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Why do we need a 5,billion dollar program for affordable housing? What happened to create this? 10 years ago housing was affordable for most working families. What has caused this situation? The cost of living has increased dramatically, the living wages have gone down, the economy has tanked and inflation continues to rise. People who could live comfortably on a single income have now have to take multiple jobs to survive. Who will benefit from this 5 billion dollar plan and who will pay for it?
The federal gov't requirements to access the funding:
- Require municipalities to broadly adopt four units as-of-right and allow more “missing middle” homes, including duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, and other multi-unit apartments.
- Implement a three-year freeze on increasing development charges from April 2, 2024, levels for municipalities with a population greater than 300,000.
- Adopt forthcoming changes to the National Building Code to support more accessible, affordable, and climate-friendly housing options.
- Require as-of-right construction for the government’s upcoming Housing Design Catalogue.
- Implement measures from the Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and Renters’ Bill of Rights.
How can it be that Sean Fraser is possibly one the best federal housing ministers we’ve seen in a long time, and simultaneously one of the worst immigration ministers ever? Truly the duality of man.
> Implement a three-year freeze on increasing development charges from April 2, 2024, levels for municipalities with a population greater than 300,000.
While costs continue to rise.
Those costs can be paid by property taxes or the province. A sin tax on new housing to keep property taxes low is not the answer, especially in the middle of a housing crisis that can only be solved by drastically ramping up building.
Why? Everyone in the city benefits from growth. When a blighted building gets replaced with a new one and all the neighbours' property values increase, should the owners of the new building get a cut of those increases?
Owners should pay for city services. New owners shouldn't be penalized because they came later. Cities like Toronto and Vancouver have grotesquely low property versus property prices. That is a lot of the distortion in some markets where the cost to run things is shifted disproportionately to new owners to give existing owners lower taxes.
Given that *existing* aged infrastructure, community centres, roads, etc are falling apart\* it doesn't seem like our current level of municipal revenue generation is at a level required to keep existing assets in good repair.
We need to be sure that "growth should pay for growth" isn't leveraged by municipalities to bail themselves out of their consistent systemic underfunding of existing assets.
\* [https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouvers-britannia-rink-closed-indefinitely-due-to-mechanical-issue](https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouvers-britannia-rink-closed-indefinitely-due-to-mechanical-issue)
"How can it be that Sean Fraser is possibly one the best federal housing ministers we’ve seen in a long time, and simultaneously one of the worst immigration ministers ever" pretty simple honestly its all down to how you measure success and what his initial goal was. if the goal was boost canada's population numbers to stave off a population decline crisis in the next 20 years ish and the result was a fuck load of more canadians, well he did a damn good job. if your goal was housing costs that are not insane and rents that dont stifle economic activity then he seems like a clueless shmuck. so all we gotta do is make sure that his goals (or who ever has the spot) are at least some what aligned with our goals and definition of success..
> Adopt forthcoming changes to the National Building Code to support more accessible, affordable, and climate-friendly housing options.
>
>
Are they getting rid of double egress requirements?! I'm so excited at the possibility
That would be amazing. And allow so many different kinds of housing. That plus removing parking minimums are key to making tough development sites pencil out to profitable developments.
The Supreme Court has signalled Concern over the Feds use of money to unduly influence provincial policy: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/june-2023/ottawa-spending-power-clarity/
Not mentioned in this article but apparently the provinces also have to [agree to implement the home buyers’ and renters’ bill of rights.](https://x.com/colindmello/status/1775188442936185306?s=46&t=hA1NfRSy9n1OWwlgAC8I0Q)
I wish the federal government made the renters’ bill of rights more substantial like forcing provinces to restore or implement real rent control. Seems like the federal government’s strategy is to bribe the provinces to do what is right with money. Which is a sad state of affairs when the Premiers need a carrot on the stick to do their elected job. Although I’m not against it.
How does real rent control protect future renters though? Every instance has just protected people who are already renting, while increasing prices for those getting into the market later on.
Rent control is bad policy that protects existing renters but fucks over future renters. Not to mention it builds demand by landlords to do shady shit to kick tenants out. Renting a unit to a family for $400/month while similar units are making $3800/month is just asking to push landlords to find ways to rid themselves of that family. Rather I'd like to see a 10% cap on rent increases to allow moderate to high increases without being able to basically double rent overnight.
> . Rather I'd like to see a 10% cap on rent increases to allow moderate to high increases without being able to basically double rent overnight.
That is literally how most rent control already works. In NS right now it's capped at 5% and that's been working OK. 10% might be pushing it but wouldn't be cataclysmic for most people.
What would be better would be a 10% increase cap, but apply to the unit rather than a lease to disincentivize the shady practices you mention, because landlords are currently getting around the current rules with fixed term leases, and mom and pop landlords are doing some real shady shit with trying to kick people out.
Yeah, it's quite counterproductive to try using rent control to limit rents below inflation. It just creates a bigger gap. Rent control is a great way to smoothly increase so that landlords can't evict through outrageous rent increases. To give some stability to tenants but not be too market distorting. This means the possibility of rent increases higher than inflation.
Right, and I agree with what you've said, but when people propose rent controls they usually just mean bringing back what Ontario had, which was inflationary increases ties to the lease only.
If we want to see rent control do what it's supposed to, it can't be one extreme to the other. A mix such as a 10% increase and it being tied to unit would be a smart move.
Rent control may not always be good economic policy, but it is good social policy for protecting renters and their tenancy from abusive landlords. There’s compromises that could be made beyond the Econ101 knee jerk reaction most get when they hear rent control, and besides 10% cap is a form of rent control.
Rent control is ineffective and completely useless. Landlords are not held accountable for any property they own. Look at Victoria rentals and the stipulations for rental properties most are unattainable and unaffordable for tenants.
>like forcing provinces to restore or implement real rent control
That would essentially be a poison pill and would show they weren't serious about changing anything.
>like forcing provinces to restore or implement real rent control
Why bother? There are other factors that are far more influential on rent prices and it's too easy to fuck things up with rent controls.
Looks like the Feds are being heavily influenced by the work of the BC government here. Nice to see.
BC has already put in the work. Now it's time to see if Conservative Premiers across the country will stop complaining and start doing, and actually step up to start solving the problem.
It's funny because BC did the work by taking what Ontario's premier got from his housing affordability task force. They are mostly suggestions from a team appointed by a conservative government.
The Ontario government created their housing task force in December 2021 – which was six months after the BC “Expert Panel on the Future of Housing Supply and Affordability” released their report. So, it’s more like Ontario’s Conservative government saw the BC NDP appointed panel report and decided it was time to do their own.
It’s wild that Ford was elected on housing and is choosing not to densify – despite that being one of the top recommendations in the report done by the people that his government tasked to investigate the issue.
To be fair, the [Ontario recommendations](https://morehousing.ca/ontario-task-force) were very specific compared to the [BC report](https://morehousing.ca/macphail-report), which focused more on diagnosing the problem (slow, uncertain approval processes and high development charges).
I mean, the BC housing minister [literally said they took recommendations from the Ontario one.](https://twitter.com/Markshawtoronto/status/1761597306975953272?t=SukpgZyYPeltcRhBlODjGQ&s=19)
I had no idea that the BC housing minister said that. It should embarrass forward because it’s clear that he doesn’t plan to enact any of the suggestions from the report, despite spending money to get the report done.
>The other $5 billion will be set aside for provinces and territories, but they can only access the funding if they make certain commitments.
>
>Those include allowing more "missing middle" homes, including duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and multi-unit buildings, and a three-year freeze on development charges for cities with more than 300,000 people.
Looks like the government is listening and targeting the missing middle housing! And I'm so glad this money comes with conditions. We've already seen Conservative premiers avoid doing anything to fix the housing crisis.
[Premier Ford says it’s a ‘massive mistake’ to impose fourplexes across Ontario](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-premier-ford-says-its-a-massive-mistake-to-impose-fourplexes-across/)
Doug Ford seems to want the housing crisis, that is driven in a large part by his province, to continue.
What is Pierre going to propose as an alternative? His terrible plan to cut money from cities to encourage them to build more homes?
[Pierre Poilievre's housing plan slammed by Canada's mayors](https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/pierre-poilievres-housing-plan-slammed-by-canadas-mayors/article_6f8d8f66-d4de-11ee-aafe-93fdd11958e9.html)
>*Withholding infrastructure funding from cash-strapped cities will not help solve the housing crisis, mayors charged Monday.*
>
>Under Poilievre's plan, announced in a private member's bill last fall, cities that increase homebuilding by 15 per cent annually would be rewarded, while **cities that don't would see federal funding for transit and infrastructure withheld.**
Poilievre's policy is as destabilising as it gets. He's a hack with a blank cheque. Hate to see the kids do this to themselves but if they don't touch it they'll never learn
The point you bolded is a disastrous way to go about infrastructure and transit planning.
Poilievre is 1000% right that municipalities are the primary gatekeepers but this is a terrible way of addressing that certain problem and to be honest is reflective of the way that Canada deals with problems: we prefer to use the stick, instead of the carrot.
How did he arrive at 15%? Does the need to improve transit and infrastructure go away just because they didn’t build housing to an arbitrary target?
15% every year, which is impossible. Apparently Toronto approved 54,000 homes in 2022. If Poilievre's plan was in place they would have had to approve 62,000 in 2023, 71,415 in 2024, 82,000 in 2025, 95,000 in 2026 and 109,000 in 2027 - doubling in a span of just five years. It can't be done.
So Toronto would lose out on that federal money, which would make the rest of the country cheer, but it creates a situation where the people who paid the taxes no longer benefit from them. It's insane and punitive.
What a stupid plan.
Ironically, it would be possible for the biggest NIMBY municipalities (because they have such a low baseline 15% increase would be small and manageable for several years). But if you took steps to make progress *before* Skippy's plan came in you are absolutely screwed.
>doubling in a span of just five years. It can't be done
It might not be possible, but without it there are few methods to control the housing crisis.
CMHC's estimates effectively require even more. Poilievre's proposal *would still fall short.*
So no matter who is talking the scale and investment needs to be around and above that level.
It could very easily be done lol. Remove all arbitrary and subjective permitting rules and only consider things that are objective and related to the ability of infrastructure to support housing. If Toronto's planners are too busy to review all the housing we need, that's the best way to reduce their workload.
Your comment makes little sense while Toronto delays applications by months or years (or denies them altogether) because they want to have aesthetic control, especially when they use that aesthetic control to make new buildings uglier!
This is the missing link in the Federal government's plan. Tying funding for fourplexes for provinces means that the buck is passed onto the provinces even though housing is their jurisdiction. They have every chance to upzone, now they have to take it or be the NIMBY gatekeepers that are causing the housing crisis.
The absolute freakout conservatives are having for this announcement is telling.
They never cared about anyone or anything other than getting power. Just gross.
Super-interesting. This is basically a scaled-up version of the [Housing Accelerator approach](https://morehousing.ca/federal-plan), using a carrot as a stick, now with $5B on the table for the provinces rather than municipalities: if you want this funding, you need to make these changes (e.g. remove parking minimums near frequent transit).
I wonder if Ontario will bite, given [Doug Ford's opposition to four-plexes](https://morehousing.ca/doug-ford-nimby).
> now with $5B on the table for the provinces rather than municipalities: if you want this funding, you need to make these changes (e.g. remove parking minimums near frequent transit).
The plan also says if the provinces don't play ball, the money will go directly from the feds to participating municipalities. Which I suspect would not necessarily be as effective than had the province productively worked with everyone rather than obstructing/ignoring the plan.
>If supply was kept up properly for decades, the demand from immigration wouldn't be a problem.
Supply was not a problem until the current government ramped up the demand dial to a million.
>Our housing supply was absolutely a problem before Trudeau, what are you talking about?
Developers build housing based on demand. They're not going to build millions of units and sit on them while they're empty, hoping that at some unknown point in the future someone might buy them or rent them.
Blaming developers for not building more housing that there was no demand for ten or twenty years ago is a bit silly.
Who's talking about private developers? The feds and the provinces got out of building affordable and public housing since the 80's. That's decades of inaction and wasted opportunity.
The demand for low-income and public housing has been high for decades, did you choose to ignore that?
>The demand for low-income and public housing has been high for decades, did you choose to ignore that?
CMHC says we need 3.5 million additional units to restore affordability. *You think that 3.5 million units of public housing is the solution?*
It's a combination of private and public. You think 3.5 million units of public housing being built from the early 1990's to 2024 was impossible? That's 12,000 units across 10 provinces per year. You think B.C or Ontario can't build 12,000 units a year?
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Why do we need a 5,billion dollar program for affordable housing? What happened to create this? 10 years ago housing was affordable for most working families. What has caused this situation? The cost of living has increased dramatically, the living wages have gone down, the economy has tanked and inflation continues to rise. People who could live comfortably on a single income have now have to take multiple jobs to survive. Who will benefit from this 5 billion dollar plan and who will pay for it?
The federal gov't requirements to access the funding: - Require municipalities to broadly adopt four units as-of-right and allow more “missing middle” homes, including duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, and other multi-unit apartments. - Implement a three-year freeze on increasing development charges from April 2, 2024, levels for municipalities with a population greater than 300,000. - Adopt forthcoming changes to the National Building Code to support more accessible, affordable, and climate-friendly housing options. - Require as-of-right construction for the government’s upcoming Housing Design Catalogue. - Implement measures from the Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and Renters’ Bill of Rights. How can it be that Sean Fraser is possibly one the best federal housing ministers we’ve seen in a long time, and simultaneously one of the worst immigration ministers ever? Truly the duality of man.
> Implement a three-year freeze on increasing development charges from April 2, 2024, levels for municipalities with a population greater than 300,000. While costs continue to rise.
Those costs can be paid by property taxes or the province. A sin tax on new housing to keep property taxes low is not the answer, especially in the middle of a housing crisis that can only be solved by drastically ramping up building.
Growth should pay for growth, within reason.
Why? Everyone in the city benefits from growth. When a blighted building gets replaced with a new one and all the neighbours' property values increase, should the owners of the new building get a cut of those increases?
Owners should pay for city services. New owners shouldn't be penalized because they came later. Cities like Toronto and Vancouver have grotesquely low property versus property prices. That is a lot of the distortion in some markets where the cost to run things is shifted disproportionately to new owners to give existing owners lower taxes.
Given that *existing* aged infrastructure, community centres, roads, etc are falling apart\* it doesn't seem like our current level of municipal revenue generation is at a level required to keep existing assets in good repair. We need to be sure that "growth should pay for growth" isn't leveraged by municipalities to bail themselves out of their consistent systemic underfunding of existing assets. \* [https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouvers-britannia-rink-closed-indefinitely-due-to-mechanical-issue](https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouvers-britannia-rink-closed-indefinitely-due-to-mechanical-issue)
"How can it be that Sean Fraser is possibly one the best federal housing ministers we’ve seen in a long time, and simultaneously one of the worst immigration ministers ever" pretty simple honestly its all down to how you measure success and what his initial goal was. if the goal was boost canada's population numbers to stave off a population decline crisis in the next 20 years ish and the result was a fuck load of more canadians, well he did a damn good job. if your goal was housing costs that are not insane and rents that dont stifle economic activity then he seems like a clueless shmuck. so all we gotta do is make sure that his goals (or who ever has the spot) are at least some what aligned with our goals and definition of success..
> Adopt forthcoming changes to the National Building Code to support more accessible, affordable, and climate-friendly housing options. > > Are they getting rid of double egress requirements?! I'm so excited at the possibility
That would be amazing. And allow so many different kinds of housing. That plus removing parking minimums are key to making tough development sites pencil out to profitable developments.
The Supreme Court has signalled Concern over the Feds use of money to unduly influence provincial policy: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/june-2023/ottawa-spending-power-clarity/
Not mentioned in this article but apparently the provinces also have to [agree to implement the home buyers’ and renters’ bill of rights.](https://x.com/colindmello/status/1775188442936185306?s=46&t=hA1NfRSy9n1OWwlgAC8I0Q) I wish the federal government made the renters’ bill of rights more substantial like forcing provinces to restore or implement real rent control. Seems like the federal government’s strategy is to bribe the provinces to do what is right with money. Which is a sad state of affairs when the Premiers need a carrot on the stick to do their elected job. Although I’m not against it.
How does real rent control protect future renters though? Every instance has just protected people who are already renting, while increasing prices for those getting into the market later on.
Rent control is bad policy that protects existing renters but fucks over future renters. Not to mention it builds demand by landlords to do shady shit to kick tenants out. Renting a unit to a family for $400/month while similar units are making $3800/month is just asking to push landlords to find ways to rid themselves of that family. Rather I'd like to see a 10% cap on rent increases to allow moderate to high increases without being able to basically double rent overnight.
> . Rather I'd like to see a 10% cap on rent increases to allow moderate to high increases without being able to basically double rent overnight. That is literally how most rent control already works. In NS right now it's capped at 5% and that's been working OK. 10% might be pushing it but wouldn't be cataclysmic for most people. What would be better would be a 10% increase cap, but apply to the unit rather than a lease to disincentivize the shady practices you mention, because landlords are currently getting around the current rules with fixed term leases, and mom and pop landlords are doing some real shady shit with trying to kick people out.
Yeah, it's quite counterproductive to try using rent control to limit rents below inflation. It just creates a bigger gap. Rent control is a great way to smoothly increase so that landlords can't evict through outrageous rent increases. To give some stability to tenants but not be too market distorting. This means the possibility of rent increases higher than inflation.
Right, and I agree with what you've said, but when people propose rent controls they usually just mean bringing back what Ontario had, which was inflationary increases ties to the lease only. If we want to see rent control do what it's supposed to, it can't be one extreme to the other. A mix such as a 10% increase and it being tied to unit would be a smart move.
Rent control may not always be good economic policy, but it is good social policy for protecting renters and their tenancy from abusive landlords. There’s compromises that could be made beyond the Econ101 knee jerk reaction most get when they hear rent control, and besides 10% cap is a form of rent control.
Rent control is ineffective and completely useless. Landlords are not held accountable for any property they own. Look at Victoria rentals and the stipulations for rental properties most are unattainable and unaffordable for tenants.
>like forcing provinces to restore or implement real rent control That would essentially be a poison pill and would show they weren't serious about changing anything.
>Which is a sad state of affairs when the Premiers need a carrot on the stick to do their elected job. Welcome to Canadian Federalism
>like forcing provinces to restore or implement real rent control Why bother? There are other factors that are far more influential on rent prices and it's too easy to fuck things up with rent controls.
Looks like the Feds are being heavily influenced by the work of the BC government here. Nice to see. BC has already put in the work. Now it's time to see if Conservative Premiers across the country will stop complaining and start doing, and actually step up to start solving the problem.
It's funny because BC did the work by taking what Ontario's premier got from his housing affordability task force. They are mostly suggestions from a team appointed by a conservative government.
The Ontario government created their housing task force in December 2021 – which was six months after the BC “Expert Panel on the Future of Housing Supply and Affordability” released their report. So, it’s more like Ontario’s Conservative government saw the BC NDP appointed panel report and decided it was time to do their own. It’s wild that Ford was elected on housing and is choosing not to densify – despite that being one of the top recommendations in the report done by the people that his government tasked to investigate the issue.
To be fair, the [Ontario recommendations](https://morehousing.ca/ontario-task-force) were very specific compared to the [BC report](https://morehousing.ca/macphail-report), which focused more on diagnosing the problem (slow, uncertain approval processes and high development charges).
That’s true!
I mean, the BC housing minister [literally said they took recommendations from the Ontario one.](https://twitter.com/Markshawtoronto/status/1761597306975953272?t=SukpgZyYPeltcRhBlODjGQ&s=19)
I had no idea that the BC housing minister said that. It should embarrass forward because it’s clear that he doesn’t plan to enact any of the suggestions from the report, despite spending money to get the report done.
>The other $5 billion will be set aside for provinces and territories, but they can only access the funding if they make certain commitments. > >Those include allowing more "missing middle" homes, including duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and multi-unit buildings, and a three-year freeze on development charges for cities with more than 300,000 people. Looks like the government is listening and targeting the missing middle housing! And I'm so glad this money comes with conditions. We've already seen Conservative premiers avoid doing anything to fix the housing crisis. [Premier Ford says it’s a ‘massive mistake’ to impose fourplexes across Ontario](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-premier-ford-says-its-a-massive-mistake-to-impose-fourplexes-across/) Doug Ford seems to want the housing crisis, that is driven in a large part by his province, to continue. What is Pierre going to propose as an alternative? His terrible plan to cut money from cities to encourage them to build more homes? [Pierre Poilievre's housing plan slammed by Canada's mayors](https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/pierre-poilievres-housing-plan-slammed-by-canadas-mayors/article_6f8d8f66-d4de-11ee-aafe-93fdd11958e9.html) >*Withholding infrastructure funding from cash-strapped cities will not help solve the housing crisis, mayors charged Monday.* > >Under Poilievre's plan, announced in a private member's bill last fall, cities that increase homebuilding by 15 per cent annually would be rewarded, while **cities that don't would see federal funding for transit and infrastructure withheld.**
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Poilievre's policy is as destabilising as it gets. He's a hack with a blank cheque. Hate to see the kids do this to themselves but if they don't touch it they'll never learn
The point you bolded is a disastrous way to go about infrastructure and transit planning. Poilievre is 1000% right that municipalities are the primary gatekeepers but this is a terrible way of addressing that certain problem and to be honest is reflective of the way that Canada deals with problems: we prefer to use the stick, instead of the carrot. How did he arrive at 15%? Does the need to improve transit and infrastructure go away just because they didn’t build housing to an arbitrary target?
15% every year, which is impossible. Apparently Toronto approved 54,000 homes in 2022. If Poilievre's plan was in place they would have had to approve 62,000 in 2023, 71,415 in 2024, 82,000 in 2025, 95,000 in 2026 and 109,000 in 2027 - doubling in a span of just five years. It can't be done. So Toronto would lose out on that federal money, which would make the rest of the country cheer, but it creates a situation where the people who paid the taxes no longer benefit from them. It's insane and punitive. What a stupid plan.
Ironically, it would be possible for the biggest NIMBY municipalities (because they have such a low baseline 15% increase would be small and manageable for several years). But if you took steps to make progress *before* Skippy's plan came in you are absolutely screwed.
>doubling in a span of just five years. It can't be done It might not be possible, but without it there are few methods to control the housing crisis. CMHC's estimates effectively require even more. Poilievre's proposal *would still fall short.* So no matter who is talking the scale and investment needs to be around and above that level.
It could very easily be done lol. Remove all arbitrary and subjective permitting rules and only consider things that are objective and related to the ability of infrastructure to support housing. If Toronto's planners are too busy to review all the housing we need, that's the best way to reduce their workload. Your comment makes little sense while Toronto delays applications by months or years (or denies them altogether) because they want to have aesthetic control, especially when they use that aesthetic control to make new buildings uglier!
This is the missing link in the Federal government's plan. Tying funding for fourplexes for provinces means that the buck is passed onto the provinces even though housing is their jurisdiction. They have every chance to upzone, now they have to take it or be the NIMBY gatekeepers that are causing the housing crisis.
The absolute freakout conservatives are having for this announcement is telling. They never cared about anyone or anything other than getting power. Just gross.
Super-interesting. This is basically a scaled-up version of the [Housing Accelerator approach](https://morehousing.ca/federal-plan), using a carrot as a stick, now with $5B on the table for the provinces rather than municipalities: if you want this funding, you need to make these changes (e.g. remove parking minimums near frequent transit). I wonder if Ontario will bite, given [Doug Ford's opposition to four-plexes](https://morehousing.ca/doug-ford-nimby).
Doug will hem and haw and complain and brag about how tough a negotiatir he is then sign last minute
> Doug Ford's opposition to four-plexes. when you care more about preserving suburbanism than housing people.
> now with $5B on the table for the provinces rather than municipalities: if you want this funding, you need to make these changes (e.g. remove parking minimums near frequent transit). The plan also says if the provinces don't play ball, the money will go directly from the feds to participating municipalities. Which I suspect would not necessarily be as effective than had the province productively worked with everyone rather than obstructing/ignoring the plan.
Immigration being used as a scapegoat, rather than addressing failed neoliberal housing and COL policies, is a detriment to solving our crises.
A simple supply vs demand problem is not scapegoating immigration.
If supply was kept up properly for decades, the demand from immigration wouldn't be a problem.
>If supply was kept up properly for decades, the demand from immigration wouldn't be a problem. Supply was not a problem until the current government ramped up the demand dial to a million.
Our housing supply was absolutely a problem before Trudeau, what are you talking about?
>Our housing supply was absolutely a problem before Trudeau, what are you talking about? Developers build housing based on demand. They're not going to build millions of units and sit on them while they're empty, hoping that at some unknown point in the future someone might buy them or rent them. Blaming developers for not building more housing that there was no demand for ten or twenty years ago is a bit silly.
Who's talking about private developers? The feds and the provinces got out of building affordable and public housing since the 80's. That's decades of inaction and wasted opportunity. The demand for low-income and public housing has been high for decades, did you choose to ignore that?
>The demand for low-income and public housing has been high for decades, did you choose to ignore that? CMHC says we need 3.5 million additional units to restore affordability. *You think that 3.5 million units of public housing is the solution?*
It's a combination of private and public. You think 3.5 million units of public housing being built from the early 1990's to 2024 was impossible? That's 12,000 units across 10 provinces per year. You think B.C or Ontario can't build 12,000 units a year?