• grteOPM
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    The reason why is because foreign home ownership has never been the core of the issue. This law was a distraction from the reality that Canadians are plenty willing, and more likely, to be the one exploiting you.

    https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/46-28-0001/2023001/article/00001-eng.htm

    In Nova Scotia, more than 1 in 20 houses is used as an investment by a person living outside the province or the country

    […]

    In-province investors owned, as investment properties, between 8.7% of the houses in New Brunswick and 12.4% in Nova Scotia, and, as such, they owned more houses used as an investment than all the other types of investors combined.

    Chart indicating home ownership by in or out of province resident

    As always, the core of the issue is that home ownership is treated as a commodity. Sort of a fundamental reality of putting a thing into a competitive market is that you’re going to have winners and losers. And losers in the housing market leads to, you know, homelessness among many other social ills.

    • bionicjoey
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      I tried to point this out on Reddit and Lemmy so many times and usually got downvoted. People want to believe there’s some nefarious boogeyman buying up houses and keeping them vacant, but the reality is that virtually all homes in Canada have occupants. We just don’t have nearly enough housing for the population.

      Edit: it’s still happening. In the other thread on this board about this article, people are saying “it’s not the foreign buyers we should tax, it’s the corporate buyers”. People will do all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid considering the possibility that we need to densify our housing.

      • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        We need to change the ways we build our cities. The suburban experiment has failed and we need to address that. Commiting nearly every scrap of residential zoning for exclusively single family homes has had massive impacts on the urban fabric of our cities, the scarcity of housing, and the dependance on cars.

        We don’t need to eliminate all single family homes, but we do need to make it possible to build multi-residences and mixed use areas. We also need to address how we tax residential properties because as it stands, single family zoning is often subsidized by the denser areas of the city.

        • bionicjoey
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          6 months ago

          Okay and you could have 50% more homes available if 20% of the SFH in a city was converted into apartments. 7% is nothing if we actually would densify what we build rather than just sprawling suburbs.

        • Pxtl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          6 months ago

          “empty or not for usual residents.” is a useless metric. Student houses are considered “empty” if the the students have a family home to return to and haven’t updated their mailing address.

            • n2burns
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              6 months ago

              The usual residence of students is that of their parents, if they return to live with their parents during the year even if they live elsewhere while attending school or working at a summer job.

              From Stats Canada.

              Students are usual residents of Canada, they’re not usual residents of the place they stay in while studying in school.

              • Electromechanical_Supergiant@lemmynsfw.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                6 months ago

                Students and workers from other countries with study and work permits are considered usual residents, according to StatsCan.

                Directly quoted from the source I posted.

                • n2burns
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  6 months ago

                  That’s why I clarified how you misinterpreted that sentence, and gave you a source from Stats Canada. I also worked the last census in KW, where there’s a large student population, so it was drilled into our heads students only count if they live in that house year round (and preferable changed the address on their ID).

    • tleb
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      6 months ago

      Residential property shouldn’t be an investment, but we can make great strides if we ban corporate and foreign ownership (NO exceptions this time)

    • Avid Amoeba
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      6 months ago

      It’s the kind of thing that might occur if people don’t have pensions and need to secure some sort of income that would sustain them when they retire. 🫠 Perhaps in addition to tackling the lack of density, number of non-market units, etc. we should also look at the industry pushing people to create their own pensions.

  • joshhsoj1902
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    6 months ago

    Of course it didn’t.

    Foreign ownership and immigration were always just distractions.

    They sound good, seem to make sense, and the people they are meant to mislead will never look deeper than that.

    It took less than 10 minutes on Google to determine that neither of these were significant factors.

    • Formes
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 months ago

      Sort of. The thing is - they are factors, just the small low hanging fruit; more specifically it’s the easiest to attack from a political stand point: Foreign owners don’t vote in Canada.

      The reality is - we need to pull out the stops at this point. Go after Foreign ownership, corporate ownership. Go after Vacant properties through taxes, and go after the short term rental market.

      Foreign ownership might be say a few percent, short term rentals might be a few percent. But you couple 3-4 small sources and suddenly you are freeing up some 5-10% of housing and putting it back on the long term rental market or they are being sold on the open market… to people who want a home.

      • joshhsoj1902
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 months ago

        Except not really. Freeing up less then 5% and then stopping doesn’t actually help anything.

        The bunch that hate immigrants are happy, and honestly that seems to be about 30% of the population. And that’s enough to elect a government, so that’s as far as that will ever go.

    • tleb
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 months ago

      It’s silly to point to the data on % of buys from foreign buyers because foreign buyers don’t buy as foreign buyers, they buy through companies or children that they sent here as a student.

    • WashedOver
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      6 months ago

      It’s a quick hot take that many I know like to spout off without any effort to look into things. They aren’t interested in looking any further into it unfortunately. Much like reading in school, they are done with that phase of their lives.

      I think if they did, they would realize the major thrust of immigration are students to support universities higher tuitions and a continual new workforce for low wage jobs that others aren’t going to work.

      There is the added bonus of these people needing rental housing but it’s not the main thrust of the issues which are too much for many to bother looking into.

  • Ulrich_the_Old
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    6 months ago

    When you have politicians like Squinty McProudBoy (pierre poilievre) who own multiple rental properties and who vote against Canadians at every turn what can you expect?