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A million more non-permanent residents live in Canada than official figures, ministers told

   

Those are Newfies.

   

Affordable Housing Has Become Unaffordable to Build

   

   

Trudeau says he 'should have, could have' moved faster on housing

   

And in other news, water is wet.

There's still time to make an impact on housing and rent prices before the next election.

   

Concur, he knows he has lots of time and power to make huge changes. He is looking to see how the opposition reacts and once they do he will counter with a policy deluge.

   

   

What would you recommend that he do?

   

The Conservatives released their housing plan a couple of weeks ago. It's got harsh financial punishments for provinces & municipalities that engage in anti-housing NIMBYism & foot-dragging on approvals. The banks & other mortgage issuers & the CMHC have also been warned too about getting in the way of younger buyers with excessively large down payment requirements & other similar entanglements. Plus they said they'd so a GST suspension on certain portions of the per-unit building process. Probably other tax suspensions as well because "affordability" is going to be very hard to achieve just from price increases on materials & labour over the years.

Poilievre is probably going to get a majority based on the housing situation alone. Some polling a couple of weeks ago showed that if an election was held today that the Conservatives would get 190 or more seats. The approval for the Conservatives among the young who have been priced out of the market altogether has soared and simultaneously collapsed for the Liberals. Trudeau's personal disapprovals are now massive. The damage Poilievre and some of the others caused by association with the trucker convoy goofs turned out to not be very severe or long-lasting to the Tory brand at all.

   

   

Tax the ever living FUCK out of people/companies that own more than 2 residential properties
Ban foreign investment buying
Push for nation wide development. Provide municipalities with increase infrastructure support to promote it.
Rent control (likely provincial)

   

I think that your first two ideas would help, but they don't go far enough. Most flippers that I have known only own two homes.....the one that they live in and the one that they are flipping. The more than two house rule would not take them out of the game. They would need some type of law about selling more than one home in a certain time frame (say like five years ) would require the forfeit of all profits to the crown. Flippers artificially deplete the inventory of cheap homes by targeting them. Lending organizations are to blame as well. They want the house to be in perfect condition before they issue the mortgage. Many sellers are not interested in fixing up the property prior to the sell. Maybe they inherited the house and live on the other side of the country. They just want the house sold already. The flippers come along with cash and buy it up. They put some lipstick on the pig and make a killing. The government should force lending organizations to offer special "fixer up" mortgages where they have the mortgage at the going rate, and then offer more money to bring the house up to standards at a fixed one percent. Put it in writing what repairs are to be done and the time limits required for the repairs. Let some people that need mortgages get a shot at the cheaper homes for once instead of lining the pockets of the flippers.

Rent control sounds good but can cause more problems than it corrects. It takes a lot of money to build an apartment complex. Most of the people building apartments are private capitol groups. They are in it for the long haul. They make their money by collecting rent. They are not looking to flip properties. If you institute rent control there will not be another non government owned apartment complex built any where in that area ever again. The nation wide development of non government owned apartment complexes would grind to a halt. The ones that are currently operating would convert to condos. They would tell their tenants to cough up 1.5 million for their unit or move out. The tenants that can't get a mortgage would be homeless. Either that or the capitol groups could evict everyone, level the complex, and build strip malls. These capitol groups exist to make money, and they will. One way or another. I can't see them standing by and letting their margins get slashed. They are going to do whatever they have to do to keep the money flowing in. Ontario removed rent control on buildings built after 1991 hoping that it would lead to the construction of new rental properties. No one went for it because they knew it was just a ploy. They knew that rent control would just come back in the future, and it did. Thats why the rental market is so tight in Ontario. No one wants to build rental properties there. Rent control helps renters in the short term by keeping their rent in line, but it hurts them in the long run as it prevents any future construction of rental properties.

Building more (lots more ) government owned housing would help in the long run. I don't know about Canadian law but in the states if the government takes property, they have to pay fair market value. It could bankrupt the government to buy up all the privately owned apartment complexes at fair market value. Private companies do not want to build new rental properties, then the government needs to step up and build them. They also need to quit being assholes as to who can live there. They act like you make too much money to live in the projects if you have a full time job making minimum wage. More reasonable, realistic guidelines as to income need to be put in place. Quit throwing people out because they got a .25 cent an hour raise. Everything is for the destitute and nothing for the working poor. Just my two cents.

   

Government housing, which has been down and out for 40 years now, is the solution.

It isn't going to happen overnight and prefab housing can only get them so far. God help them finding workers and the costs will be astronomical to find materials but this has to get done by all levels of government as a priority. A national strategy akin to the Trans Canada to make carbon neutral homes.

   

Your anecdote doesn't matter, because that's not the case here.

https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-cit ... investors/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british- ... -1.6743083

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/busines ... data-show/

Imagine 20-40% more supply in the market. Sure a portion of that will be people who are buying a second home to flip, but it's probably 5-7% from what I've seen. Not 20-50%. If they want to continue to do it, the government gets huge tax income from it and can turn around and build government rent controlled housing, or provide funds to municipalities to build additional house/build the infrastructure to support it.


Not just apartments. There were laws in place that limited how much rent could be raised on a unit year over year (I think it was 4%). That law was removed in ontario. That's a form of rent control. Stop landlord from charging 3000 dollars for a 1 bedroom basement apartment. You're assuming people will operate from a position of good will. I don't know how fucking long people need to pay attention to capitalist structures to find out that capital owners, 90% of the time, are going fuck you senseless if they can get away with it.

   

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