Canada

Typical G&M flame bait. Blaming immigrants and JT for the immigration policies. Let's toss in the health care problems too. Why are the liberals doing this to us? Crocodile tears

No mention of speculative investment in housing, greedy landlords jacking up rents, corpo land holdings, foreign land holders, claw backs on infrastructure grants, complicated building laws, red tape and all that.

This tripe from the Postmedia network is more distraction from the real news.

November 2019, Postmedia announced[25] that 66% of its shares were now owned by Chatham Asset Management, an American media conglomerate which owns American Media, Inc., and is known for its close ties to the Republican party.[26] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmedia_Network

Update: Whoops. Here I'm talking shit about G&M and they are not owned by Postmedia. I'm not a fan, but I did misrepresent the paper, and this article. I suppose that I'm so used to conservative shit, that I might scan articles leaning to the right. I'll do better.

I would slightly rephrase this to "too little housing." Houses per se is not the answer, because just building more single family houses is not going to solve any problem that isn't going to be massively outweighed by other problems that are exacerbated, as we've seen over the past 70+ years of suburban development. Increasing infill density and allowing for "missing middle" housing and mixed use development is the way to go, at least as far as the problems faced by your downstairs neighbors are concerned. This also must be complemented by prioritization of public transit and active transport as preferred modes of transportation in cities, coupled with redevelopment of parking lots and a moratorium on any new freeway construction, as more traffic lanes always and only ever make traffic worse.

Too many domestic speculators. Up to 30% of Canadians are speculators. That's fucking gross and needs to be banned/taxed to hell and back.

No mention of the fact that house sizes have almost doubled since the 1960s, while families are smaller than ever.
If it takes as much material to build 2 houses now as it used to for 3-4 houses, that's not going to help affordability.

The biggest factors still revolve around zoning and other restrictions imposed by the municipalities and by extension the provinces.

Housing isn't as much of a big deal in Winnipeg, but our dingbat premier is still pushing tax cuts that "will fund themselves by stimulating growth". Meanwhile she's not even considering rolling back the healthcare cuts that had crippled the system here even prior to Covid.

We also have too few jobs, which makes competition for high-skill jobs that much higher. It's not ideal. Also, it's not just too few houses, it's too few housing including apartments and condos etc.

Oligarchy and Plutocracy

When the country is more affected by the decisions of monied interests, corporations and wealthy oligarchs ... can you really still keep calling it a democracy?

The problem with housing is that it is no longer being seen, financed or managed as a system to house or shelter people ... it's being managed as another way to squeeze more wealth out of those people that have little to no money for the benefit of those that don't really need any more wealth than they already have.

Just look at the decision makers of this issue ... many of them already own and manage multiple real estate investments and are trying to monetize it themselves .. yet they are the ones deciding on what to do about this issue.

It's not a problem through the actions or mere existence of average people ... it's a problem of wealth and greed.

It's a terribly disgusting runaway stage four cancer that we are trying to treat with skin cream and essential oils.

No, it's also too many people.

Our highways systems and medical systems are also overwhelmed, it's not just housing. Build more houses, bring more people, and we just make all the other problems worse if we don't change something and start to fix/redesign those systems as well.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Why are housing prices in Canada so high – fifth highest, relative to income, in the OECD?

Canada’s GDP per capita is no higher than it was in 2017; labour productivity, having fallen for five consecutive quarters, is back to where it was in 2014.

It would be one thing if the supply of either were running flat out – if investment or output or housing starts were at record or even unusually high levels, but still could not keep up with the torrid growth in population.

I suppose it’s possible to connect the relative stagnation of per capita GDP over the past several years to the surge in population over the last two.

Housing starts, at roughly 260,000 annually, are lower now, in absolute terms, than they were in the early 1970s, when our population was barely half what it is today.

If it means we are now beginning, at long last, to have a serious conversation about the barriers to investment and housing construction that have bedevilled this country for decades, then hallelujah for all those extra people, and let’s have lots more.

The original article contains 819 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

So Canada has 38 million people and 16 million houses, about 2.4 people per house. Average household size in Canada is 2.5, so there is some slack to allow for second homes and vacancy.

Perhaps more houses are needed in the areas where people want to live, but it doesn't seem like that big of a shortage.

Can we have a Cabadahousing community where we can post these things?

I know it's an important issue in Canada, but I feel like this is all that is talked about on here.