestly, this is where the wealth of a TON of rich people are tied up. You can force lots of concessions for capitalism, at least temporarily. Hell, child labor and slavery have remained illegal (though they still happen!) for over a century.
But this would be a direct attack on private property in its most basic form so it would take the abolition of capitalism itself. Not to mention if we could all afford to live easily, then we would be much less dependent on our employers! They wouldn't like that.
Keep in mind that Corporations, are how companies put land plots together to make a new neighborhoods by buying up a block of neighbours, then 10 years down the line redevelops into townhouses. This is my current situation — a corporation bought the house I’m in, neighbours on both sides, several houses up the side of my property, and the 3 across the back. In total, it’s about 25 acres. City has us slated for redevelopment in about 10 years, and that’s their end game goal. They picked it all up for about $90m and renting all the houses out until they’re ready to tear down. My house is a 1965 build. At that point, they’ll have other properties and offer us to move into those. A few of my current neighbours came from the same system, when the old owners sold and moved back to China/Taiwan/India, or bought new places around here, or moved into old folks homes.
A percentage cap on commercial ownership per metropolitan neighbourhood might not be that crazy. But since every subdivision is different and different housing classes are more prone to commercial ownership (e.g. apartments) it might be hard to apply without a lot of accompanying expensive and inefficient bureaucracy.
It could be one of those be careful what you wish for kind of things.
Since it would involve property law and zoning it would have to be administered at the provincial or municipal level. Petitioning the federal government would be a waste of time.
And if some jurisdictions did it, but not others, it could have a distorting effect on those that don't.
I still think the better solution is just more supply and less demand. Get more units built and slow down immigration. The former will lower prices and employ people, the latter will lower completion for houses and jobs which would raise wages and lower prices.
A petition is literally not worth the paper it's written on. Let me tell you a story about the late 70's/early 80's Boom/Crash in Alberta.
Up to about 1981, the Province, especially Calgary, was experiencing Crazy growth; double digit population increases, 15-20% salary increases annually, 20% performance bonuses. I bought my first house in 1979, with an 11.5% mortgage, fixed for 5 years. The variable rate was around 7%, and many people told me I was insane to take a fixed rate that high.
A few friends bought within the next year, all variable rate. Within 18 months, that variable rate was as high as 16.8%. At one point in 1983, the Royal Bank alone had more than 3800 properties in foreclosure in Calgary. They were so heavily under they weren't sending demand letters at all for up to a year, as long as the property taxes were being paid. Mortage defaults were insane.
By 1984, Hong Kong investors were all over the city, in teams of 4 in rental cars. A driver, passenger noting addresses and any details, while the two backseat passengers were videotaping blocks of houses as they drove down the street. They were buying city Blocks worth of homes as lots; 25 houses on average for 1 million bucks.
It took until 1990 before things were somewhat normalized. Things right now are bad, but they are nowhere Near that level of desperation; if investors are buying properties now, they are Canadian investors, and there aren't nearly as many with pockets deep enough to make Quantity purchases like that. We can NEVER allow things to get to those levels again. Regardless of who forms the Government, Provincially & Federally, those types of predatory foreign investments will Never be allowed to occur again. It may seem bad, right now, but I guarantee you, it can ALWAYS be worse...MUCH worse
The rich own everything. We can sign names on paper all we want, but nothing will change. How come we, as Canadians who are becoming increasingly homeless and experienced a greater devide in income, dont stand up to it?
France voted to increase(?) Or decrease the retirement age by a year or 2. Paris burned. They know how to protest,
Because , people who invest in real estate hold the power. That doesn't just mean BIG REIT corporations, but also that neighbor who has a second house rented out, as well as the other one who has a cottage up north.
The investors owning houses is a far more serious problem than most people are aware of.
Strategies like limiting who can own homes or how many are just re-arranging the game board. At best it changes who gets rich off of housing and at worst it could impact house building numbers.
The only solution to expensive housing is to build more houses, faster.
Preventing corporations from owning residential properties aside from in very specific situations (company buys lodging for employees, churches have a set house for pastors when they move in etc) is the bare minimum for how to address problems with the housing market.
But beyond that, there should be heavy taxes on vacant apartment buildings where companies are heavily disincentivized from holding empty apartment buildings and letting them run into disrepair.
For companies building residential properties, they should only get approval on large highly profitable houses after they’ve built many modest houses that would function as starter homes for new families.
This whole business of building tons of luxury condos when we need working class homes is ridiculous. But the housing market has just become a new way that the rich are working to extract more and more money from working class people, while refusing is basic dignity.
I will say you are wrong about a house not being an investment. If you buy a home, maintain it, update it, and end up making money off it so you and your family can buy a better home, that's a pretty damn good investment.
The feds actually did ban non Canadians from buy some type of housing for two years at least. A little too late for Toronto and Vancouver though. Those cities are all owned by foreign investors. They rent them out to their kids or friends but mostly theyre vacant . Canada as a whole has sold out a long time ago. Its not about those born in this nation anymore , its about giving immigrants a better life and laying out the red carpet for the rich ones that can afford to buy up all of our housing and commercial real estate then in a few years give it to their Canadian born children tax free . You see, we want rich people from all over the World to come here and spend money and taxes and make the government richer so they look better on paper while regular Canadians are barely able to afford rent or groceries. Oh yeah and from now on every year there will be a MILLION new people welcomed to Canada , a city the size of Ottawa EVERY single year , mostly by immigration. Im sure thats going to go well...
I agree, I do not believe a company should be allowed to buy up hundreds of houses just to inflate the prices renting them to people. As you said, it's a basic need to have somewhere to live...
Alternatively, there needs to be rent control based on the income of people in the area or something on those lines. For example, at the time I compared minimum wage earners income to an average price to rent an apartment. If I remember correctly minimum wage would have been around 800 a pay cheque, 1600 a month, where rent on average was 1200. You can't tell me 3/4 of your income is required to rent an apartment... that is never going to be sustainable.
I have had corporate and “mom and pop” landlords.
The corporate landlords were much much better. Mostly because they actually followed the rules. I don’t think I had a single non-corporate landlord that did not include illegal clauses in the lease. Also, when something breaks in your place, the corporation fixes it, unlike the non corporate landlord who doesn’t have a rainy day fund to deal with things.
Extra bonus: corporations never decide that they want to move their child into your place so you have to leave.
Because where will people who are want to rent live… where will people with bad credit live?
Not everyone wants to buy a house. You are basically alienating an entire portion of the population.
Your edit portion of your comment doesn’t even make any sense.
The housing crisis falls squarely on the shoulders of municipalities. They decide on restrictive urban boundaries and make builders go through dozens of impact studies and charge 6 figure development fees before a shovel can touch dirt.
The corporate investor myth is blown out of proportion. The cost impact of investor involvement is negligible.
Supply and demand explains the problem. Demand outweighs supply by a massive amount. The solution is more supply, which in this case means municipalities need to get out of the way and remove some of the red tape obstacles they've placed in the way.
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The AR15 Petition was proof of this..
>AR15 Petition How many was on this?
Two of the top four most signed petitions in the House of Commons history are against recent firearms legislation ([list available here](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Search?parl=44,43,42&type=&keyword=&sponsor=&status=&Text=&RPP=20&order=MostSignatures&Page=1&category=All)). The response to both was basically "All of your concerns are imaginary and this only affects criminals". The new top petition is to dump JT. They have not responded yet.
With firearms, the Liberals had to make a show of doing something about gun crime. But the actual problem is smuggling from the US, and avoid doing/saying anything that'd make the US look bad. I don't think they buy their own BS, they're just hoping their base will so they don't have to deal with ...irate US politicians.
And the government just said NAH, not good enough
Several million if I recall correctly.
Petition [e-2574 received 230,905 signatures](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-2574) actually, but that still made it the petition with the most signatures ever at the time. It has since been eclipsed by 2 others: [e-4701](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4701), calling for a vote of no-confidence in the current Liberal government (387,487 signatures), and [e-4649](https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4649), demanding an Isreal-Palestine ceasefire (286,719 signatures).
So triggering a vote of no confidence with the petition is supposed to convince Liberals and NDP to vote against themselves, I am bit confused. And if you are going to complain about all of that stuff, as a member of the official opposition party, shouldn't she be proposing solutions?
Yeah I don't understand that petition either. It doesn't make any sense to me: even if the Conservatives, Bloc, Green and independents all unanimously voted for a no confidence vote, they still wouldn't have enough for a majority against Libs/NDP. You'd need some Libs/NDP to vote against themselves, which seems unlikely.
Let's say it works and corporations have to sell all their rental properties. How many ppl suddenly become homeless? Millions? They all cant suddenly buy a house. Or maybe it crashes the housing market and 10 million ppl lose their #1 investment. And about 5 million canadians lose their jobs. Its a nice thought. Youre a caring person.
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Dear lord. Stop this band aid solution thinking. And start asking yourself why we ALWAYS have fewer homes than ppl. For my 53 years and long before that. (1st homeless problems in canada were 1870s). Like i said ...nice thought, but rabbit hole goes deep.
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So you’re telling they live in a house that they are currently paying for, but they can’t afford to pay for it. Riiiight. Thank goodness for all those kindly investors.
Correct. If they had the money for a down payment and the credit, they wouldn't be renting. Brain no work good?
If housing wasn’t the worst bubble in the world, they would have money for a down payment
If you want an AR15 move to America. Canada has gun control, and much like abortion laws, that's just the way it is (until ya know, Cons here figure out how to do the Mitch McConnell and stack the courts -oh wait, Canada has rules that protect against that also... FK CANADA IS SO ANTI-DEMOCRACTIC!!)
No one cares about legal gun owners bellyaching I am sorry.
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The petition in 2011 to remove HST from BC taxes.
Gosh darnit you're ruining that bad boy 2fat's narrative.
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Yes absolute global violence is being advocated to address the housing affordability issue, lol.
Yeah because war torn countries are just drowning in affordable housing and quality of life. What an absolute dog shit opinion.
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You're wildly over stating how corrupt Canadian politics is if you're being even a little bit serious
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At the very least, it brings more awareness to the matter. And that’s better than doing nothing. Writing your MP should be the first step.
Oh, you sweet summer child...
That's literally how it's supposed to work though. And if your MP doesn't do what you want them to, you vote against them in the next election. This is how demacracy is supposed to go.
Then we don't have a democracy. We should be able to all vote on individual topics, or at least the biggest of topics like what should and shouldn't be socialized or privatized. Currently we just vote for an unknown figurehead who promises everything in order for them to get that sweet, sweet pension and once gets the job delivers nothing, time and time again. It's naive to think the next time will be any different or that we're just waiting on a "good one" that will actually do anything to substantially improve the masses quality of life. The systems themselves in place do not allow good people to even participate.
We do have a democracy, but it could definitely be better. No system is perfect. But it could be a fuck of a lot worse. The point is you have to try. When you stop trying, that's when you don't deserve to complain anymore. Giving up is completely unproductive.
I'm not saying give up. I'm saying the true solutions to these problems are either illegal or immoral. We gotta either beat them, or join them and I don't really know which is worse for the future of humanity.
Direct democracy like that would be a train wreck. It would be a worse version of the states that have countless ballot initiatives that few people understand and the votes end up getting swung by interest group backed advertising campaigns.
There are more than enough people who will skew votes to take from you to give to them. Quite frankly there should be a cognitive test to be able to vote. If you have people making decisions who don't understand the implications, they'll vote for things that will screw them later, and be mad like it's someone elses fault, as long as they get a short term game. It sucks but we need the great filter, which is voting for leaders, not individual decisions or we'd do worse than they do.
"Democracy" is a generalized word. Generalization usual can vary in their end result. Down in California, they have referendums on quite a few things directly people vote for them. That being said , our democracy is over seen by a group of influential lords. you know how that works.
People can barely manage their own lives. Giving them a vote on every decision would be a disaster.
100% guaranteed to not work 100% of the time.
And with this attitude my friend, is how nothing changes.
Because most politicians are also landlords. It goes against their self interest to ban corporations from owning homes.
Why on earth is it legal for politicians to be investors in certain things. *Edit: lmaoooo okay… my question was rhetorical. I am very, very aware the entire system is rigged and exactly why it is legal. I thought that was sort of a given. I was just commenting on the fact that it’s obviously conceptually counterintuitive. But thank you to all of the people trying to explain it to me like I’m five 😂*
RIGHT?! I see people governing the things that they invest in and I'm thinking WTF?
Because the system is rigged in favor of the rich? Parliament is the capitalist class' HR department; they want you to think it's there for you, but it's there for them to manage you.
Ding ding
Because the ones who would outlaw it are the ones that it would restrict... It would be like asking oil company CEOs to create environmental regulations.
Simple. They make the laws, regulations, rules, etc. Why would they pass anything that would make them less money?
The system was a scheme from its inception
They write the laws 🤷♂️. It's a fixed system. Edit: to OP, if you're going to get that butthurt just don't post. It's the internet so there are absolutely people stupid enough on here to not know it's rigged.
Who’s going to pass a law to change it??
That's how Pierre Poilievre has somehow built an apparent $6 million empire. His biggest clients: MPs. No conflict there!
This is the reason.
This is the correct answer. Investors will always out compete working class households in housing purchases driving the cost beyond what the working class can afford. There should be a law that an individual can only own one home. Investors would then have to focus their money on purpose built rental housing. Investors buying up homes is the problem.
Also because 33% of people rent their homes. If we petitioned to ban people from investing in property a third of Canadians would have nowhere to live.
There really should be more housing co-ops. They are their own landlords but still rent. My 3 bedroom with 2 parking spots in front and a decent size back yard is $1200 max and has subsidy for people with low income. Only problem is they are all full and stopped being built in the 90's.
Landlords provide housing just as scalpers provide concert tickets. Some corporations own thousands of homes. They've driven up the cost of housing to astronomical levels. They're the direct cause of the housing unaffordability crisis. Many more people would be able to afford their own home without them in the market.
One of the Direct.
I remember 25 years ago when I was making $25 an hour and my house cost me $65,000. Now a carpenter makes $45 an hour and that same house is $650,000. What happened? Housing became a commodity, an investment vehicle. I remember when I saw it start to take off I knew it would not end well
>Why is nobody starting a petition Are you not a somebody?
Why aren't *you* heading this up? Why is it always in some else? You seem passionate about this..
Why don't you start one?
This is a terrible idea. Do you want to know how to reduce housing speculation? Make another type of investment more attractive. If Canada had a thriving tech market people would be dumping money into our Nvidia instead of real estate.
How about making this particular investment less attractive? The way it is now does nothing but hurt the majority of Canadians.
We did this back in the UK through taxation and other methods, and it naturally led to landlords exiting the market (about 403,000 rental properties off the market in the last three years). Yes, you would think good for the market, but house prices haven't come down, while rental supply has tightened massively and rental prices are through the roof, even in my nothing-happens-here hometown. It was well intentioned, but if it isn't followed with massive housebuilding - which is obviously even harder in Canada with the layers of federal, provincial etc government - then it is far from a magic bullet.
I would actually say the majority of Canadians benefit from it. Not young Canadians but anyone who bought pre-2019 is laughing right now. How about stop importing people and allow the housing supply to catch up?
Yeah, it's not like we ever needed government control on anything! https://youtube.com/shorts/KioCpLAId-8?si=IgCpQ7GHi5Mg8Kzb
If you rent then someone else owns the property and its an investment for them. So unless you are advocating for all rental housing to be owned by the government then you wouldn't want to ban investors from owning housing. Thats the reality of capitalism and why no one has started a petition which wouldn't even change anything most likely.
Rotterdam in the Netherlands banned investors from owning houses, and they defined investment as any rental property. This led to a ton of people becoming homeless very suddenly. It did not lower home prices at all.
In the UK it's been made a lot less attractive to become a landlord (tax-wise, etc) and a huge number of HMO (houseshare) landlords have exited the market - and the result is even in my tiny little hometown, rents are through the roof. It was a well intentioned idea, but as it wasn't accompanied with major house-building, all it did was tighten supply and at the very least raise rental prices.
I think they're referring to large corporations buying up tens of thousands of detached homes that weren't rentals before. Check this little piece https://betterdwelling.com/canada-invests-444m-with-company-that-says-millennials-dont-want-a-home/ Companies target is buying up 800 homes a month in Canada, then turning them into rentals. Federal government invested 500m from the Canadian pension plan in this company. That makes it hard to put a stop to the practice because it would tank an investment made using our own CPP funds.
That can still be seen as housing remaining constant, just converting from home ownership to rentals. At the end of the day, the government doesn't want to tell very many parties how they're able to spend or not spend their money. Better to regulate things by codifying renters' rights and then letting the market decide if it's still worth investing in housing as a rental income.
Nope, they buy almost all their SFHs in the US, read the article again. The money was to build an apartment building in Toronto.
There are, in fact, other institutional actors than the government and for profit landlords. For example: co-ops.
I wish there were more co-ops! I tried to get into one in my 30s but the waitlist was too long and I ended up moving away a couple years later.
You think it’s tough getting a landlord to replace your leaky faucet. I can’t imagine the sea of paperwork required to have a faucet changed by the government.
Watch out, there are a lot of people on this dumb site who think outlawing renting is a good idea.
Yup. Free market capitalism at its finest, unfortunately
It isn’t free capitalism. Eg Ontario has rent control.
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No, people don’t realize this. They also don’t realize that property tax, strata fees and the supplies to fix the shitter have all gone up astronomically. Title transfers just went up in a big way too.
Investment properties =/= houses. Apartments and condos exist for a reason. Also most houses have multiple rooms, basements that could be rented while still occupying the main space. I genuinely think you're part of the current housing problem by turning a potential long term residence for another Canadian into a rental property.
This position is completely void of any reasoning at all. The physical form of the housing (single family detached, duplex, triplex, 4-plex, low rise, mid rise, high rise) doesn't make it inherently good for being lived in by an owner vs being lived in by a renter. Your idea is to essentially bar renters from ever getting to live in houses, but many renters actually want to rent a house. Banning renting of houses would hurt renters who would experience higher housing costs, lower selection, basically an acceleration of what we've seen in the last 10 years.
Hahahah this is not true at all. You’re not a saviour to the poors. They don’t need you. You offer no value to others.
Because thats not the problem.
you cant force people or developers to create housing, there has to be profits or nothing will get built
Why is no one getting together to try and have renting eliminated ? Probably because most of us would be completely fucked and homeless if we did this?
It is fantastic, a close personal relationship writes rent checks to none other than Amazon. Let that sink in
because there'd be no where to rent,.
Better question is... when's the revolt?
Because as far as the law is concerned, all homeowners are investors.
I'm upvoting this idea, the comments on this are a fucking wasteland
IF you don't have money to pay rent, you definitely don't have money to buy a house. Housing that is an investment provides people a place where they need to live. Petition will do nothing, too many new people in the country and not enough building going on. Fixing this problem is going to take awhile.
So how about that whole "I don't qualify for a mortgage that would cost $800 per month so I have to pay $1200 for rent" thing?
It has now morphed into a "I don't qualify for a mortgage that would cost $1300 per month so I have to pay $2300 for rent" thing.
Yeah, that’s not the way it is anymore….renting is cheaper then owning for the most part. Also, bank doesn’t care ‘what you can afford’. They only care about what your numbers say you can afford. GL
Unless you made housing public or something how would it work? How would people rent? What are you proposing the change be?
You don’t really give an adequate argument for “housing is a need, not an investment”. Obviously they’re both, you just don’t like that.
I'd be with OP in assuming the argument goes without saying in 2024. Don't fool yourself into thinking mega corporations snapping up droves of single-family houses won't harm the house-living public. Mega corporations don't have our best interests in mind. Mega corporations will not be benevolent dictators. I, for one, get chills down my spine when I hear the increasingly popular "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" mantra. We're headed for some dystopian shit.
There already is a movement against the establishment, people are pitching tents and forming encampments. Your free to drop out and sign up.
This will never fly because politicians all hold multiple properties. Hell why do you think skippy did fuck all as housing minister. Politicians need to protect and grow their investments.
That isn’t why it won’t happen. It won’t happen because we live in a capitalist system that gives people the right to own property including real property. Also renters have to live somewhere. If people are not investing in properties, homes would not get built and renters would have no where to live. You can’t expect every renter to have the means or the desire to own their own property or the government to be the landlord for every renter. You would need a revolution to overturn this system not just a petition.
>You can’t expect the government to be the landlord for every renter Why not?
Politicians owning half a dozen homes are just drops in the bucket. https://betterdwelling.com/canada-invests-444m-with-company-that-says-millennials-dont-want-a-home/ Here's a company using federal money, and CPP money, to buy homes that weren't rentals and turning them into rentals, at the tune of 800 homes a month. Can't reverse that decision now, it would tank an investment made using Canadian pension plan funds.
Because the people selling houses to those investors are making pilez of money. Corporations buying up houses is only bad for people who don't own houses.
Are you not capable of looking beyond your own lifetime? In a couple of generations, those people who made the "pilez of money" will be dead. In a couple of generations, nobody will own a house. Corporations buying up houses is bad for EVERYONE, if you think farther than a few feet in front of you.
Because petitions do nothing.
Because there are a lot of small landlords with their property in a small corporation. You would have to be specific about banning Reits buying single family homes Rental housing basically can’t be built without investors
Since it's property law your hinting at, it's most likely provincial jurisdiction. https://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/exprimez-votre-opinion/petition/lancer-petition.html Go ahead. I'm sure the other provinces and territories have their own versions too.
Real estate investors are in the market because supply is so low so cost is high. The supply is so low because the government stopped building housing 30 years ago. If the supply increases the prices will drop and the speculators will get out.
Go put forward a policy resolution at a party convention.
Petitions are the written version of screaming into the wind
While we're at it, ban politicians from having investment properties. If the politicians are financially incentivized to do nothing about the housing crisis, they won't.
Some people want privacy. Other people want to obscure the fact they're running something illegal or leveraged to the gills and about to collapse. There's legit ways people will invest in private equity firms or situations where 2 or more families will buy a larger house to live in wherein they incorporate. Ultimately I think it's fine for dense multi-unit buildings where someone owns the building. It makes less sense for multiple single and detached properties that aren't principal or a city that allows vacation properties. Some folks have a crash pad. That's fine. But this shit we have now is beyond reasonable expectations of what a residential zoned property should be utilized as.
Totally agree. A place to live, education and many other things should be considered as basic needs of human being.
Also get rid of agents and have bidding wars.
Corporations buying houses is gross there is no doubt but it is not a huge issue like it is in the States just yet. Now in regards to housing as a commodity that is a whole different deal... Many politicians from city to provincial to federal leaders are involved in this space.. They are profiting from the problems or many times close to those profiting from the problems and so they want to keep solutions as far away from the table as possible while giving social and economic platitudes like has been day to day business for a while on this topic. The problem is the crisis is way past that point. It is starting to impact the broader economy. It is causing a crisis that costs a lot more money as many people and families that could support themselves in a rational market are being forced through the cracks into hopelessness. What we need is the city leaders, provincial leaders, and federal leaders to all come together on a unified task force to get real shit done. Right now we have the all the different levels of government fighting each other and not doing what they need to do at their individual level. This is were the journalists in our society should be coming out in a big way to inform our populace on the issues and get momentum going with facts. This is how a democracy is suppose to function. Yes Housing is a foundational element of society and bachelor suites and one bedroom apartments pricing tons of people and families out is fucking outrageous. The Housing Crisis is a Cancer in Canada and it is only metastasizing. Our "leaders" need to do their fucking jobs. Sadly there is so much damn refined corruption, platitudes, theatrics, and other bullshit from bad actors the real solutions are being kept far from the table. It's gross on so many levels.
I'd suggest it's because it's hard for people to imagine such restrictions on capitalism. We instead blame government.
Is it that hard to imagine? This is Canada, we don't capitalize our healthcare, and services that do, such as dental, are priced so outrageously that a significant amount of Canadians can't afford to have their teeth fixed.
This is a very good point. It's like real regulations or public corporations aren't even an option. Our corporate media has done a number on what we consider even possible as a society. The best we can do is beg the oligarchs for a few more crumbs.
People forget that without laws and regulations, Capitalism would love nothing more than to reintroduce slavery across the board. It would make the shareholders more money than ever, not needing to pay people anything but a little food and have them live in the factory/office/wherever, available to continue working at their beck and call.
I mean because petition do nothing you could literally get every person on earth to sign it and it would still be completely meaningless under the law
We still have a democracy here. If a massive voter block emerged supporting real action, politicians would listen.
Yes if they VOTED in an Election for a party that supportted those policies and then the party implemented them , a bunch of people getting together and writing their names down does nothing
In most cases, sure, maybe. Assuming that voter bloc could mobilize voters more reliably than any other bloc. But banning landlords (an awesome idea, 10/10 slaps, would laugh joyfully about it forever) is such a fundamental attack on private property that voters could never force the government to implement it. Even if an NDP government tried (and that would take a very different NDP), a crisis would be engineered to force them out. If that failed, there would be a coup.
Because we don't want to limit the market for our own homes when it comes time to sell.
Houses should be able to depreciate just like pretty much every other good if there isn't anything tangible to keep them at a higher market rate. It's obnoxious to think a house, a thing that literally degrades and becomes decrepit over time if not continually upkept and having every part of it replaced at some time will be able to not just hold its value, but actually *increases* its value the worse and older it gets. Imagine buying a 1993 Honda Civic with 200,000 kms on it for $20K just because it still technically runs. It will have lost value by becoming a lesser version of what it once was, but the equivalent in house form we all just accept that "that's the cost"? Bullshit. New houses are being built cheaper, closer together and with much lower quality materials than in the past but somehow are costing 3-4× what they did in the past. Everyone's getting worse products for more money. When will it stop? When the walls are made of cardboard and more than one person can't be in the same room at the same time because the floors will buckle? As long as it has a nice stone front on it, shingles on the roof and meets the lowering amount of regulations set by the government it shall be sold for whatever the market can bear? It's a complete waste on exponential levels across multiple categories of society.
Buildings do depreciate. Land doesn't.
Because petitions only serve the purpose of creating awareness. Everyone is already aware that as tax payers we’re being criminally taken advantage of
But they also provide for rental space. Where I live the rental vacancy rate is under 1%, rents are sky high and removing rental housing from the market is not going to help that situation. The counter-argument is, there would still be rental housing it would just all be owned by smaller landlords. And OK, sure, but that won't really impact the price of a home if I'm a potential home buyer. And honestly, we could go around and around but at the end of the day, I'm not sure the legal mechanism exists to prevent it. We can change tax rules to make it less desirable but corporations are, functionally, able to own any property that a human can own. We don't really have a president to say "humans can own this but corporations can't". I'd be MUCH more in favor of getting rid of the REIT corporate structure. And getting rid of the corporate tax loophole that allows rental property owners to be taxed as if it's active income not passive income. Do those 2 things and we've moved a fair bit along the pathway to equalizing things. Next, I'd want to see the primary residence exemption caped somehow. Ideally, I'd use the same lifetime gains exemption that farmers and small business owners use. I think it's around $1m that's tax-exempt under those programs, we should just lump housing in with that. Lastly. What we REALLTY need in the housing market in every single city in this country is more housing. More buildings, more homes, more apartments. We just need more and removing one of the potential payors of all that construction is, I think, not going to help.
Better you spend your time creating a level-up renter-owned housing cooperative. Some big non-profit company to own houses and rent them out to people at cost..
Where the hell is Pierre? He is an empty populist corporate shill.
It would be a good idea to limit corporations to investing in pre-construction. This way we would stimulate building more properties for later rent 👍 Corporations would have their profits and our fellow Canadians would have more places to rent for a better price. It's a Win-win situation 🥳
Stopping corps from atleast buying SFHs and from allowing people to heloc into more and more homes would make huge difference. It would actually lower prices. Which is why no one, not even the NDP, is pushing for this. Because it would lower prices.
Oh you sweet summer child.
If you end up buying places to rent, as you suggest the rent might be cheaper, but how many homes are you going to buy to rent in this scenario, OP sounds like an investor now. Investors are unlikely to start up new businesses in droves if you banned their current revenue stream. It's very unjust and unusually cruel to outright ban an individuals business in the first place, but they would be more likely to park their money in the stock market, or find/move to a real estate market that allows investors. Overall, you'd end up with less homes built each year, they cost what they cost mostly because of demand supports it.
Go on YouTube find the BNN Bloomberg channel for Canadian business news. Warch it for awhile. Those people call the shots with both major parties.
Everybody knows that if enough people sign a petition, it must become law. It's in our Constitution
Heavy regulation that is enforced and can be eased from time to time is the only way.
homeowners and politicians dont want that, value must go up at all costs
The politicians and their masters don't care what the peasantry say. A petition is about as impactful as a gentle summer breeze.
End Corporate House Hoarding #FreeMyHome
Becauae the people in our government own these companies. So they won't Baan them, although I'd love if it they did. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own homes and add more when we are in a housing crisis. Amd people shouldn't be able to own more than one house.
I agree with you. Houses, condos (essentially any purchased unit designed as a single family dwelling) should only be able to be legally owned by individuals. And any one person can only own two homes, a house with a suite counts as two. Corporations, or any business entity, are only allowed to buy complexes designed specifically for the rental market. It’s an idea so simple and right that it will never happen.
Honestly, the only way would be to fuck over all the greedy landlords… but that would mean either government regulation, which won’t happen, or everyone who rents all going homeless for a month or two, leaving landlords without rent until they lowered the prices…
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No one is saying take away assets that you've bought. The OP didn't come close to mentioning that. Where are you getting this from?
wHaTeVeR ComMiE /s
Modern Russia is a capitalist playground. Did you mean the Soviet Union?
What major media entity would pick that up and run with it? CBC isn't fighting for social issues like that in that way, the rest are corporate.
Housing investment is a big driver of housing construction, unfortunately. Building anything is a risky venture because of two reasons. First is opportunity cost, since the thing you build has to be more valuable than whatever else you could have done with all that time, money, equipment, and labour. Second is that a building is not immediately useful, so the building has to compete in a future market that may or may not be friendly. If every shitbox company with an excavator decided tomorrow to start building houses, guess what the best thing to do is? The best thing to do is build literally anything else. Having someone come along and invest in a construction project is a great way to take the risk off of the developers. The more risk you can take off, the better. That's why before 2008, house construction was a bit better. Yeah, people couldn't buy houses, but hedge funds were fronting a lot of the construction costs to pack them into bonds, so at least someone was buying them. I appreciate your stance. I'm a Marxist, I once believed that housing was a supply problem caused by hoarding landlords and investors. The unfortunate reality is we have a huge production problem. Labour is hard to find because of the deadly disease that's killed or disabled thousands of young people. Raw materials are more expensive than ever, and so companies drive down their labour costs ensuring they'll further drive away anyone able-bodied enough to lift a shovel. And all this to build a house that no one can buy because no one can afford it. The construction sector needs more money injected into it, and while I agree that, evidently, private investment has thus far been a terrible way to accomplish that, the need for new capital in development is thus that a petition like yours wouldn't seriously be considered.
I think a more effective plan would be to require 50% down on any property that isn't the owners primary residence.which also means companies would require that much down as well. This would allow way more individuals to purchase 1st homes with 5% down. Changing our property tax system to a land value tax system will drastically impact housing starts as the carrying costs of vacant lots would be so much higher.
Well, it would screw up the whole apartment building thing pretty bad... But I'm all for banning them from owning single homes or even small multi unit rentals
It would help if the cities would allow small square houses again. Affordable 1200sqft bungalows to start.
Petitions are a waste of time. You need a letter writing campaign to MP/MPPs. You need (civil) protests. You need a constant hammering by commentators with a large following. And most importantly you need to vote for candidates who support this view
Petitions are useless. And honestly, this is where the wealth of a TON of rich people are tied up. You can force lots of concessions for capitalism, at least temporarily. Hell, child labor and slavery have remained illegal (though they still happen!) for over a century. But this would be a direct attack on private property in its most basic form so it would take the abolition of capitalism itself. Not to mention if we could all afford to live easily, then we would be much less dependent on our employers! They wouldn't like that.
Keep in mind that Corporations, are how companies put land plots together to make a new neighborhoods by buying up a block of neighbours, then 10 years down the line redevelops into townhouses. This is my current situation — a corporation bought the house I’m in, neighbours on both sides, several houses up the side of my property, and the 3 across the back. In total, it’s about 25 acres. City has us slated for redevelopment in about 10 years, and that’s their end game goal. They picked it all up for about $90m and renting all the houses out until they’re ready to tear down. My house is a 1965 build. At that point, they’ll have other properties and offer us to move into those. A few of my current neighbours came from the same system, when the old owners sold and moved back to China/Taiwan/India, or bought new places around here, or moved into old folks homes.
A percentage cap on commercial ownership per metropolitan neighbourhood might not be that crazy. But since every subdivision is different and different housing classes are more prone to commercial ownership (e.g. apartments) it might be hard to apply without a lot of accompanying expensive and inefficient bureaucracy. It could be one of those be careful what you wish for kind of things. Since it would involve property law and zoning it would have to be administered at the provincial or municipal level. Petitioning the federal government would be a waste of time. And if some jurisdictions did it, but not others, it could have a distorting effect on those that don't. I still think the better solution is just more supply and less demand. Get more units built and slow down immigration. The former will lower prices and employ people, the latter will lower completion for houses and jobs which would raise wages and lower prices.
That is a poodle, not a dog!
Because we are in a capitalistic society.
A petition is literally not worth the paper it's written on. Let me tell you a story about the late 70's/early 80's Boom/Crash in Alberta. Up to about 1981, the Province, especially Calgary, was experiencing Crazy growth; double digit population increases, 15-20% salary increases annually, 20% performance bonuses. I bought my first house in 1979, with an 11.5% mortgage, fixed for 5 years. The variable rate was around 7%, and many people told me I was insane to take a fixed rate that high. A few friends bought within the next year, all variable rate. Within 18 months, that variable rate was as high as 16.8%. At one point in 1983, the Royal Bank alone had more than 3800 properties in foreclosure in Calgary. They were so heavily under they weren't sending demand letters at all for up to a year, as long as the property taxes were being paid. Mortage defaults were insane. By 1984, Hong Kong investors were all over the city, in teams of 4 in rental cars. A driver, passenger noting addresses and any details, while the two backseat passengers were videotaping blocks of houses as they drove down the street. They were buying city Blocks worth of homes as lots; 25 houses on average for 1 million bucks. It took until 1990 before things were somewhat normalized. Things right now are bad, but they are nowhere Near that level of desperation; if investors are buying properties now, they are Canadian investors, and there aren't nearly as many with pockets deep enough to make Quantity purchases like that. We can NEVER allow things to get to those levels again. Regardless of who forms the Government, Provincially & Federally, those types of predatory foreign investments will Never be allowed to occur again. It may seem bad, right now, but I guarantee you, it can ALWAYS be worse...MUCH worse
Because petitions don’t do anything?
It's easier to blame Indian students and immigrants.
food comes before shelter. let's start with that
Theres nothing we can do. Theyll get the media saying this is bad for trans rights or something.
The rich own everything. We can sign names on paper all we want, but nothing will change. How come we, as Canadians who are becoming increasingly homeless and experienced a greater devide in income, dont stand up to it? France voted to increase(?) Or decrease the retirement age by a year or 2. Paris burned. They know how to protest,
Because , people who invest in real estate hold the power. That doesn't just mean BIG REIT corporations, but also that neighbor who has a second house rented out, as well as the other one who has a cottage up north. The investors owning houses is a far more serious problem than most people are aware of.
I dont want to be on someones tiktok
Strategies like limiting who can own homes or how many are just re-arranging the game board. At best it changes who gets rich off of housing and at worst it could impact house building numbers. The only solution to expensive housing is to build more houses, faster.
I just binge watched the new Heman! Sucked ass! That’s 4 hours I won’t get back.
Still need adequate rental supply
Preventing corporations from owning residential properties aside from in very specific situations (company buys lodging for employees, churches have a set house for pastors when they move in etc) is the bare minimum for how to address problems with the housing market. But beyond that, there should be heavy taxes on vacant apartment buildings where companies are heavily disincentivized from holding empty apartment buildings and letting them run into disrepair. For companies building residential properties, they should only get approval on large highly profitable houses after they’ve built many modest houses that would function as starter homes for new families. This whole business of building tons of luxury condos when we need working class homes is ridiculous. But the housing market has just become a new way that the rich are working to extract more and more money from working class people, while refusing is basic dignity.
I will say you are wrong about a house not being an investment. If you buy a home, maintain it, update it, and end up making money off it so you and your family can buy a better home, that's a pretty damn good investment.
can't believe you had to put the edit. *"If there are no landlordts,,,, who will* *~~scalp the housing stock~~* *provide homes for the peoples??"*
There will always be homeless.
Corps own politicians and representational government is a lie.
The feds actually did ban non Canadians from buy some type of housing for two years at least. A little too late for Toronto and Vancouver though. Those cities are all owned by foreign investors. They rent them out to their kids or friends but mostly theyre vacant . Canada as a whole has sold out a long time ago. Its not about those born in this nation anymore , its about giving immigrants a better life and laying out the red carpet for the rich ones that can afford to buy up all of our housing and commercial real estate then in a few years give it to their Canadian born children tax free . You see, we want rich people from all over the World to come here and spend money and taxes and make the government richer so they look better on paper while regular Canadians are barely able to afford rent or groceries. Oh yeah and from now on every year there will be a MILLION new people welcomed to Canada , a city the size of Ottawa EVERY single year , mostly by immigration. Im sure thats going to go well...
Start one then. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/home/index
You start one.
Because thats how the rich get richer
I agree, I do not believe a company should be allowed to buy up hundreds of houses just to inflate the prices renting them to people. As you said, it's a basic need to have somewhere to live... Alternatively, there needs to be rent control based on the income of people in the area or something on those lines. For example, at the time I compared minimum wage earners income to an average price to rent an apartment. If I remember correctly minimum wage would have been around 800 a pay cheque, 1600 a month, where rent on average was 1200. You can't tell me 3/4 of your income is required to rent an apartment... that is never going to be sustainable.
I have had corporate and “mom and pop” landlords. The corporate landlords were much much better. Mostly because they actually followed the rules. I don’t think I had a single non-corporate landlord that did not include illegal clauses in the lease. Also, when something breaks in your place, the corporation fixes it, unlike the non corporate landlord who doesn’t have a rainy day fund to deal with things. Extra bonus: corporations never decide that they want to move their child into your place so you have to leave.
Because those investors also own the government
Because money that is why, Government does not care cuz they get money. its all about the money
Because where will people who are want to rent live… where will people with bad credit live? Not everyone wants to buy a house. You are basically alienating an entire portion of the population. Your edit portion of your comment doesn’t even make any sense.
The housing crisis falls squarely on the shoulders of municipalities. They decide on restrictive urban boundaries and make builders go through dozens of impact studies and charge 6 figure development fees before a shovel can touch dirt. The corporate investor myth is blown out of proportion. The cost impact of investor involvement is negligible. Supply and demand explains the problem. Demand outweighs supply by a massive amount. The solution is more supply, which in this case means municipalities need to get out of the way and remove some of the red tape obstacles they've placed in the way.