[Scape]

Problem solved. Convert the immigrant population to Amish.

[bootlegga]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I am never going to vote for anyone named Trudeau. But it will definitely hurt them with the undecided.

Well, unless you move to Quebec, that's going to be next to impossible.

[Scape]

[herbie]

I don't want to save up for 5 years and finish the basement like my Dad did.
I don't want to slave away for four summers building rock walls, gardens and fences.
I don't want to have the hassle of a septic system.
I don't want hydro, phone and cable lines hanging overhead.
I don't want to replace carpets or laminate or to paint.
I don't want a gravel driveway.

I want sidewalks, sewers, paved road fiber Internet and underground services.
I want to put zero down.
I want the same opportunity as my Dad.
I want to pay $19,000.00 and I want the bank to lend it to me, no credit check.

It's all Trudeau's fault it's not happening.

[Scape]

Bloomberg: Canada likely sitting on the largest housing bubble of all time

WE'RE NUMBER 1! WE'RE NUMBER 1! WE'RE NUMBER 1! WE'RE NUMBER 1!

[Scape]

Chief of staff for Ontario housing minister resigns amid Greenbelt report

[Thanos]

If Montreal's experience is anything to go by, any national housing initiative will be a total failure simply because you can't force developers to build affordable housing that they're going to take a loss on. And they'd rather pay fines or give up property that they've slated for higher-end development than be dictated to by some out-to-lunch city council.....

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal ... -1.6941008

$1:

Two years after Valérie Plante's administration said a new housing bylaw would lead to the construction of 600 new social housing units per year, the city hasn't seen a single one.

The Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis forces developers to include social, family and, in some places, affordable housing units to any new projects larger than 4,843 square feet.

If they don't, they must pay a fine or hand over land, buildings or individual units for the city to turn into affordable or social housing.

According to data released by Ensemble Montréal, the city's official opposition, and reviewed by CBC News, there have been 150 new projects by private developers, creating a total of 7,100 housing units, since the bylaw came into effect in April 2021.

None of the units have yet been made into affordable housing, with all the developers of those projects opting instead to give Montreal financial compensation. Only 550 units are big enough to be considered family housing. Five developers ceded a piece of property to the city instead of creating affordable housing.

The money from the fees paid by developers goes into either the city's affordable housing fund or its social housing fund. Those fees have so far amounted to a total of $24.5 million — not enough to develop a single social housing project, according to housing experts.

I suppose there's a lesson to be learned here. Given the national tradition though of charging headfirst into disastrous policy & then paying the financial/social/political price later I doubt any of the big brains are able to learn the lesson beforehand when the cost will be much less painful. Doing everything wrong right from the start is the Canadian way after all.

[Scape]

Quebec government rejects Trudeau's immigration plan, fears decline of French

Welp, so much for that idea JT. Looks like all the feds need to man up and have an actual plan now instead of playing hot potato.

[rickc]

I remember my mother buying a brand new house (built to her specs) in 1978 for $30,000. A $100,000 house at that time would have been inconceivable for her. Nowadays a $100,000 house is merely a dream in most of the U.S. and Canada. When my dad first moved to Las Vegas, he would tell me how great it was. One of the great things about it was that the average house price was around $100,000. That was inconceivable to me living in the north east. By the time I had moved to Las Vegas, that $100,000 house had turned into a $500.000 house. Apartments were turning into condos. The tenants were told they could fork over $400,000 for their two bedroom condo, or they would have to move out. Flippers were buying up everything sight unseen. I knew people that bussed tables for a living that owned multiple properties. I visited the site of a future housing development. It was going to be a gated community with 24 hour security working the gate. Swimming pools, splash pads, playgrounds and parks. You name it, they had it. When I went to visit I was told that every single house had already been sold. They had not even broken ground yet. All they had done was some surveys. Sticks with strings was all they had to show and yet every single house was already sold.

When the crash of 08 hit, that $500,000 house had turned back into a $100,000 house again. An 80% drop in price. 15 years later and it still has not reached $500,000. I looked it up the other day and its worth $430,000.

I seen a few good ideas in this thread of how to slow the growth of the cost of housing in Canada. The problem is that it is way too late for those ideas. The prices today in Canada are unsustainable. You would have to be out of your fucking mind to buy a house today at these prices. You would be married to the house. No money left over to enjoy life. Better pray that nothing major breaks, no one gets sick, no one loses their job or has their hours cut. The best think that the government of Canada can do now is DO NOTHING! Enough talk about a soft landing. People do not need a soft landing, they need a crash.They do not need a 5% drop in prices, they need an 80% drop in prices. Stay out of the way and let the fools keep outbidding each other. Keep acting like every house ids the last one in North America. Keep pushing the prices higher and higher past the breaking point. Wait for the crash to hit. When the crash does come, then its time to implement some laws taking flippers and corporations out of the single family house game.

Don't get me wrong, eventually the prices will be back at these levels. New laws will not stop that. What we are trying to do is extend the time that it takes to get back to these levels. Lets say that it takes 50 years to get back to these levels. People should be making a lot more money in 50 years. Just like $100,000 seemed like an astronomical number in 1978, but it seems like a very small amount for a house today. Let the crash happen. Encourage it. Embrace it. The sooner the better.

[Thanos]

It's a horrible problem everywhere. Apparently in Baltimore MD you can pick up an abandoned rowhouse unit for $200000 US. Sounds good on the surface, but it's in a neighbourhood that's "gentrifying", which means you get the live action 24/7 right in front of you kind of like a never ending episode of The Wire or Homicide: Life On The Street.

In hindsight, in the Canadian experience anyway, a massive portion of the blame has to be attributed to local city politicians who deliberately stymied as much suburban development as they could over the last fifteen years. They must have missed out on the reality, being the city slickers they are, that the outer ring & suburbs were where first-time buyers went to buy their home, simply for the affordability. Cut off the supply of affordable properties and the prices on existing homes skyrocket almost immediately. Add in things that never happened before, like huge corporations buying up massive numbers of homes during COVID, and the price goes up even further because those sorts of motherfuckers aren't going to accept anything less than the doubling of their investments as a return.

The politicians of today have to take most of the blame. They sat on their asses as all this was happening and did nothing at all to prevent it, as the phenomenon that began in Vancouver over *twenty years ago when far too many properties got bought up en masses by foreigners as investments, and then that nonsense spread like a plague all across the country. Even in the Maritimes, with their limited economies that are tiny compared to Ontario, BC, or Alberta, the cities like Halifax, Moncton, St. Johns, and others are also now too expensive for first-time buyers. And there's no reason to believe than any of this is ever going to end.

Watch the hilarity erupt ten years from now, if the grand national housing plan every happens. Gonna be all sorts of comedy when, thanks to simple inflation and the cost of materials & labour, the "affordable" first-time house of tomorrow ends up costing the buyer as much as the unaffordable house of today does. Ah fuck, just shoot me now.

Fuck, this demonic greed-centric shit kicked off in Toronto almost FORTY years ago, and no one could be bothered to do anything about it.

[DrCaleb]

rickc rickc:

Let the crash happen. Encourage it. Embrace it. The sooner the better.

I for one will embrace the crash. The only other option is for my pay to triple or quadruple, which is unlikely.

[JaredMilne]

I wonder if the problem with housing is kind of the same as healthcare-the provinces have primary responsibility for these things, but instead of actually doing their jobs better the premiers would rather just blame Trudeau. And if Trudeau and the feds actually did try and intervene more directly, many of those same people would yell about federal intrusion into provincial jurisdiction. It should be noted that a fair number of people also blame the provinces for this, and nearly a quarter of them aren't sure which level of government is to blame.

That's the problem with Pierre Poilievre's idea to go after "municipal gatekeepers" that're holding up affordable housing-municipalities are very much a provincial jurisdiction. It's one thing for the feds to give municipalities money for things like infrastructure, but it's quite another for the feds to directly intervene in how municipalities govern themselves. Poilievre's right about at least some of the cause of the problem, though-here in St. Albert we've have people complaining about additional housing units literally overshadowing their properties...

...and then there are asshats like this NIMBY guy, who opposed a Habitat for Humanity project because he thought it would increase crime and reduce his property values. The letter ran in our local paper, and I saw the original version he wrote-the paper did a lot of editing to make it readable.

[DrCaleb]

Montreal tried to get developers to build affordable units, or pay a fine. Every one of them paid the fine, rather than build affordable housing. The profit margin must have been higher. Poillievre can't fix that.

[herbie]

Pierre Poilievre also stated that the housing crisis is 100% because of 8 years of Liberal gov't.

Sorry, I grew up in Burnaby and live in the North. We sold Mom's 650 sq ft condo there for more than a motel here sold for, more than a 32 unit townhouse complex sold for. More then double what a new home on 2.5 hectares or on the lakefront would sell for.
Nothing to do with millions wanting to live where you're bound in by mountains, ocean and farms vs. 1,000s of miles of empty where and people that will pay absurd amounts?
No guilt in selling the condo for that much, people were lined up to outbid each other!

[Scape]

Amid Crisis, Major Cities Fail to House the Homeless When Options Are Available