https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/housing-crisis-quebec-study-1.7240376
Submitting for this truly astonishing quote:
" Landlords in Quebec, however, feel they need to catch up to other provinces as Quebec is still one of the most affordable places to live in the country, said Jean-Olivier Reed, a spokesperson for the Quebec Landlord Association (APQ)."
This is perfect and the various parties are surprisingly frank. For example:
Landlords in Quebec, however, feel they need to catch up to other provinces as Quebec is still one of the most affordable places to live in the country, said Jean-Olivier Reed, a spokesperson for the Quebec Landlord Association (APQ).
and:
"What we have built over the last years, the last months — it's mainly luxury condos or apartments because it's what we can afford to build right now," he said.
That's still good though. If there are people willing to move into those luxury places, they are probably freeing up some other capacity, and so on. More supply is never bad. As long as they are building in density, it will help with housing affordability.
The assumption that they're freeing up other capacity isn't necessarily true. There are several counter samples on my mind and there are probably more.
In fact one of the main points of the article is that Montreal has been building faster than population growth and housing is still drastically going up in price.
In fact one of the main points of the article is that Montreal has been building faster than population growth and housing is still drastically going up in price.
That's because Montreal doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's maybe the only city in Canada with a remotely good approach to urbanism, and as a result one of the most affordable cities to buy housing in Canada. So there is added demand for Montreal real estate from the rest of the country, which contributes to rising prices.
If there are people willing to move into those luxury places, they are probably freeing up some other capacity, and so on.
What about house flippers?
How the hell does luxury=affordable to build. Affordable housing would be cheaper to build wouldn't it?
What they meant to say was "we have built luxury housing because it is more profitable"
Those mean the same thing. Affordable for the developers = revenue - cost > 0. I think they said it explicitly a paragraph earlier, that they build what's profitable.
Affordable housing can still be profitable to the land/building owner, It just isn't as profitable. Under our capitalist system line must go up and profits come before providing enough housing for all.
Of course. But if the land/labor/materials have gone so high in price, it is possible that even with zero profit the final price for units goes beyond what is considered affordable housing. I don't know if that's the case in Montreal or not.
With that said, even if affordable housing is not profitable for land/building owner, it's still "profitable" for the community around and in that future building. So from that angle, even if it's unprofitable for the land/building owner, it should be "profitable" for the public/government. And if that's the case, then it's kinda pointless to rely on the market to find it profitable enough to build affordable housing.
But then someone would say that would mean some builders won't make as much as they otherwise could which means line won't go up as much, government bad, free market good, fml... ☠️
In any case, I think we should put the market in its place and build affordable housing without waiting for it to consider it profitable. That's a perfect example where even creating new money can be a net benefit.
Isn't the UK already there in terms of mental health? (which reflects quality of life to an extent)
Social housing can never be the true solution. The government doesn't have enough money to make it have an impact. Even in cities in Europe that have 30-40% social housing, they are still having housing crisis situations where people can't move, people wait years to affordable units, and private housing is still astronomically expensive.
There is a proper fix, but it destroys almost all of the equity in the existing housing market which means voters will never go for it. Far too many people still own houses and would lose hundreds of thousands or even millions.
So instead we get this pandering shit, and prices will continue to rise for the next few decades.
In the real world there are no single "true solutions". More social housing is needed. Capping speculation is needed. Taxing empty houses is needed. Building new dense and walkable neighbourhoods is needed. Carefully deflating the bubble to free up capital to productive investments is needed. Retrofitting existing buildings is needed. Housing coops are needed. All these things are needed.
Start The War on Landlords. Declare the housing crisis a national security threat, build housing till every landlord commits suicide.
Stop bending the knee to the for profit house building corporations. Stop protecting the status quo because it doesn't work for everyone. Stop making excuses for this way of life that has only been around for not even a thousand years yet. Stop acting like how things are are inevitable.
AND, electoral reform. I distinctly remember Canadians being promised electoral reform! Where the fuck is it? How about you get to vote for a kick in the nuts or a kick in the face? Sound fair? No? What's wrong YOU HAVE A CHOICE! Feeling free yet?
Welcome to earth, Where money is made up and the rules doesn't matter.
And here I thought the answer was to light rental properties on fire until it was too expensive to insure them and all of the landleeches ended up in squalor?
None of those are solutions. They're all Band-Aids. No matter how much you do any of those things you proposed, prices will continue to climb.
Not a single developed country has managed to rein in prices, no matter what tactics they've tried. There are places with all of those suggestions, and still... expensive housing.
Building more density in well-designed, walkable neighbourhoods is absolutely part of the answer.
We need to make it so that there are about as many homes as people who need homes. Right now the numbers are wildly out of wack. The reason prices won't go down is because the government is resistant to opening the floodgates of density (as you said, because too many of their constituents are homeowners).
If we just abolished single family zoning and said anyone can build dense housing anywhere that is residentially zoned, we'd have affordable housing within a few years. Zoning is an artificial bottleneck on the supply of housing. Imagine if every shitty carbrained suburb suddenly could house 2x or 3x as many people! But then of course we would need to make them a bit less carbrained by introducing more walkability, better public transit, and more mixed use. That can all be done gradually by relaxing zoning restrictions.
This is just objectively false.
Japan didn't have single family zoning, anyone could build dense housing anywhere residential in any of the major cities and they absolutely did, and yet it was never affordable. They have massively walkable cities, with great public transportation, and yet... not affordable unless you want to live in a 100 square foot closet that most north Americans couldn't even fit through the door on.
A bunch of US cities have no zoning and are still not affordable.
Zoning is a slight bottleneck, but it's not even close to the core problem.
I'm not saying don't change the zoning, go ahead, but expecting things to become affordable in a few years is an absolute pipe dream.
BC just did it, and developers are just shit talking the policy saying it doesn't change anything.
There are places that cap real estate speculation? And also are shifting equity away from real estate and towards the productive parts of the economy? While also promoting social housing and coops and building new walkable neighborhoods? Like all of those things at once? Where is that social-democratic utopia?
Explain why the real estate sector in a small island city-state is comparable in any way to that in the country with the second largest landmass in the world.
Because 99% of the Canada landmass is rural, and a city is a city.
Also, last time I checked, Montreal (the first city mentioned in the article) is an island.
Singapore is 735.2 sq km and has a density of 7,804/sq km.
The Montreal metropolitan area is 4,258.31 sq km and has a density of 1,007.85/sq km.
I don't know if 1% of Canada is urban. But assuming it is, and assuming that it is impossible to grow that 1% of the 9,093,507 sq km that make up the country (a ludicrous assumption that one), that is still 90,935.1 sq km.
Your comparison is just plain irrelevant and wrong.
I'm championing land value taxes, but they won't pass until ownership rates drop another 20-30 percent over the next 20-30 years.
Honestly, the best option for my children (who are still quite young) right now is for me to try to make it worse faster so that we can make such a radical change sooner.