As always, the Fraser Institute is shitting on ideas that could help the 99%, and saying government should rEmOvE ReD tApE.
I really want this to work. But the announcements I’ve seen for the building plan only address the supply side and ignore the problems on the demand side: people who own houses are able to pump up the cost of new houses; tax law encourages Canadians to treat their primary residence as an investment; real estate is used for money laundering (at least in some jurisdictions); mortgage fraud is a thing (at least in some jurisdictions); renovictions are used to pump the cost of rentals; and rent caps aren’t available in many jurisdictions.
Anyhow, here’s hoping the investing in modular housing succeeds, rezoning somehow lowers prices, and the feds are able to push housing starts to the moon.
The bias in this is just revolting. I get that it’s “opinion”, but they’ve made no attempt at having a terribly balanced one.
Canada’s housing sector has been following the Fraser Institute’s advice for decades now, and the result has been exactly as many predicted. Carney’s right: it’s time for the state to get back into building because the private sector has failed to do the job.
Unfortunately, this reads more like a financial instrument rather than what I would argue Canada needs: a housing agency that actually builds the houses rather than simply funds and directs construction. Regardless, in the wreckage that free market capitalism has wrought on housing, this is the sort of thing that takes a lot of time and money get up to speed. You needs skilled labour, industry connections, reputation, and experience building in various climates, and you just can’t create that out of the blue. I’m pleased to hear that they’re moving in the right direction.
I agree with all of your statements, but
The bias in this is just revolting. I get that it’s “opinion”, but they’ve made no attempt at having a terribly balanced one.
They have a point of view. I don’t agree with it, and it ignores the pain that the housing crisis is inflicting on Canadians, but it makes no sense to expect them to parrot talking points they don’t agree with.
I’m not asking them to parrot talking points, but ignoring reality doesn’t do anyone any favours. It’s like writing from a perspective that the world is flat and talking like only fools would think that a spherical planet worldview is rational. Their perspective is demonstrably flawed, but rather than approaching the issue on the facts, they’ve just blasted this project from a ideological perspective. It’s a bad article and the Globe & Mail should feel bad about publishing it.
It’s an op-ed, not an article. It explains the Fraser Institute’s point of view (perhaps that of their donors). They raise a couple of good points (notably the one about the infrastructure bank), but it’s their chance to get their ideas out. It shouldn’t be balanced.
If all op-eds need to be balanced, then we’d see indigenous land defenders having to explain why a company is allowed to despoil that land. Similarly, if a doctor is writing an op-ed explaining why think you should get vaccinated, they shouldn’t need to reiterate the talking points of whackos saying it isn’t. That’s fine for articles, but this isn’t an article.
The point of op-eds is to get an idea out. This one is probably a counterpoint to Paul Kershaw’s delicious trolling in yesterday’s Globe.
Fuck the Fraser Institute. Right-wing spew.
It’s riskier, but Carney’s got 20 years experience in managing financial risk. It’s a bet I’m willing to take, since incentives to private developers have only gotten us so far. High risk high reward and all, and you can’t get anything big done if you don’t think big.
Fraser Institute: “But what if, we could get tax breaks for the rich and disguise it as nation-building? Hohohoho, delightfully devilish, Fraser.”
Totally. Something is better than nothing.
But there’s a political risk that needs to be addressed quickly: many Canadians are getting priced out of their homes now, while others are unable to save for retirement. They see older Canadians making out like bandits on primary residences they bought 10+ years ago and they’re justifiably angry.
These people are probably going to vote Conservative in the next election if they don’t see an improvement.
It’s unclear if the current LPC plan will provide housing relief within four years.
I find it funny how someone who thinks the Liberals would think the Conservatives would make it better. Almost as funny as the idea it only took 10 years for the housing market to get to this state.
I think it’s more a question of getting rid of the incumbents that presided over the most noticeable part of the affordability crisis.
Trudeau & co initially said our GDP is growing, what’s there to worry about? People have a long memory when they are ignored or slighted. Then add that Poilievre focused on affordability issues during the election. Even if the CPC policies suck, his supporters appreciate that he’s talking about the problem.
Neither of the LPC or CPC plans looked great for affordability, IMO. If Carney can stay in power long enough, I think they might be able to get 500k starts/year, but that won’t be soon enough for the people who are priced out.
You know what else is a major risk to tax payers? Rampant homelessness.
That’s just an externality.
The number one cause of housing shortages are zoning laws limiting high occupancy building in most communities.
No, the number one cause is not building efficient high density transportation networks.
If you build efficient high density transportation networks like streetcars and subways, then people plan their lives around taking those forms of transportation, and thus will gravitate towards living near the stops and you naturally end up densifying housing around your network.
Endless suburban sprawl is caused by only building road networks so everyone plans their lives and housing around owning and using cars.
And at a fundamental level, corporations building out and then operating high density towers, is not building out a pleasant future to live in, it’s building out a cyberpunk dystopia where the municipality expands vertically but cedes control of that expansion to exploitative corporations.
Canada has the existing space in our cities and towns and should be focused on turning more communities into Toronto’s relatively dense ‘streetcar suburbs’, where you have a mix of lots of townhomes, semi-detached housing, and short apartment buildings, where people can for the most part actually fully own their property and building, while still supporting a relatively high density of housing. But we need to build out actual streetcar networks in cities other than Toronto for that to happen.
They can build as many high-occupancy housing as they want. Just not in my backyard! /s
If you need apartments to solve this problem and not the fact that there is empty houses… I gave up a long time ago but functionally speaking this encourages a wealth divide and is short term oriented
Do you have a reference for that?
My understanding was that developers stopped building “high occupancy buildings” in the 1980s/1990s when tax benefits for high density housing were removed, and condos became more lucrative. Since then, condos have gotten more expensive and smaller as investors take up more of the stock (owning ~40% of condos in large cities).
Of course, we aren’t just facing a housing shortage we’re also facing an affordability crisis due to a number of factors I listed in the post. I know that the Liberals and Conservatives have pushed the line that we just need to build, but I think that is mainly because they don’t want to piss off older home owners (ie, the people who vote) by changing tax laws that would deprioritize home ownership as a retirement savings vehicle, and actively push down prices. The supply side is definitely a significant factor, but so are a number of demand factors.
Well, the liberal plan is already including a chunk of red tape removal – the criticism is more about having a large public institution overtly shifting market trends, especially as the intention appears to have it be both lender, and builder. They’re right to note that there’s potential conflicts, and that govt programs typically aren’t about ‘efficiency’ in terms of service delivery.
My napkin math is terrible, and the different amounts noted for different programs is a bit unclear to me in terms of what amounts the govt intends to invest directly by building housing vs how much its just going to try and subsidize builders.
From what I’ve seen, it mostly seems to be subsidies - either providing low(er) interest loans or investing in prefab housing.
They also talk about paying private builders to create affordable housing, but I’m not clear who would own those buildings, who would get to live in them, or how much they would cost.
There are a lot of unknowns, and (as far as I’ve seen) the only timeline is building 500k houses a year by 2035. If that’s really the timeline, I doubt it will change the minds of young Canadians who are getting gouged on housing.
Yeah, it all seems really wobbly. Like one of their notes related to using public lands for building initiatives, though it wasn’t clear if that just means … like selling off the parks in Vancouver to developers, or government-subsidized planned neighbourhoods around smaller towns to try and spread our population out (praying that jobs would somehow follow), or what.
I admit, if I could find a way to move to a more remote location, that still had necessities like medical services, and I’d get a functional, easy to maintain, eco friendly / eco resilient type of detached property, I’d be interested… the costs on that sort of thing are really quite high though. And shaving like $50k off the top of that cost isn’t really gonna do much to help with affordability, when you’re talking about housing costing millions.
I’ve been living in a small town since the pandemic, and it’s pretty good. I’d recommend it, if you’re into a small town lifestyle (I’m not).
I’m assuming the federal properties are lands inside city limits. Building housing a few hours from a population centre seems like a terrible idea. But I guess we’ll find out more soon.
