I will bang the drum for social housing every time. The housing crisis is a solved problem, we just need the will to bring that solution here. Vienna, Austria, is the most livable city in the world and it has achieved this through extensive social housing where the majority of residents in the city live in it.
Burnaby, BC has recently created a municipal housing authority tasked with creating housing like this. I am very interested in moving there as a result.
I have a couple friends who live in co-op housing and it seems great. They paid a down payment of a couple thousand and effectively live in a strata. Their monthly rents are 100-200% cheaper than market rates, and they get back their down payment + interest if they ever leave.
Sure, you won’t retire off of selling your home from living in a co-op, but housing never should be an investment. That’s one of the reasons we got into this housing situation in the first place.
The problem where I am, is that there have been no new co-ops created in over 30 years, so it’s even harder to get into than regular renting. We need the federal and provincial governments to invest in creating more as they are a great solution to this problem.
I will bang the drum for social housing every time. The housing crisis is a solved problem, we just need the will to bring that solution here. Vienna, Austria, is the most livable city in the world and it has achieved this through extensive social housing where the majority of residents in the city live in it.
https://thetyee.ca/Solutions/2018/06/06/Vienna-Housing-Affordability-Case-Cracked/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-housing.html (archive)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city
https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/
Burnaby, BC has recently created a municipal housing authority tasked with creating housing like this. I am very interested in moving there as a result.
I have a couple friends who live in co-op housing and it seems great. They paid a down payment of a couple thousand and effectively live in a strata. Their monthly rents are 100-200% cheaper than market rates, and they get back their down payment + interest if they ever leave.
Sure, you won’t retire off of selling your home from living in a co-op, but housing never should be an investment. That’s one of the reasons we got into this housing situation in the first place.
The problem where I am, is that there have been no new co-ops created in over 30 years, so it’s even harder to get into than regular renting. We need the federal and provincial governments to invest in creating more as they are a great solution to this problem.