between rich investors and companies, buying up everything during a world crisis
Rich investors and companies buy, build, and own rental properties. Students and refugees rent, not buy. Big money has destroyed the buyer’s market, but the failure of the rental market is absolutely caused by
Insufficient building because municipalities have basically made housing construction illegal without special per-build permissions.
Too much demand because too many people want places to rent. Yes, the international student boom is a contributing factor here. Also, we’re into the 2nd echo of the Baby Boom getting old enough to start moving out.
Paul-Martin-era austerity killed subsidies for constructing rental housing.
If big money was really causing this crisis, we’d see a glut of rental housing appear onto the market, which would drive prices down because of competition - there are too many players in the game to price-fix, it’s not like grocery stores where Loblaws owns like 80% of the market and can get away with price fixing. Instead, the exact opposite is happening and rents are skyrocketing. Vacancy rates have crashed.
I’m a far-left big-government green lefty on 99% of political issues, but on this one? I’m hardcore libertarian. Government Is The Problem. If I have to choose between extreme restrictive municipal housing policy creating tent cities, or housing anarchy creating Kowloon Walled City, I’ll take Kowloon every time.
There are hard numbers supporting this - for example, here’s a graph of bedrooms built since 1990:
In Toronto, the number of bedrooms per year built peaked in 2001, and went down to below half that by 2019. The housing crisis happened because demand went up and supply went down. Nothing more, nothing less. And the reason supply went down isn’t “corporation” or “investors”, it’s municipal governments that made housing illegal and the provinces that enabled them.
Don’t take my word for it, see this video of deposition by Mark Richardson of Housing Now TO (an affordable housing builder):
See, he’s not trying to build market housing, he’s trying to build subsidized, low-cost housing. And the municipal government is blocking him at every turn, with “guidelines which are treated like they’re cast in stone”.
$20 billion dollar intersection in Forest Hill; somebody said that should be a 7-storey and 70-unit building in 2018. How…where did that number come from? Somebody picked that number. Because it “conformed to the current planning policy for Forest Hill” and somebody adjacent to the site had a backyard swimming pool. That can’t be our priority in 2023.
Ok. If you live in Toronto, then I understand where you’re coming from. Toronto has some major zoning issues. There are many single family homes in Toronto that should have been changed into multi unit residential housing a long time ago. Your comment makes sense for Toronto.
I live in Hamilton, which is outside of the GTA but is well-within the Toronto housing market’s blast-radius. It happens everywhere in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area, which is about 20% of all Canadians. And I follow the housing news in greater Ottawa and greater Vancouver, which represent another 10% of the population put together.
So from my perspective, at least a 30% of Canada has NIMBY political problems, and the rest of Canada is dealing with the people being pushed out of those areas.
Rich investors and companies buy, build, and own rental properties. Students and refugees rent, not buy. Big money has destroyed the buyer’s market, but the failure of the rental market is absolutely caused by
Insufficient building because municipalities have basically made housing construction illegal without special per-build permissions.
Too much demand because too many people want places to rent. Yes, the international student boom is a contributing factor here. Also, we’re into the 2nd echo of the Baby Boom getting old enough to start moving out.
Paul-Martin-era austerity killed subsidies for constructing rental housing.
If big money was really causing this crisis, we’d see a glut of rental housing appear onto the market, which would drive prices down because of competition - there are too many players in the game to price-fix, it’s not like grocery stores where Loblaws owns like 80% of the market and can get away with price fixing. Instead, the exact opposite is happening and rents are skyrocketing. Vacancy rates have crashed.
I’m a far-left big-government green lefty on 99% of political issues, but on this one? I’m hardcore libertarian. Government Is The Problem. If I have to choose between extreme restrictive municipal housing policy creating tent cities, or housing anarchy creating Kowloon Walled City, I’ll take Kowloon every time.
There are hard numbers supporting this - for example, here’s a graph of bedrooms built since 1990:
https://twitter.com/benmyers29/status/1222613287092785159
In Toronto, the number of bedrooms per year built peaked in 2001, and went down to below half that by 2019. The housing crisis happened because demand went up and supply went down. Nothing more, nothing less. And the reason supply went down isn’t “corporation” or “investors”, it’s municipal governments that made housing illegal and the provinces that enabled them.
Don’t take my word for it, see this video of deposition by Mark Richardson of Housing Now TO (an affordable housing builder):
https://mastodon.social/@Pxtl/110300343308877005
See, he’s not trying to build market housing, he’s trying to build subsidized, low-cost housing. And the municipal government is blocking him at every turn, with “guidelines which are treated like they’re cast in stone”.
Ok. If you live in Toronto, then I understand where you’re coming from. Toronto has some major zoning issues. There are many single family homes in Toronto that should have been changed into multi unit residential housing a long time ago. Your comment makes sense for Toronto.
But don’t think it applies everywhere in Canada.
I live in Hamilton, which is outside of the GTA but is well-within the Toronto housing market’s blast-radius. It happens everywhere in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area, which is about 20% of all Canadians. And I follow the housing news in greater Ottawa and greater Vancouver, which represent another 10% of the population put together.
So from my perspective, at least a 30% of Canada has NIMBY political problems, and the rest of Canada is dealing with the people being pushed out of those areas.