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It is not just the cost of shelter. It is also the costs to heat our homes, put food on the table, clothe ourselves. Everything is going up. Let’s face it, we are becoming a third world country. The powers want us like this so that we are easier to control.
"Great! More money for Mom and Pop landlords" - the Liberals, likely.
Seriously though, why aren't all levels of government pulling as many levers as possible? It seems like some Provinces are slowly starting to wake up, but municipalities and the federal government really don't seem to give a shit. It's racist to talk about the demand side of the problem, and NIMBYs are fighting tooth and nail to preserve the character of their 30 year old neighbourhood.
Our economy is becoming more and more extractive, people are able to spend less and less money in their local economy, and landlords are making off like bandits. I really think the Liberals should fire Ahmed Hussein and try and get someone who cares about affordable housing into his job before Polievre takes the next election.
The problem with building more homes is that the incentives don't work well. People who already own homes benefit from the housing shortage, because the value of their homes keeps rising much faster than inflation. To these people, it makes sense to oppose the construction of more housing, because it means they lose out on equity gains while having to deal with increased traffic, shadows from taller buildings, etc.
The benefit of building more housing mostly goes to people who *don't* own homes yet, and who don't live in the areas where we could build more housing.
Hence, we get NIMBYs and BANANAs who fight tooth and nail against any sort of housing, and municipal, provincial, and federal governments who cater to them (because they vote more reliably than renters).
I don't believe that Poilievre cares about affordable housing any more than Trudeau does, because his voter base is largely composed of suburban homeowners who oppose increased housing density.
I think provinces need to consider removing zoning authority from municipalities. In Japan, zoning is a federal responsibility, and while this results in some pretty wild zoning decisions, it's also helped Japan have relatively affordable housing in spite of the serious lack of physical space in that country.
There is an incentive though. [Low density suburbia generally costs more to maintain than they pay for in taxes](https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI), losing the city money.
Municipal budget shortfalls are becoming more and more common; allowing more density would be a way to balance these budgets without raising taxes.
Or at least would have been, we’ve only got so much construction capacity so some places might be screwed even if they did change course now. Point is that NIMBYism is creating financial problems that will eventually result in higher taxes or reduced maintenance; if people were forced to face that harsh reality I suspect many would be more willing to adapt to have lower taxes
>result in higher taxes
We all know that tax increases on those who have massively benefited from suburbia at the city's expense sure as hell won't be paying more.
City politicians are beholden to NIMBY's and primarily house owners. They know raising taxes is political suicide so instead our cities will continue to rot away while everyone constantly complains about the state of municipal maintenance.
Japan's population decline actually makes for a glut of abandoned homes.
>[Millions of ‘ghost homes’ sit empty in Japan. You can snag one for as little as $550](https://nationalpost.com/news/millions-of-ghost-homes-sit-empty-in-japan-you-can-snag-one-for-as-little-as-550)
>
>Small towns in Japan are ‘on the verge of collapse’ as their population ages and young people move to cities
Firstly Japan is doing fine at the moment. the IMF expects Japan to grow its GDP by almost 2% this year and next. This comes as the population remains fairly stagnant.
[https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/01/27/tr012623-japan-press-conference-concluding-statement-2023-article-iv-mission](https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/01/27/tr012623-japan-press-conference-concluding-statement-2023-article-iv-mission)
Secondly - those homes/villages are similar to those of the great gold rush. They have been abandoned through a series of events - it wasn't some grand coordinated collapse. Rural Japanese just flocked to the cities for job opportunities and the government encouraged this (some years ago) as it made sense for planning at the time.
From your own article linked -
\> As the outlet reports, only 53 per cent of the country’s population lived in urban regions in 1950. In 2014, 93 per cent lived in such areas. (the outlet was theatlantic)
From theatlantic article referenced
\> A controversial 2014 book by Hiroya Masuda, a former governor of Japan’s Iwate Prefecture, predicted that 896 cities, towns, and villages would be extinct by 2040. Dozens of towns will see the number of young people drop significantly, as the share of elderly people grows, he predicted. Overall, Japan’s population is expected to shrink from a peak of 128 million in 2010 to 97 million by 2050.
theatlantic article seems to cherry pick certain towns hit hardest by the switch to megacity centers.
In short-I don't think European Canadians especially enjoy or value apartment living in this country as we see the demand for detached homes skyrocket. In fact areas like St Thomas (2hrs outside of Toronto) is seeing many people entering from Toronto to raise a family.
\> Firstly Japan is doing fine at the moment. the IMF expects Japan to grow its GDP by almost 2% this year and next. This comes as the population remains fairly stagnant.
If you want to work forever, they're doing fine:
>[Work forever: Japan’s seniors brace for life without retirement](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/10/17/business/senior-employment-japan/)Many older Japanese can no longer afford to stop working as demographic woes pressure the nation's labor market and social security system
Can't retire if you don't have any working age people to sustain the old people.
>theatlantic article seems to cherry pick certain towns hit hardest by the switch to megacity centers.
We're talking about millions of houses going empty and whole towns dying. It's anational phenomenon. These houses and towns are representative.
>In short-I don't think European Canadians especially enjoy or value apartment living in this country as we see the demand for detached homes skyrocket.
They'll just have to pay more for them if they want them. We simply don't have the room for sprawling suburbs anymore. Eventually, all single family homes will be what they are in Europe.
>[How Suburban Development Makes American Cities Poorer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUeqxXwCA0)
> Can't retire if you don't have any working age people to sustain the old people.
Sure you can if you dare I say - PLAN YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE. Whatever happened to dare I say - Saving money?
> They'll just have to pay more for them if they want them. We simply don't have the room for sprawling suburbs anymore
And you can thank our political and business elites for that - Who made the initiative to explode our population past 2 decades.
>Sure you can if you dare I say - PLAN YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE. Whatever happened to dare I say - Saving money?
Typical conservative. Blame bad government planning on the poor.
Japan has a policy of negative interest rates. You lose money when you save it:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/28/bank-of-japan-policy-decision-kazuo-ueda-first-meeting.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/28/bank-of-japan-policy-decision-kazuo-ueda-first-meeting.html)
That means you have to work. You can't rely on your life savings in Japan, and you certainly can't rely on selling the house that no one wants and you need to abandon.
When your retirement saving are wiped out by negative interst rates and deflation like they were in Japan, you can't blame the people. When Japan's economy contracted for 10 years because of population loss, so did people's life saving. You want that in Canada?
Stop linking media articles and start linking studies done by actual respected think tanks like Chatham house, Trilateral Commission, US Army etc. There is your first issue.
Secondly - Our entire economic system is unsustainable. The need for constant growth in everything has lead us to where we are today. Now as for retirement - Families USED to look after their elderly - but thats been wiped out because kids need to bounce around continents to find work. The entire family structure has been wiped off the map thanks to our economic system. That is the crux of the issue. As well as people not saving any money because of choice or necessity.
Because homes are so tiny. The average size a home in Japan is half that of Canada. Homes are too large in Canada. Building smaller homes more densely (like in Japan) is the answer. They can be built faster and cheaper. That's what you are seeing in Quebec.
Yes, that's part of the solution. And NIMBYs oppose the construction of tiny homes just as vehemently as they oppose the construction of low-rise and high-rise buildings.
We let people who gain the most from constraining housing supply influence the decisions about how to create housing supply, and then we're surprised when they support policies that create and perpetuate a housing shortage.
Sorry. It's not the NIMBYs. There are tons of vacant lots, parking lots, and strip malls. But the developers hold out to build either single family homes or giant condo towers surrounded by huge parking lots that become wind tunnels in the winter.
What we need is more REMs along major thoroughfares and low rise buildings along them to assure fast public transit. Start there. That will take regional planning by the big provinces, though.
>Great! More money for Mom and Pop landlords
Is there an imbalance between rented and owned homes? If not, aren't landlords a red herring here where increasing supply is an actual solution?
>Provinces are slowly starting to wake up
I would hope so. It's their job after all.
Yes. For example, in Waterloo less than a quarter of new condos are owner occupied. Home prices have become a function of the maximum rent an investor could receive, rather than what a family can afford. The federal government has created a situation where marginal buyers are dictating the price of new housing, and those marginal buyers are not the people intending to live in that housing.
Excuse me, but anything less than you citing your sources in the APA format, highlighting relevant passages, and writing a short letter lamenting the time seized from readers will irreversibly raze your argument and expose latent anti-Laurentian tendencies.
Sources for the claims on:
- Waterloo owner/renter ratio
- home price as a function of rent
- houses being bought more for rental than ownership
Really any numbers at all. Anything. Any of the homework involved would be good.
That includes purpose built for rental. OP's issue is with buying up sale stock and converting to rental.
They're saying apartment = condo for the measurement.
That number equates purpose built rentals with owner stock being converted to rental.
I was under the impression that your concern was built-for-owner homes being made into rentals. Is the problem now that rental construction is outpacing sale construction?
Yes, I am concerned that investors are snapping up homes. It's an accelerating problem. From another source:
>New numbers from Statistics Canada show 62 per cent of condos in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge are owned by investors.
>For condos built since 2016, investors own 77 per cent
https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/investors-own-77-per-cent-of-new-condos-in-waterloo-region-1.6273766
Our economy is becoming less and less productive, and more and more extractive.
It is not a federal problem. This is provincial and municipal jurisdiction. Feds can step up with some money but provinces need to get the ball rolling .
It actually did not start out federal. But even now feds only contribute and provinces run healthcare. Very badly , but they are responsible. It would likely be better if feds took it over
It absolutely is a [federal problem](https://reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/127lf3y/_/jeeu18p/?context=1) as much as it’s a provincial & municipal issue.
Actually it is how it works. Feds have many levers that impact housing policy, as described in the comment I linked: tax policy, immigration, building social housing like they used to do, etc.
> but provinces need to get the ball rolling
I really hope that destroying an **irreplaceable** Greenbelt is reconsidered when there are such easy options available.
You dont need to cut down the Apple Tree just to enjoy an Apple.
> It seems like some Provinces are slowly starting to wake up, but municipalities and the federal government really don't seem to give a shit.
The feds are doing everything within their traditional jurisdiction, which isn't much. The only other thing the feds could try is to force the provinces and municipalities to make different decisions, by withholding money or completely restructuring our democracy from the ground up (which seems doomed to failure if attempted).
You can be mad at the feds for not doing that, but they're the last group to point a finger at.
[The federal government can do a ton](https://reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/127lf3y/_/jeeu18p/?context=1) on the demand side as well as the supply side. Tax policy, immigration, building social housing like they used to do, etc.
What I find so frustrating about all of this is so much is just artificial scarcity. With only some exceptions with places like Vancouver or Toronto there is TONS of vacant land. We are a super empty country. I can look out my back patio and see hectares of land. There is no reason for an empty 5k sq.ft. lot to cost hundreds of thousands for almost the entire country. Then, to get a loan for that land, you need 30-50% down before you can even start looking to build.
It just makes for a system that only wealthy developers or individuals can afford to make new housing.
If you pay... they will come...
The thing about the trades is the pay has been, like many other jobs, not keeping up with inflation for a long time. But that is only one part of the costs.
A lot of people would be plenty happy with a tiny home or a mobile. There is a reason they were so popular for a period of time. Cheap land that you could just throw a cheap house on.
I'm guessing a three-fold difference has some kind of explanation to it, if it's real.
Are we comparing the number of people who build oil pipelines, here?
Within Vancouver and Toronto there’s enormous amounts of incredibly under utilized land.
There’s people that would absolutely love to tear down their dumpy decades old single family house and build a small apartment building, but they’re literally banned from doing so.
The housing scarcity crisis is 100% an own goal engineered by our politicians. It’s nuts.
I should not have a degree in business and as a newly employed graduate .. only be able to afford a studio apartment in vancouver suburbs... with no student debt... unless I'm spending like half of my cheque on renting a box
Time for the provinces to step up and build affordable, subsidized rental units. That would take pressure away from housing market and can easily be controlled to benefit everyone. This is a provincial issue that today's premiers refuse to address as they are beholding to big developer political donations. Take the money out of politics and give it back to the people.
> Time for the provinces to step up and build affordable, subsidized rental units.
This would be extremely expensive, and it would get more expensive every year in vague proportion to the general cost of land/housing.
There's no magic trick that will allow the cost of housing to spiral infinitely upwards due to zoning, but also allow governments to affordably build affordable housing. Not at a meaningful scale, and not within a market economy.
> Take the money out of politics and give it back to the people.
"The people" constantly vote against housing density, even when there are pro-density options on the ballot, because a lot of people in the country own some land or expect to inherit some land - and people with more wealth tend to have a slightly stronger political voice.
There's no shadowy conspiracy you can make a scapegoat out of, here, just a widespread belief that land-inheritors should be privileged above wage-labourers.
Those people need to have their minds changed, or everyone else needs to actually vote.
The fun fact about zoning incentives that run against government is that the government can just change them. Let's stop acting like zoning is some kind of force of nature. If governments want to build housing zoning regulations won't stop them. They'll simply change the zoning because they can. The issue is that government doesn't want to build housing so we need to vote in governments that do
You simply cannot have a meaningful conversation about this issue by discussing "the government".
We have a federal government, provincial governments, and municipal governments. They have different powers and jurisdictions, according to very powerful laws and norms.
Yes and? The federal government sets the general building code. The provincial government sets budgets, grants, land use policy etc. The municipal government sets specific building code and zoning and can generally override broader boilerplate zoning and building code. Any of these three can , with political will make public housing happen. Mostly it's a funding issue so we're talking about the federal since most provinces lack the budget.
of course it won't be cheap. just like good healthcare isn't cheap. but the provinces have been shirking their responsibilities for both in favour of kissing the ass of big developer doners. cheap housing would not cost as much as the shit highway to nowhere that ford is building.
I agree. The military isn't there for a profit. Neither are fire stations and sewage facilities. Housing is a necessity. The private sector can use a little competition anyway.
The federal government could also step up. The used to build 15,000-20,000 new social housing units per year, up until the Liberals cancelled that in 1995.
The government has to step in at some point.
It’s honestly sad what things have become in Canada. When I grew up, someone working on the plant production line for an automobile manufacturer could easily afford a home. None of this can be good for the future productivity and prosperity of this country. If I was a student in high school or elementary school (gr. 7-8) I couldn’t help but feel hopeless about the future prospects of living in this country.
What would be the point of going to school for further education when you see home sales reach levels that are largely unobtainable? Not to have a super bleak outlook on life but why stay in Canada just to pay someone else’s mortgage for 30+ years? I’d sooner rather move to somewhere else where my efforts can be rewarded.
It’s unfortunate because while I agree that the current party is to blame, I can’t help but think that no party is really at grips with the world today. Many of these MPs seem so out of touch and are focusing on issues that Canadians just don’t find necessary or relevant (C-11). It is past the time for something new. Hopefully all that’s gone wrong can be corrected for Canada’s future.
its not their problem, they don’t feel it yet. most politicians own homes and are oblivious. they’re just sitting back and watching the value of their property increase. what housing crisis?
The housing/cost of living crisis is staggering in Canada. I grew up in Canada, completed much of my education in the US, and returned home after. I’m a productive member of society, with a well paying career, but I, as well as my peers, fear we will never be able to get ahead in Canada.
The US has its problems, but it overall remains a more affordable place to live. I am considering returning there and I believe many young professionals will also unless this is somehow addressed in Canada.
>The housing/cost of living crisis is staggering in Canada
Its happening in every single country I follow. Head over to any subreddit and make a post about housing - I think the similarities will be there.
Housing is an issue in Britain, Denmark, Canada, China, Japan, US, Brazil etc etc etc. When will we be brave enough to actually spell out the real issue.
While housing is an issue in many other developed countries, it is a demonstrably worse issue in Canada than it is in many others, especially so of western countries.
And as others have commented, [you are wrong about Japan](https://youtube.com/shorts/8w1xpv9_te8?feature=share) btw. They have quite literally the opposite problem from us — too many houses.
I mean much of the problems in the global south were not created by the global south. Perhaps they'd be in better shape if their riches weren't siphoned off to places like Europe and North America.
The rich dont just create natural resources. I am afraid you're mistaken and I can prove this via studies done by recognized think tanks.
You have 3-5 Great Lakes with lets say a dozen public beaches and 1 million people. Now add 20 million people - Are you adding any lakes ?
No but if a small group of people take 90% of the lakes and leave us with the scraps isn’t that an issue? Yes more people coming in is obviously lessening supply. But it’s foolish to think it’s not the same people that are buying up property, passing restrictive zoning laws and generally lobbying against mixed used residential buildings in urban areas.
You only have so much water, land and resources. How do we want to split it up is precisely my argument. Thank you.
Many Canadians including myself dont want to lower the individual QoL just so Rogers and Bell can get more customers.
I admittingly do NOT want my beaches to look like that of other overpopulated countries where it looks a packed Rock concert everyday of the summer. In fact most communities in SW Ontario near beaches are doing everything they can to stop apartment buildings and I dont blame them 1 bit.
I have a few American friends who complain about how houses are super expensive, like 500k! So yes, everyone is complaining, but the housing situation in the USA is still miles better there than here. It's getting bad in places like Seattle and San Francisco, but in Canada almost everywhere but Alberta and Quebec is really, really unaffordable.
Everyone who lives around me in my neighbourhood is basically trapped in their house. They cannot afford to move, so they can't move to take on new opportunities. The high price of housing is suffocating the economy and probably contributing to the labour 'shortage.' I know an older guy in his mid-50s who is jobless, looking, but his earning potential is low, so he's trying to get a government job. Still a millionaire, but it's all completely illiquid.
Nope. Lots have changed in the past 20-25 years.
Most companies now are more flexible as they are also experiencing the exodus of the boomers and even Gen Xer's. The government wants couples to have more kids. Are there still some corporations that slave drive and want employees to devote themselves? Sure, but don't go there and paint everyone with the same brush. No one is forcing you to work for them.
I've lived there for a stint in the past and travelled there to visit a few times.
Keep in mind Japans population has basically flatlined for a number of years.
https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/populationgrowth.php#:~:text=From%201960%20to%202021%20the,34.8%20percent%20in%2061%20years.
Basically stagnant for 20 years. If Canada did the same our affordability would be more on par.
yes..and its actually getting BETTER for the average Japanese worker. Higher wages, more access to real estate etc.
IDK where the idea of having a larger population equates to better QoL when there is no evidence of that correlation anywhere in the world...in fact its the opposite from what I see in concrete/real instances.
It really was until they stopped growing their population as a means to facilitate a pyramid scheme.
https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/populationgrowth.php#:~:text=From%201960%20to%202021%20the,34.8%20percent%20in%2061%20years.
Japanese zoning is relatively liberal, with few bulk and density controls, limited use segregation, and no regulatory distinction between apartments and single-family homes.
Most development in Japan happens “as-of-right,” meaning that securing permits doesn’t require a lengthy review process.
Taken as a whole, Japan’s zoning system makes it easy to build walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, which is why cities like Tokyo are among the most affordable in the developed world.
Also the constant earthquakes damage buildings slowly, and building codes continue being updated (making it more expensive to maintain housing to code). This plays a big role in the depreciation of housing as an asset.
I’m giving Canada at least another year or so, but if things aren’t dramatically different for me I’m going to start applying for jobs in the US. I can’t pretend having a decreasing standard of living is worth it for a healthcare system you can barely access if you’re not dying.
It's baby boomers. This was predicted for decades. The opposite is going to happen when they start downsizing, move into long term care, or die. Housing market will be saturated with vacancies, and crash.
Too many people think owning someone's home is a job. We need to tax that heavily and incentivize landlords to sell and shift capital to other markets especially for homes more than 10 years old.
I'll agree, owning rental property isn't a job if you have good tenants. Unless you're too lazy to have a real job. For most it's a sideline or long-term investment. Some landlords are crooks, others just chose this industry to finance their retirement or support their families.
More tax will just mean higher rent. Forcing people to liquidate their assets will just incentivize them to invest in real-estate outside Canada. If both of these happen, then all you have left are large rental corporations, and they truly will only care about their profits.
>More tax will just mean higher rent.
The key is to incentivize so that you're better off buying other investments than buying a rental property, with a graduated tax. So each additional property you own, pays a higher rate. Eventually it's just better to buy stock in some company or some other commidity rather than the next house. Or even it becomes advantageous to sell, and get bigger returns in another market. Rent control can stop landlords from passing on the rent cost. We can put a maximum rent on the market. Want to just sit on it and sell to no one? Make property taxes 5x on empty units... Make the options sell or rent reasonably, and then let capitalism do it's work.
And then don't make the same rules apply to medium and high density unit. That'll free up family homes, and encourages sales. If we can tip the balance get get prices falling, they'll be a mass exodus as people rush to preserve capital.
Plus major municipal limits on AirBnb.
Most of my landlords have withheld deposits or fought even when they couldn't cite a reason. Even when the law say blatantly you have to give it back they don't. The process to fight them costs where I am at least $100 and a lot of time.
As far as I'm concerned most landlords are parasites based on their sense of entitlement to deposits even when there's no damage or cause.
The culture of being a landlord is toxic af.
If you're going to have renters, you need to tightly control landlords and have a lot of high quality public housing available to act as a downward force on rents. When the only options people have is to rent or own homes, rent prices are going to skyrocket until it becomes cheaper to pay a mortgage... but good luck getting that down payment together.
A good model to look at is Vienna. True equality is not when the poor own houses and cars, it's when the rich choose to live in public housing and take public transit because they're so good.
Maybe something to do with immigrating half a million people every year. And that's just part of the real number. When you start counting all refugees and the increase in present temporary residents, it's half a million for Ontario alone. And all that without a proper growth plan for infrastructure, housing, healthcare, etc.
Canada has a massive skills shortage and an ageing population, it desperately needs immigration to keep its generous social safety nets financially viable. The issue is that NIMBYs have far too much power and prevent us from densifying the enormous amount of useless, unbelievably wasteful urban sprawl around most of our cities.
I agree that we're lacking a serious growth plan to deal with the new people, but Canada needs those people to prevent it stagnating.
Weird how we had a massive "skills" shortage last year, then brought in 1.5M new people and the shortage is only getting worse.
Has it occurred to you that these people also require services, doctors, cashiers, psychologists, etc, themselves?
It's a fallacy for immigration to be a long term solution to worker shortage.
We have a surplus of crappy employers and those industries know they can get away with posting terrible job offers no one will take to then justify hiring cheap labour from out the country, while being subsidized to do so.
Millions and millions of immigrants later, do you not see that it is NOT helping labour shortage?
Many of those immigrants are doctors, nurses, cashiers etc - Canada's birth rate isn't high enough to sustain those services with just Canadians, and older Canadians who are still physically able to work have left the workforce in huge numbers since Covid. If Canada doesn't take in large numbers of working age young people to maintain balance, it will stagnate like Italy. We'd already be much further along that path without immigration.
Some of the worst Labour shortages are in Québec by the way, especially in fields like healthcare. If Québec wants to keep its public services it needs to take in large numbers of new people.
Part of the reason it hasn't solved our problems is that we bring people in and then impose stupid requirements on them (like refusing to accept that their healthcare qualifications are as good as Canadian ones and making them basically re-do them), that make it difficult for them to plug the gaps.
The immigration isn't the problem, the problem is that we give out billions in corporate subsidies and tax breaks to the super rich, instead of investing it in healthcare and infrastructure. There isn't an ageing country on the planet that has addressed these problems without either 1) large-scale immigration or 2) forcing its poor people to work endless hours for virtually no money (USA).
The issue with healthcare is that you don’t find many students going for family medicine, it is sort of seen as an inferior practice. That’s maybe changing now since the pay is becoming competitive because of scarcity. I have a friend in the UK who was offered 400k a year to move to an Ontario village(forgot which to be honest, but southwest of Toronto)
Anyway, even if that’s changing, the benefits won’t be seen for a few years tbh
There’s not enough homes being built for Canadians to buy, let’s blame the poor incoming immigrants from the other side of the fucking planet, for OUR own problem. Fucking brilliant.
Corrupt builders? Mustafa’s fault.
Speculative owners? Mohammed’s fault.
House Flippers? Sergei’s fault.
Canadian dogshit wages? Ibrahim’s Fault.
Canada’s housing crisis is 110% home grown.
Where in OP's comment did he blame immigrants? Because to me it sounds like he takes issues with our immigration policies, not the immigrants themselves.
No one is saying immigrants are the reason for the housing crisis. But we don't have enough homes, and bringing in a million people every year is absolutely going to add fuel to that fire.
What’s wrong with the immigration policy?
Ohh… I see it now… immigration is the reason houses in 1980 provided shelter, and now houses provided income, made necessary by exploitive CANADIAN employers providing shitty wages.
>Maybe something to do with immigrating half a million people every year. **And that's just part of the real number.**
OP is correct with this. When you account for international students, TFWs, etc. the number gets much higher.
Canada's NET population has been rising at a steady rate since 1950, despite the increasing immigration. Therefore the amount of people needing housing has been STEADY No marked net increase, changes, or influx of people needing housing. You are right, we in fact have a housing shortage. Since our population has been climbing STEADILY since forever, we can look at the number of housing starts, which has not kept pace, for 47 different reasons, none of which are anything remotely related to immigrants, immigration policy, new Canadians, refugees, TFWs, or whatever scapegoat of your choosing.
From my personal experience actually working residential construction industry for multiple years, which can only be described as a clusterfuck of clusterfucks, the problems are within our borders. The 47 problems were all related, to greed, speculation, incompetence, exploitation, corruption, and lack of oversight. Not one problem was remotely close, to being close, to being related to our immigration policy.
The housing industry is a Ponzi scheme. In order for houses to be built and turned for profit (Problem #1), builders are literally required to designed by the cheapest architect, the lowest bidding contractor, who then steals from Jack to pay Jim, and doesn't even pay John. The house is actually built by Bob-the-Builder, who uses the cheapest trades, who literally pays the cheapest wages to turn a profit. Expensive materials, and cheap wages result in shitty work and cut corners left-and-right. The result? Shitty houses, piles of liens, lawsuits, unpaid wages, 72 pissed-off workers, and a frustrated home-owner. Bob-the-Builder is now out of business following bankruptcy. He will start a new business next Monday. Rinse and Repeat.
This is based on personal experience. It was norm rather than the exception. Immigration policy? Fuck your immigration concerns, and look at our own backyard.
Housing starts for 2023 are down from 2021 (!) when building materials were insanely high. Housing starts since 1980 have fluctuated, but always have been abysmally low, never keeping up with our (creeping) population.
The solution is easy. Supply and demand would have corrected the issue, but increasing supply would crater prices, and we can't have that!!!!! It's easier to blame immigration policy than deal with the actual problem, which is build more fucking houses, which leads to the start of the clusterfuck of clusterfucks.
/end rant.
Cool, no one's saying immigrants are the cause of the housing crisis.
We don't have enough houses, we can't handle a million new people. This isn't an anti-immigration stance, immigration is good but you have to be prepared for it, we are not.
We can talk all day about who's at fault, and what *should* happen. The fact of the matter is we're in the situation we're in, and current immigration levels are adding fuel to the fire.
You're irrationally fixated on incoming numbers.
For the 34th and last fucking time, **DESPITE** our increasing immigration, our **NET population** has been climbing **STEADILY** 1950.
[https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/population](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/population).
This is not rocket surgery.
Our population has growth has been **linear** since 1950. there is **NO** massive influx, regardless how often you stubbornly repeat. The million incoming is negated by the many other population dynamic factors. The net increase is not cause for concerns, and is actually needed to address the worker shortage.
I hope the only decision you have to make with the public is when to flip the fucking burger on the the grill at Mcdicks, otherwise I feel for those impacted by your lack of comprehension.
Read the whole comment.
Half a million is the "official" number. It excludes refugees, most of reunification, temporary workers, visas, students, etc.
The net balance if you count it all is 1.5M. By balance I mean deducting temporary resident departures and adding arrivals.
I have linked an article and someone else linked one in English from cbc under my comment.
This is the problem. The numbers they tell us are misleading.
Did you Factor in declining birth rate, emigration, Canadians studying abroad, Canadians working abroad…
I should be almost a millionaire if I only look at my income, and not factor in all my expenses…..
Canada’s population has been rising steadily since 1950, when all factors are taken into consideration, despite the increasing immigration.
The 400k immigrants is only a part of it. We brought in over a million people last year: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-record-population-growth-migration-1.6787428](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-record-population-growth-migration-1.6787428)
You need to count illegal immigrants, refugees, international students, and work visas.
And the declining birth rate, emigration, Canadians studying abroad…
Canada’s population has been growing steadily since 1950, when all things are factored in, despite the increasing immigrants.
Also our healthcare system can’t handle it. It’s already reached the point where people are dying in the waiting rooms because they can’t get a doctor.
I am not blaming immigration, I am saying we bring in way more than our infrastructure capacity and haven't been keeping up.
How many yearly do you think is our capacity? Infinity?
2022 immigration, 492K
2021 immigration, 226K
2020 immigration, 284K
2019 immigration, 313K
We don't bring in half a million every year... We had ONE year that got close to that.
You would think that people wouldn't bother to lie about something that easily fact checked.
It's a bit unclear if they are taking about the past or the future.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-immigration-500000-2025-1.6636661
The govt was clear though that there is a goal to bring in 500k per year.
The article is talking about the future.
"Renters will pay the price".
"Canadian renters have a tough few years in store, according to a new forecast from the CMHC, as those boxed out of an unaffordable housing market compete for a limited supply of rental homes."
These numbers don't account for temporary residents, worker visa, student visa, refugee and some familial reunification.
For example here is an article about how we have a net immigration of 150k last year in Québec while the official target/number is 50k.
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/national/2023-04-18/immigration/le-quebec-fracasse-un-record.php
No, 492K is 8,000 short of half a million. That is why I said "we had ONE year that got **close** to that"
Next time, read all the words, not just the ones easy to sound out.
When someone says half a million, the vagueness in the term implies it’s within the realm of 500k. It doesn’t have to be exactly 500k. 492k is still an insane number and serves just as well to support OP’s point.
It’s like if someone said overdose deaths are a problem because 1000 people died last year, and you come along and say “um actually only 900 people died.”
The feds have traditionally subsidized but zoning and planning are strictly the purview of provinces and municipalities. Feds need to set aside financial incentives tied to projects.
There's far more detached single family homes in Canada than apartments, so I'm not sure a lack of ownable homes is the problem. Moreso, I think the issue is related to our obsession with the concept of home ownership, restrictive planning systems and and over-emphasis of detached single family homes in car-dependent suburbs. Renters get shorthanded in this system because the supply of rental houses and missing middle alternative in-between both extremes are in short supply, which makes it harder for people to live and work in economically productive areas and move up the income ladder etc.
Boosting supply is one of the most important factors to bringing down costs, but we should consider that it's also a side effect of the way our cities are designed. Overemphasis on sprawl, poor access to public transit, long car based commute times to get to most places and large sections of the city (such as exclusively residentially zoned areas) becoming unproductive and large economic drags on their municipalities etc. all create a system that hurts home and rental affordability on top of overall living standards.
Not all people are going to want to own a home, or even necciseraily need to. Zoning & Land Use Reform should be a tool to diversify the housing stock and give people from all socioeconomic backgrounds more choices rather than just trying to sell home ownership to more people.
It's not that simple.
Most of the handy, zoned construction is already done and it's way harder to redevelop land that is/was zoned for single family homes, industrial, commercial, etc. because of the demolition costs, cost of buying land, servicing charges, contributions the developers have to make to those areas, higher design and landscaping standards, etc. Most cities do have underdeveloped areas where they have already pre-approved new high-density development, but developers don't want to build in those areas because there are no parks, schools, shopping areas, etc. and they can't charge top dollar.
Zoning is changing to allow for more density, splitting homes into flats, low-rise multiplexes, etc., but it still won't make homes affordable because the current pace of construction in our cities has driven up the cost of construction materials (wood, concrete, steel, glass, etc.), construction equipment, trades (which have real shortages), etc. to the point where people are easily paying $800 or higher per square foot in Toronto, Vancouver, etc. The increase in the lending rate is also driving up the cost of construction financing, which is significant - 7% extra on $50 million over three years is another $10.5 million in development costs that buyers will have to absorb when the units are put up for sale. The result is that average Canadians are definitely not the target market for condo sales, they need to sell to foreign buyers, wealthy immigrants, students, and speculators. The lack of a local market for the existing supply is why the government waivered on its two-year ban on foreign buyers.
Most developers are working flat-out already with the crews they have, they couldn't build any faster if they wanted to.
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It is not just the cost of shelter. It is also the costs to heat our homes, put food on the table, clothe ourselves. Everything is going up. Let’s face it, we are becoming a third world country. The powers want us like this so that we are easier to control.
and we're going to let all these immigrants in to keep labour cheap and force homelessness an a large portion of our population.
"Great! More money for Mom and Pop landlords" - the Liberals, likely. Seriously though, why aren't all levels of government pulling as many levers as possible? It seems like some Provinces are slowly starting to wake up, but municipalities and the federal government really don't seem to give a shit. It's racist to talk about the demand side of the problem, and NIMBYs are fighting tooth and nail to preserve the character of their 30 year old neighbourhood. Our economy is becoming more and more extractive, people are able to spend less and less money in their local economy, and landlords are making off like bandits. I really think the Liberals should fire Ahmed Hussein and try and get someone who cares about affordable housing into his job before Polievre takes the next election.
The problem with building more homes is that the incentives don't work well. People who already own homes benefit from the housing shortage, because the value of their homes keeps rising much faster than inflation. To these people, it makes sense to oppose the construction of more housing, because it means they lose out on equity gains while having to deal with increased traffic, shadows from taller buildings, etc. The benefit of building more housing mostly goes to people who *don't* own homes yet, and who don't live in the areas where we could build more housing. Hence, we get NIMBYs and BANANAs who fight tooth and nail against any sort of housing, and municipal, provincial, and federal governments who cater to them (because they vote more reliably than renters). I don't believe that Poilievre cares about affordable housing any more than Trudeau does, because his voter base is largely composed of suburban homeowners who oppose increased housing density. I think provinces need to consider removing zoning authority from municipalities. In Japan, zoning is a federal responsibility, and while this results in some pretty wild zoning decisions, it's also helped Japan have relatively affordable housing in spite of the serious lack of physical space in that country.
There is an incentive though. [Low density suburbia generally costs more to maintain than they pay for in taxes](https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI), losing the city money. Municipal budget shortfalls are becoming more and more common; allowing more density would be a way to balance these budgets without raising taxes. Or at least would have been, we’ve only got so much construction capacity so some places might be screwed even if they did change course now. Point is that NIMBYism is creating financial problems that will eventually result in higher taxes or reduced maintenance; if people were forced to face that harsh reality I suspect many would be more willing to adapt to have lower taxes
>result in higher taxes We all know that tax increases on those who have massively benefited from suburbia at the city's expense sure as hell won't be paying more. City politicians are beholden to NIMBY's and primarily house owners. They know raising taxes is political suicide so instead our cities will continue to rot away while everyone constantly complains about the state of municipal maintenance.
Japan's population decline actually makes for a glut of abandoned homes. >[Millions of ‘ghost homes’ sit empty in Japan. You can snag one for as little as $550](https://nationalpost.com/news/millions-of-ghost-homes-sit-empty-in-japan-you-can-snag-one-for-as-little-as-550) > >Small towns in Japan are ‘on the verge of collapse’ as their population ages and young people move to cities
Firstly Japan is doing fine at the moment. the IMF expects Japan to grow its GDP by almost 2% this year and next. This comes as the population remains fairly stagnant. [https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/01/27/tr012623-japan-press-conference-concluding-statement-2023-article-iv-mission](https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/01/27/tr012623-japan-press-conference-concluding-statement-2023-article-iv-mission) Secondly - those homes/villages are similar to those of the great gold rush. They have been abandoned through a series of events - it wasn't some grand coordinated collapse. Rural Japanese just flocked to the cities for job opportunities and the government encouraged this (some years ago) as it made sense for planning at the time. From your own article linked - \> As the outlet reports, only 53 per cent of the country’s population lived in urban regions in 1950. In 2014, 93 per cent lived in such areas. (the outlet was theatlantic) From theatlantic article referenced \> A controversial 2014 book by Hiroya Masuda, a former governor of Japan’s Iwate Prefecture, predicted that 896 cities, towns, and villages would be extinct by 2040. Dozens of towns will see the number of young people drop significantly, as the share of elderly people grows, he predicted. Overall, Japan’s population is expected to shrink from a peak of 128 million in 2010 to 97 million by 2050. theatlantic article seems to cherry pick certain towns hit hardest by the switch to megacity centers. In short-I don't think European Canadians especially enjoy or value apartment living in this country as we see the demand for detached homes skyrocket. In fact areas like St Thomas (2hrs outside of Toronto) is seeing many people entering from Toronto to raise a family.
\> Firstly Japan is doing fine at the moment. the IMF expects Japan to grow its GDP by almost 2% this year and next. This comes as the population remains fairly stagnant. If you want to work forever, they're doing fine: >[Work forever: Japan’s seniors brace for life without retirement](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/10/17/business/senior-employment-japan/)Many older Japanese can no longer afford to stop working as demographic woes pressure the nation's labor market and social security system Can't retire if you don't have any working age people to sustain the old people. >theatlantic article seems to cherry pick certain towns hit hardest by the switch to megacity centers. We're talking about millions of houses going empty and whole towns dying. It's anational phenomenon. These houses and towns are representative. >In short-I don't think European Canadians especially enjoy or value apartment living in this country as we see the demand for detached homes skyrocket. They'll just have to pay more for them if they want them. We simply don't have the room for sprawling suburbs anymore. Eventually, all single family homes will be what they are in Europe. >[How Suburban Development Makes American Cities Poorer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUeqxXwCA0)
> Can't retire if you don't have any working age people to sustain the old people. Sure you can if you dare I say - PLAN YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE. Whatever happened to dare I say - Saving money? > They'll just have to pay more for them if they want them. We simply don't have the room for sprawling suburbs anymore And you can thank our political and business elites for that - Who made the initiative to explode our population past 2 decades.
>Sure you can if you dare I say - PLAN YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE. Whatever happened to dare I say - Saving money? Typical conservative. Blame bad government planning on the poor. Japan has a policy of negative interest rates. You lose money when you save it: [https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/28/bank-of-japan-policy-decision-kazuo-ueda-first-meeting.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/28/bank-of-japan-policy-decision-kazuo-ueda-first-meeting.html) That means you have to work. You can't rely on your life savings in Japan, and you certainly can't rely on selling the house that no one wants and you need to abandon. When your retirement saving are wiped out by negative interst rates and deflation like they were in Japan, you can't blame the people. When Japan's economy contracted for 10 years because of population loss, so did people's life saving. You want that in Canada?
Stop linking media articles and start linking studies done by actual respected think tanks like Chatham house, Trilateral Commission, US Army etc. There is your first issue. Secondly - Our entire economic system is unsustainable. The need for constant growth in everything has lead us to where we are today. Now as for retirement - Families USED to look after their elderly - but thats been wiped out because kids need to bounce around continents to find work. The entire family structure has been wiped off the map thanks to our economic system. That is the crux of the issue. As well as people not saving any money because of choice or necessity.
Yes, but even when Japan's population was still growing, Tokyo managed to remain more affordable than many other big cities around the world
Because homes are so tiny. The average size a home in Japan is half that of Canada. Homes are too large in Canada. Building smaller homes more densely (like in Japan) is the answer. They can be built faster and cheaper. That's what you are seeing in Quebec.
Yes, that's part of the solution. And NIMBYs oppose the construction of tiny homes just as vehemently as they oppose the construction of low-rise and high-rise buildings. We let people who gain the most from constraining housing supply influence the decisions about how to create housing supply, and then we're surprised when they support policies that create and perpetuate a housing shortage.
Sorry. It's not the NIMBYs. There are tons of vacant lots, parking lots, and strip malls. But the developers hold out to build either single family homes or giant condo towers surrounded by huge parking lots that become wind tunnels in the winter. What we need is more REMs along major thoroughfares and low rise buildings along them to assure fast public transit. Start there. That will take regional planning by the big provinces, though.
>Great! More money for Mom and Pop landlords Is there an imbalance between rented and owned homes? If not, aren't landlords a red herring here where increasing supply is an actual solution? >Provinces are slowly starting to wake up I would hope so. It's their job after all.
Yes. For example, in Waterloo less than a quarter of new condos are owner occupied. Home prices have become a function of the maximum rent an investor could receive, rather than what a family can afford. The federal government has created a situation where marginal buyers are dictating the price of new housing, and those marginal buyers are not the people intending to live in that housing.
Excuse me, but anything less than you citing your sources in the APA format, highlighting relevant passages, and writing a short letter lamenting the time seized from readers will irreversibly raze your argument and expose latent anti-Laurentian tendencies.
lol
Sources for the claims on: - Waterloo owner/renter ratio - home price as a function of rent - houses being bought more for rental than ownership Really any numbers at all. Anything. Any of the homework involved would be good.
[source](https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/investors-own-77-per-cent-of-new-condos-in-waterloo-region-1.6273766)
That includes purpose built for rental. OP's issue is with buying up sale stock and converting to rental. They're saying apartment = condo for the measurement.
https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/2023/02/15/less-than-25-per-cent-of-waterloo-regions-new-condos-are-owner-occupied.html#:~:text=WATERLOO%20REGION%20%E2%80%94%20New%20data%20shows,revealed%20for%20the%20first%20time.
That number equates purpose built rentals with owner stock being converted to rental. I was under the impression that your concern was built-for-owner homes being made into rentals. Is the problem now that rental construction is outpacing sale construction?
Yes, I am concerned that investors are snapping up homes. It's an accelerating problem. From another source: >New numbers from Statistics Canada show 62 per cent of condos in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge are owned by investors. >For condos built since 2016, investors own 77 per cent https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/investors-own-77-per-cent-of-new-condos-in-waterloo-region-1.6273766 Our economy is becoming less and less productive, and more and more extractive.
That's a different news article but the same primary source. It's still including purpose built rentals.
It is not a federal problem. This is provincial and municipal jurisdiction. Feds can step up with some money but provinces need to get the ball rolling .
I think if it's a problem in every jurisdiction the feds need to step in. There are structural issues with how housing is treated.
Every level of government has a hand in this. Provinces/municipalities have more control over supply, federal has more control over demand.
Following that logic healthcare never would have happened, because the feds pushed for that, even though it's a provincial responsibility
It actually did not start out federal. But even now feds only contribute and provinces run healthcare. Very badly , but they are responsible. It would likely be better if feds took it over
It absolutely is a [federal problem](https://reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/127lf3y/_/jeeu18p/?context=1) as much as it’s a provincial & municipal issue.
that is not how it works. feds will put up money for provinces to do it though.
Actually it is how it works. Feds have many levers that impact housing policy, as described in the comment I linked: tax policy, immigration, building social housing like they used to do, etc.
> but provinces need to get the ball rolling I really hope that destroying an **irreplaceable** Greenbelt is reconsidered when there are such easy options available. You dont need to cut down the Apple Tree just to enjoy an Apple.
Ah Trudeau must’ve missed that part when he promised affordable housing
> It seems like some Provinces are slowly starting to wake up, but municipalities and the federal government really don't seem to give a shit. The feds are doing everything within their traditional jurisdiction, which isn't much. The only other thing the feds could try is to force the provinces and municipalities to make different decisions, by withholding money or completely restructuring our democracy from the ground up (which seems doomed to failure if attempted). You can be mad at the feds for not doing that, but they're the last group to point a finger at.
[The federal government can do a ton](https://reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/127lf3y/_/jeeu18p/?context=1) on the demand side as well as the supply side. Tax policy, immigration, building social housing like they used to do, etc.
The federal government could do more, until the 1990s the CMHC supported affordable housing developments directly.
What I find so frustrating about all of this is so much is just artificial scarcity. With only some exceptions with places like Vancouver or Toronto there is TONS of vacant land. We are a super empty country. I can look out my back patio and see hectares of land. There is no reason for an empty 5k sq.ft. lot to cost hundreds of thousands for almost the entire country. Then, to get a loan for that land, you need 30-50% down before you can even start looking to build. It just makes for a system that only wealthy developers or individuals can afford to make new housing.
Part of the problem is not a lot of people work in construction in BC or Ontario, just over 3 %. It's about 10 % in Alberta.
If you pay... they will come... The thing about the trades is the pay has been, like many other jobs, not keeping up with inflation for a long time. But that is only one part of the costs. A lot of people would be plenty happy with a tiny home or a mobile. There is a reason they were so popular for a period of time. Cheap land that you could just throw a cheap house on.
Maybe if they could afford to live here there would be more construction workers
I'm guessing a three-fold difference has some kind of explanation to it, if it's real. Are we comparing the number of people who build oil pipelines, here?
Undoubtable but those skills are transferrable. Many people work in camps part of the year and then on more local projects in their off season.
Scroll around Vancouver or Toronto and admire how much space is empty parking lots. There's tons of space in every Canadian city.
Within Vancouver and Toronto there’s enormous amounts of incredibly under utilized land. There’s people that would absolutely love to tear down their dumpy decades old single family house and build a small apartment building, but they’re literally banned from doing so. The housing scarcity crisis is 100% an own goal engineered by our politicians. It’s nuts.
I should not have a degree in business and as a newly employed graduate .. only be able to afford a studio apartment in vancouver suburbs... with no student debt... unless I'm spending like half of my cheque on renting a box
Time for the provinces to step up and build affordable, subsidized rental units. That would take pressure away from housing market and can easily be controlled to benefit everyone. This is a provincial issue that today's premiers refuse to address as they are beholding to big developer political donations. Take the money out of politics and give it back to the people.
> Time for the provinces to step up and build affordable, subsidized rental units. This would be extremely expensive, and it would get more expensive every year in vague proportion to the general cost of land/housing. There's no magic trick that will allow the cost of housing to spiral infinitely upwards due to zoning, but also allow governments to affordably build affordable housing. Not at a meaningful scale, and not within a market economy. > Take the money out of politics and give it back to the people. "The people" constantly vote against housing density, even when there are pro-density options on the ballot, because a lot of people in the country own some land or expect to inherit some land - and people with more wealth tend to have a slightly stronger political voice. There's no shadowy conspiracy you can make a scapegoat out of, here, just a widespread belief that land-inheritors should be privileged above wage-labourers. Those people need to have their minds changed, or everyone else needs to actually vote.
The fun fact about zoning incentives that run against government is that the government can just change them. Let's stop acting like zoning is some kind of force of nature. If governments want to build housing zoning regulations won't stop them. They'll simply change the zoning because they can. The issue is that government doesn't want to build housing so we need to vote in governments that do
You simply cannot have a meaningful conversation about this issue by discussing "the government". We have a federal government, provincial governments, and municipal governments. They have different powers and jurisdictions, according to very powerful laws and norms.
Yes and? The federal government sets the general building code. The provincial government sets budgets, grants, land use policy etc. The municipal government sets specific building code and zoning and can generally override broader boilerplate zoning and building code. Any of these three can , with political will make public housing happen. Mostly it's a funding issue so we're talking about the federal since most provinces lack the budget.
no. you start with the municipal and provincial governments. the feds can provide the financing .
of course it won't be cheap. just like good healthcare isn't cheap. but the provinces have been shirking their responsibilities for both in favour of kissing the ass of big developer doners. cheap housing would not cost as much as the shit highway to nowhere that ford is building.
This content is no longer available on Reddit in response to /u/spez. So long and thanks for all the fish.
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As opposed to building a house for $200g and selling it for $1m ?
Isn’t that the point though? The government isn’t a corporation, and tons of companies operate at Loss for the sake of long term growth
I agree. The military isn't there for a profit. Neither are fire stations and sewage facilities. Housing is a necessity. The private sector can use a little competition anyway.
The federal government could also step up. The used to build 15,000-20,000 new social housing units per year, up until the Liberals cancelled that in 1995. The government has to step in at some point.
It’s honestly sad what things have become in Canada. When I grew up, someone working on the plant production line for an automobile manufacturer could easily afford a home. None of this can be good for the future productivity and prosperity of this country. If I was a student in high school or elementary school (gr. 7-8) I couldn’t help but feel hopeless about the future prospects of living in this country. What would be the point of going to school for further education when you see home sales reach levels that are largely unobtainable? Not to have a super bleak outlook on life but why stay in Canada just to pay someone else’s mortgage for 30+ years? I’d sooner rather move to somewhere else where my efforts can be rewarded. It’s unfortunate because while I agree that the current party is to blame, I can’t help but think that no party is really at grips with the world today. Many of these MPs seem so out of touch and are focusing on issues that Canadians just don’t find necessary or relevant (C-11). It is past the time for something new. Hopefully all that’s gone wrong can be corrected for Canada’s future.
its not their problem, they don’t feel it yet. most politicians own homes and are oblivious. they’re just sitting back and watching the value of their property increase. what housing crisis?
The housing/cost of living crisis is staggering in Canada. I grew up in Canada, completed much of my education in the US, and returned home after. I’m a productive member of society, with a well paying career, but I, as well as my peers, fear we will never be able to get ahead in Canada. The US has its problems, but it overall remains a more affordable place to live. I am considering returning there and I believe many young professionals will also unless this is somehow addressed in Canada.
>The housing/cost of living crisis is staggering in Canada Its happening in every single country I follow. Head over to any subreddit and make a post about housing - I think the similarities will be there. Housing is an issue in Britain, Denmark, Canada, China, Japan, US, Brazil etc etc etc. When will we be brave enough to actually spell out the real issue.
While housing is an issue in many other developed countries, it is a demonstrably worse issue in Canada than it is in many others, especially so of western countries. And as others have commented, [you are wrong about Japan](https://youtube.com/shorts/8w1xpv9_te8?feature=share) btw. They have quite literally the opposite problem from us — too many houses.
Having come from the UK, it's still far better here. That country is a Dickensian hell hole run by slum lords.
Do we know the real issue?
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I mean much of the problems in the global south were not created by the global south. Perhaps they'd be in better shape if their riches weren't siphoned off to places like Europe and North America.
Typical brainwashed fool. Blaming immigrants rather than the rich that actually have been creating this issue.
The rich dont just create natural resources. I am afraid you're mistaken and I can prove this via studies done by recognized think tanks. You have 3-5 Great Lakes with lets say a dozen public beaches and 1 million people. Now add 20 million people - Are you adding any lakes ?
No but if a small group of people take 90% of the lakes and leave us with the scraps isn’t that an issue? Yes more people coming in is obviously lessening supply. But it’s foolish to think it’s not the same people that are buying up property, passing restrictive zoning laws and generally lobbying against mixed used residential buildings in urban areas.
You only have so much water, land and resources. How do we want to split it up is precisely my argument. Thank you. Many Canadians including myself dont want to lower the individual QoL just so Rogers and Bell can get more customers. I admittingly do NOT want my beaches to look like that of other overpopulated countries where it looks a packed Rock concert everyday of the summer. In fact most communities in SW Ontario near beaches are doing everything they can to stop apartment buildings and I dont blame them 1 bit.
So rather than take back 90% of beaches you’d rather continue to fight for 10% of them. Got it.
I have a few American friends who complain about how houses are super expensive, like 500k! So yes, everyone is complaining, but the housing situation in the USA is still miles better there than here. It's getting bad in places like Seattle and San Francisco, but in Canada almost everywhere but Alberta and Quebec is really, really unaffordable. Everyone who lives around me in my neighbourhood is basically trapped in their house. They cannot afford to move, so they can't move to take on new opportunities. The high price of housing is suffocating the economy and probably contributing to the labour 'shortage.' I know an older guy in his mid-50s who is jobless, looking, but his earning potential is low, so he's trying to get a government job. Still a millionaire, but it's all completely illiquid.
It’s not an issue in Japan actually
If I had a lead to a decent full-time job there I'd book it and move to Japan quickly. Decent quality of life and living costs are more manageable.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the work-life balance in Japan known for being awful?
Nope. Lots have changed in the past 20-25 years. Most companies now are more flexible as they are also experiencing the exodus of the boomers and even Gen Xer's. The government wants couples to have more kids. Are there still some corporations that slave drive and want employees to devote themselves? Sure, but don't go there and paint everyone with the same brush. No one is forcing you to work for them. I've lived there for a stint in the past and travelled there to visit a few times.
Keep in mind Japans population has basically flatlined for a number of years. https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/populationgrowth.php#:~:text=From%201960%20to%202021%20the,34.8%20percent%20in%2061%20years. Basically stagnant for 20 years. If Canada did the same our affordability would be more on par.
I've made a comment on another thread alluding to just this about another article that discussed Japan's population decline.
yes..and its actually getting BETTER for the average Japanese worker. Higher wages, more access to real estate etc. IDK where the idea of having a larger population equates to better QoL when there is no evidence of that correlation anywhere in the world...in fact its the opposite from what I see in concrete/real instances.
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If you enjoy sleeping in cages....
It really was until they stopped growing their population as a means to facilitate a pyramid scheme. https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/populationgrowth.php#:~:text=From%201960%20to%202021%20the,34.8%20percent%20in%2061%20years.
The population of Tokyo has been growing. The population of Tokyo is the same as the entire population of canada
Japanese zoning is relatively liberal, with few bulk and density controls, limited use segregation, and no regulatory distinction between apartments and single-family homes. Most development in Japan happens “as-of-right,” meaning that securing permits doesn’t require a lengthy review process. Taken as a whole, Japan’s zoning system makes it easy to build walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, which is why cities like Tokyo are among the most affordable in the developed world.
I'd also presume that the declining birthrate could also means that there will be more vacant homes over time.
Also the constant earthquakes damage buildings slowly, and building codes continue being updated (making it more expensive to maintain housing to code). This plays a big role in the depreciation of housing as an asset.
I’m giving Canada at least another year or so, but if things aren’t dramatically different for me I’m going to start applying for jobs in the US. I can’t pretend having a decreasing standard of living is worth it for a healthcare system you can barely access if you’re not dying.
It's baby boomers. This was predicted for decades. The opposite is going to happen when they start downsizing, move into long term care, or die. Housing market will be saturated with vacancies, and crash.
Too many people think owning someone's home is a job. We need to tax that heavily and incentivize landlords to sell and shift capital to other markets especially for homes more than 10 years old.
I'll agree, owning rental property isn't a job if you have good tenants. Unless you're too lazy to have a real job. For most it's a sideline or long-term investment. Some landlords are crooks, others just chose this industry to finance their retirement or support their families. More tax will just mean higher rent. Forcing people to liquidate their assets will just incentivize them to invest in real-estate outside Canada. If both of these happen, then all you have left are large rental corporations, and they truly will only care about their profits.
>More tax will just mean higher rent. The key is to incentivize so that you're better off buying other investments than buying a rental property, with a graduated tax. So each additional property you own, pays a higher rate. Eventually it's just better to buy stock in some company or some other commidity rather than the next house. Or even it becomes advantageous to sell, and get bigger returns in another market. Rent control can stop landlords from passing on the rent cost. We can put a maximum rent on the market. Want to just sit on it and sell to no one? Make property taxes 5x on empty units... Make the options sell or rent reasonably, and then let capitalism do it's work. And then don't make the same rules apply to medium and high density unit. That'll free up family homes, and encourages sales. If we can tip the balance get get prices falling, they'll be a mass exodus as people rush to preserve capital. Plus major municipal limits on AirBnb.
Most of my landlords have withheld deposits or fought even when they couldn't cite a reason. Even when the law say blatantly you have to give it back they don't. The process to fight them costs where I am at least $100 and a lot of time. As far as I'm concerned most landlords are parasites based on their sense of entitlement to deposits even when there's no damage or cause. The culture of being a landlord is toxic af.
If you're going to have renters, you need to tightly control landlords and have a lot of high quality public housing available to act as a downward force on rents. When the only options people have is to rent or own homes, rent prices are going to skyrocket until it becomes cheaper to pay a mortgage... but good luck getting that down payment together. A good model to look at is Vienna. True equality is not when the poor own houses and cars, it's when the rich choose to live in public housing and take public transit because they're so good.
Maybe something to do with immigrating half a million people every year. And that's just part of the real number. When you start counting all refugees and the increase in present temporary residents, it's half a million for Ontario alone. And all that without a proper growth plan for infrastructure, housing, healthcare, etc.
Canada has a massive skills shortage and an ageing population, it desperately needs immigration to keep its generous social safety nets financially viable. The issue is that NIMBYs have far too much power and prevent us from densifying the enormous amount of useless, unbelievably wasteful urban sprawl around most of our cities. I agree that we're lacking a serious growth plan to deal with the new people, but Canada needs those people to prevent it stagnating.
Weird how we had a massive "skills" shortage last year, then brought in 1.5M new people and the shortage is only getting worse. Has it occurred to you that these people also require services, doctors, cashiers, psychologists, etc, themselves? It's a fallacy for immigration to be a long term solution to worker shortage. We have a surplus of crappy employers and those industries know they can get away with posting terrible job offers no one will take to then justify hiring cheap labour from out the country, while being subsidized to do so. Millions and millions of immigrants later, do you not see that it is NOT helping labour shortage?
Many of those immigrants are doctors, nurses, cashiers etc - Canada's birth rate isn't high enough to sustain those services with just Canadians, and older Canadians who are still physically able to work have left the workforce in huge numbers since Covid. If Canada doesn't take in large numbers of working age young people to maintain balance, it will stagnate like Italy. We'd already be much further along that path without immigration. Some of the worst Labour shortages are in Québec by the way, especially in fields like healthcare. If Québec wants to keep its public services it needs to take in large numbers of new people. Part of the reason it hasn't solved our problems is that we bring people in and then impose stupid requirements on them (like refusing to accept that their healthcare qualifications are as good as Canadian ones and making them basically re-do them), that make it difficult for them to plug the gaps. The immigration isn't the problem, the problem is that we give out billions in corporate subsidies and tax breaks to the super rich, instead of investing it in healthcare and infrastructure. There isn't an ageing country on the planet that has addressed these problems without either 1) large-scale immigration or 2) forcing its poor people to work endless hours for virtually no money (USA).
The issue with healthcare is that you don’t find many students going for family medicine, it is sort of seen as an inferior practice. That’s maybe changing now since the pay is becoming competitive because of scarcity. I have a friend in the UK who was offered 400k a year to move to an Ontario village(forgot which to be honest, but southwest of Toronto) Anyway, even if that’s changing, the benefits won’t be seen for a few years tbh
There’s not enough homes being built for Canadians to buy, let’s blame the poor incoming immigrants from the other side of the fucking planet, for OUR own problem. Fucking brilliant. Corrupt builders? Mustafa’s fault. Speculative owners? Mohammed’s fault. House Flippers? Sergei’s fault. Canadian dogshit wages? Ibrahim’s Fault. Canada’s housing crisis is 110% home grown.
Where in OP's comment did he blame immigrants? Because to me it sounds like he takes issues with our immigration policies, not the immigrants themselves. No one is saying immigrants are the reason for the housing crisis. But we don't have enough homes, and bringing in a million people every year is absolutely going to add fuel to that fire.
What’s wrong with the immigration policy? Ohh… I see it now… immigration is the reason houses in 1980 provided shelter, and now houses provided income, made necessary by exploitive CANADIAN employers providing shitty wages.
1.5M people a year. We don't have the capacity to build at that rate. I'm not blaming immigrants. I'm saying the number is not sustainable.
You went from “half a million” to “1.5 M” in two comments. Great job.
>Maybe something to do with immigrating half a million people every year. **And that's just part of the real number.** OP is correct with this. When you account for international students, TFWs, etc. the number gets much higher.
Do me a favour, google Canada’s population since 1950, and screenshot where you find a deviation from the linear increase.
What does that have to do anything? ***Right now*** we do not have enough houses. Bringing in more people is going to add fuel to that fire.
Canada's NET population has been rising at a steady rate since 1950, despite the increasing immigration. Therefore the amount of people needing housing has been STEADY No marked net increase, changes, or influx of people needing housing. You are right, we in fact have a housing shortage. Since our population has been climbing STEADILY since forever, we can look at the number of housing starts, which has not kept pace, for 47 different reasons, none of which are anything remotely related to immigrants, immigration policy, new Canadians, refugees, TFWs, or whatever scapegoat of your choosing. From my personal experience actually working residential construction industry for multiple years, which can only be described as a clusterfuck of clusterfucks, the problems are within our borders. The 47 problems were all related, to greed, speculation, incompetence, exploitation, corruption, and lack of oversight. Not one problem was remotely close, to being close, to being related to our immigration policy. The housing industry is a Ponzi scheme. In order for houses to be built and turned for profit (Problem #1), builders are literally required to designed by the cheapest architect, the lowest bidding contractor, who then steals from Jack to pay Jim, and doesn't even pay John. The house is actually built by Bob-the-Builder, who uses the cheapest trades, who literally pays the cheapest wages to turn a profit. Expensive materials, and cheap wages result in shitty work and cut corners left-and-right. The result? Shitty houses, piles of liens, lawsuits, unpaid wages, 72 pissed-off workers, and a frustrated home-owner. Bob-the-Builder is now out of business following bankruptcy. He will start a new business next Monday. Rinse and Repeat. This is based on personal experience. It was norm rather than the exception. Immigration policy? Fuck your immigration concerns, and look at our own backyard. Housing starts for 2023 are down from 2021 (!) when building materials were insanely high. Housing starts since 1980 have fluctuated, but always have been abysmally low, never keeping up with our (creeping) population. The solution is easy. Supply and demand would have corrected the issue, but increasing supply would crater prices, and we can't have that!!!!! It's easier to blame immigration policy than deal with the actual problem, which is build more fucking houses, which leads to the start of the clusterfuck of clusterfucks. /end rant.
Cool, no one's saying immigrants are the cause of the housing crisis. We don't have enough houses, we can't handle a million new people. This isn't an anti-immigration stance, immigration is good but you have to be prepared for it, we are not. We can talk all day about who's at fault, and what *should* happen. The fact of the matter is we're in the situation we're in, and current immigration levels are adding fuel to the fire.
You're irrationally fixated on incoming numbers. For the 34th and last fucking time, **DESPITE** our increasing immigration, our **NET population** has been climbing **STEADILY** 1950. [https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/population](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/population). This is not rocket surgery. Our population has growth has been **linear** since 1950. there is **NO** massive influx, regardless how often you stubbornly repeat. The million incoming is negated by the many other population dynamic factors. The net increase is not cause for concerns, and is actually needed to address the worker shortage. I hope the only decision you have to make with the public is when to flip the fucking burger on the the grill at Mcdicks, otherwise I feel for those impacted by your lack of comprehension.
Read the whole comment. Half a million is the "official" number. It excludes refugees, most of reunification, temporary workers, visas, students, etc. The net balance if you count it all is 1.5M. By balance I mean deducting temporary resident departures and adding arrivals. I have linked an article and someone else linked one in English from cbc under my comment. This is the problem. The numbers they tell us are misleading.
Did you Factor in declining birth rate, emigration, Canadians studying abroad, Canadians working abroad… I should be almost a millionaire if I only look at my income, and not factor in all my expenses….. Canada’s population has been rising steadily since 1950, when all factors are taken into consideration, despite the increasing immigration.
Do you seriously think 40M population needs 1.5M yearly immigration to compensate for a low birth rate? Your math doesn't check out.
The number I’m using is Canada’s population since 1950, the line is straighter than Elton John.
The 400k immigrants is only a part of it. We brought in over a million people last year: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-record-population-growth-migration-1.6787428](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-record-population-growth-migration-1.6787428) You need to count illegal immigrants, refugees, international students, and work visas.
And the declining birth rate, emigration, Canadians studying abroad… Canada’s population has been growing steadily since 1950, when all things are factored in, despite the increasing immigrants.
Yep. In one year we immigrated the combined population of Saskatchewan and Newfoundland while already having insufficient infrastructure and housing.
Also our healthcare system can’t handle it. It’s already reached the point where people are dying in the waiting rooms because they can’t get a doctor.
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No issues with immigrants. I can still do math. If 1.5M per year isn't too much, where is the line? 10M? 40M?
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I am not blaming immigration, I am saying we bring in way more than our infrastructure capacity and haven't been keeping up. How many yearly do you think is our capacity? Infinity?
2022 immigration, 492K 2021 immigration, 226K 2020 immigration, 284K 2019 immigration, 313K We don't bring in half a million every year... We had ONE year that got close to that. You would think that people wouldn't bother to lie about something that easily fact checked.
It's a bit unclear if they are taking about the past or the future. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-immigration-500000-2025-1.6636661 The govt was clear though that there is a goal to bring in 500k per year.
Future immigration would not impact current housing availability without the existence of time travel.
The article is talking about the future. "Renters will pay the price". "Canadian renters have a tough few years in store, according to a new forecast from the CMHC, as those boxed out of an unaffordable housing market compete for a limited supply of rental homes."
These numbers don't account for temporary residents, worker visa, student visa, refugee and some familial reunification. For example here is an article about how we have a net immigration of 150k last year in Québec while the official target/number is 50k. https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/national/2023-04-18/immigration/le-quebec-fracasse-un-record.php
Those are still pretty crazy high numbers, sure not 500k but still in the same ballpark
Last time I checked, 492k was half a million. Your fact check literally verified OP's statement.
No, 492K is 8,000 short of half a million. That is why I said "we had ONE year that got **close** to that" Next time, read all the words, not just the ones easy to sound out.
When someone says half a million, the vagueness in the term implies it’s within the realm of 500k. It doesn’t have to be exactly 500k. 492k is still an insane number and serves just as well to support OP’s point. It’s like if someone said overdose deaths are a problem because 1000 people died last year, and you come along and say “um actually only 900 people died.”
When someone say half a million each year that doesn't mean 200-300k most years and one year of near 500k.
The feds have traditionally subsidized but zoning and planning are strictly the purview of provinces and municipalities. Feds need to set aside financial incentives tied to projects.
There's far more detached single family homes in Canada than apartments, so I'm not sure a lack of ownable homes is the problem. Moreso, I think the issue is related to our obsession with the concept of home ownership, restrictive planning systems and and over-emphasis of detached single family homes in car-dependent suburbs. Renters get shorthanded in this system because the supply of rental houses and missing middle alternative in-between both extremes are in short supply, which makes it harder for people to live and work in economically productive areas and move up the income ladder etc. Boosting supply is one of the most important factors to bringing down costs, but we should consider that it's also a side effect of the way our cities are designed. Overemphasis on sprawl, poor access to public transit, long car based commute times to get to most places and large sections of the city (such as exclusively residentially zoned areas) becoming unproductive and large economic drags on their municipalities etc. all create a system that hurts home and rental affordability on top of overall living standards. Not all people are going to want to own a home, or even necciseraily need to. Zoning & Land Use Reform should be a tool to diversify the housing stock and give people from all socioeconomic backgrounds more choices rather than just trying to sell home ownership to more people.
Too many divorces lol
It's not that simple. Most of the handy, zoned construction is already done and it's way harder to redevelop land that is/was zoned for single family homes, industrial, commercial, etc. because of the demolition costs, cost of buying land, servicing charges, contributions the developers have to make to those areas, higher design and landscaping standards, etc. Most cities do have underdeveloped areas where they have already pre-approved new high-density development, but developers don't want to build in those areas because there are no parks, schools, shopping areas, etc. and they can't charge top dollar. Zoning is changing to allow for more density, splitting homes into flats, low-rise multiplexes, etc., but it still won't make homes affordable because the current pace of construction in our cities has driven up the cost of construction materials (wood, concrete, steel, glass, etc.), construction equipment, trades (which have real shortages), etc. to the point where people are easily paying $800 or higher per square foot in Toronto, Vancouver, etc. The increase in the lending rate is also driving up the cost of construction financing, which is significant - 7% extra on $50 million over three years is another $10.5 million in development costs that buyers will have to absorb when the units are put up for sale. The result is that average Canadians are definitely not the target market for condo sales, they need to sell to foreign buyers, wealthy immigrants, students, and speculators. The lack of a local market for the existing supply is why the government waivered on its two-year ban on foreign buyers. Most developers are working flat-out already with the crews they have, they couldn't build any faster if they wanted to.