Amazing Zoltan on X - "Reporter: "How do you make housing more affordable?"
Jagmeet Singh: "By making 100% of the housing affordable."
Reporter: "How though?"
Singh: "I've talked to a whole bunch of people who told me 'I can't afford luxury condos"
Singh brings nothing to the table on this subject."
The left value words over action, so
Jennifer Keesmaat on X - "I've talked to three left leaning politicians in as many days who now recognize/acknowledge:
1) they have said no to housing developments that they should have approved
2) they were hung up on the wrong issues (i.e. shadows) that they now see were NIMBY tools for keeping newcomers out
3) they made housing more expensive by adding consultation ad nauseam to the approvals process, and it did nothing to improve the project, but rather just gave some loud mouths a platform
4) all affordable housing built in the city in the past 20 years, while not enough, was still effectively and successfully built by the private sector
These are big realizations! Maybe change is on the horizon."
Damn greedy developers!
NDP's Housing Joke - "Jagmeet Singh has launched another attack on the Federal Liberals’ record, attacking them for supporting the building of airquotes “luxury” condos in Edmonton. It’s a nonsense tautology that ignores that some of the housing in the specific project he’s attacking is actually sub-market priced housing done in consultation with local First Nations communities but more importantly, it’s moronic idiocy. Building more fucking housing will help alleviate the housing crisis, because even if we accept that these are luxury condos, moving rich people from existing housing to new “luxury” housing frees up their old units for everyone else. I am not a housing expert, but Singh’s policy is literally so stupid that it flies in the face of all basic economics. If you want to lower housing prices, there’s three things you can do; massively lower demand for housing (read: slash immigration levels and then freeze them there for at least half a decade), incentivize private builders to increase the number of units available in the market (by building up, aka apartment buildings and condos), or build a metric shitton of non-market public housing. The latter idea is a good one, but there’s a lack of follow through from Jagmeet on how he’d pay for it whenever he sort of hints at supporting it. He’s yet to come out for reductions in immigration, which are needed. And he consistently attacks private builders increasing density for reasons passing understanding. Plainly, he’s either an idiot, or playing one for the cameras... Jagmeet is incredibly sanctimonious, incredibly holier than thou, and incredibly willing to say things that just aren’t true. The thing about him is whether this is in some ways an act doesn’t actually matter, because either way it’s really fucking bad. Jagmeet’s housing policy would make the crisis worse, full stop. Even if he committed to mass public building, it would still make things worse because an unfunded liability of the scale that would make a dent into the capacity crisis on an ongoing basis would cause the Canadian debt to trade at somewhere between 3 and 10 times their current levels, bankrupting the entire economy. Jagmeet is either a dangerously stupid man, substantially stupider than even the dumbest Tory MP in the history of this country, or he’s a liar. He’s either genuinely an idiot or he’s lying to the country in an effort to make housing worse to boost the electoral prospects of his party. If you have a strong opinion about which of those would be worse, great – I don’t, because in either scenario he needs to be gotten rid of. He is a joke, a mockery... this is actually truly poisonous to political trust in this country. The NDP is supposed to be better than the Liberals, it is supposed to be what the Liberals fail to be. Where the Liberals are arrogant liars, the NDP are supposed to be honest truth tellers. The Liberals support the corporate interest while the NDP stands up for workers. The Liberals care about getting elected, while the NDP care about doing things for people. Well, right now the NDP are standing with rich homeowners over workers unable to live where they work, they’re lying about the housing crisis instead of telling the truth, and they’re playing politics with a policy crisis. They’re frauds, because they elected a man who cares more about his vanity than his country."
Left wingers want everyone to live in a government slum. They rather have no housing than "luxury" housing since only "affordable" housing should be built
Justice_Queen ⚖️ 🔰🪬 on X - "Jagmeet you repeatedly call condos "luxury" when its more affordable than SFH. You barely have spoken up about international students & their housing conditions - a failure to your own community. And your wife owns a rental is that also luxury? It certainly is not social housing."
Plus housing in Edmonton is already quite affordable
Low-energy Jagmeet Singh is squandering what should be an NDP moment - "if the Conservatives don’t have all the answers, well, the Liberals have been in power for eight years. And according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) statistics released this week we’re constructing seven-per-cent fewer homes nationwide in 2023 than we did in 2022. Only very recently did the Liberals suddenly get serious on this file, deploying one of their only conspicuously competent ministers to the portfolio, withholding federal money for housing projects that succumb to NIMBY influences and holding press conferences whenever and wherever possible. Trouble is, people notice the numbers associated with these announcements and roll their eyes. Last week, Justin Trudeau went to Guelph, Ont. and boasted of federal money dedicated to “fast-tracking about 750 new housing units in the next couple of years.” A two-bedroom condo in Guelph within walking distance of the GO train, which gets you to Toronto in a glacial 90 minutes, is currently on the market for $679,900. In Guelph. That city is many more than a few hundred extra units from sanity. What Poilievre has tapped into here isn’t just the number-one issue of our time — when the Liberals are mooting limiting immigration, you know they’ve made a hell of a mess — but anger at the politicians at every level who sat back and let it happen. Show this moment in the abstract to a socialist political science professor, and he would tell you this was a perfect moment for an NDP breakthrough. Many younger, ideological leftists are practically on their knees begging Singh to bust out of the political centre and go full-on class war. Maybe that’s what he was trying to do in a video released this week in which he tears a strip off a new housing development in Edmonton’s Griesbach neighbourhood. Instead he pretty much united the country in frustration. “Only 13 per cent of the homes … will be affordable,” he says of the development. “(Trudeau) is building luxury condos you can’t afford,” Singh tweeted along with the video. “With his plan … developers get rich, you get gouged.” Federal money in Griesbach is funding two projects. One, by the City of Edmonton Non-Profit Housing Corp., will feature 85 rental units, with 43 designated for “affordable use” — “predominantly for recent immigrants, women fleeing violence with their children and low-income families,” per a city staff report. The other, by Métis Capital Housing Corporation, will (per CMHC) “consist of approximately 127 units for Métis and other Indigenous individuals and families, including 50 units dedicated to women and children fleeing violence.” This is the development Singh goes after? What the bloody hell? Even if the developments did include “luxury condos,” the term “luxury condo” is progressive language from the 1980s, when Prosecco-o’clock socialists tended to see new highrises as a sort of stain on proper urban living. Yuppies lived in condos. In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gecko’s underlings lived in condos. It was terrible. I was 11 years old when Wall Street was released. I’m 47 now. Nobody younger than me has any familiarity with this world view. They just want somewhere they can live where they might be able to build a bit of capital, as most of their parents did. As economist Mike Moffatt observed on X, for just about anyone under 40 and unaided by generational wealth, condos are starter homes"
I see many left wingers still hating on "luxury condos", and most of them seem to be young
Jennifer Keesmaat on X - "The myth of the "luxury" condo squashed with data. Condos are entry level homes, affordable homes, and retirement/downsizing homes. This is rhetoric meant to inflame and dive. Reminds me of the 'downtown elite' rhetoric: We squashed this again and again with data: 23% of residents in the downtown core live below the poverty line. The majority of residents in downtown do not own a car. It's where the majority of our affordable housing and social services in the city are located."
Thread by @MikePMoffatt on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I wasn't going to weigh into this, but since everyone else is... here goes. The myth of the "luxury condo", particularly outside of the GTA and GVA, needs to die. Condos *are* affordable homes. It's non-condos that are luxury housing. And I can prove it... with data... 81% of the units in the least expensive category are condos. And in the most expensive category? *4%* are condos."
Cap on international students is here. But can it fix the housing crisis? - "Whitzman said the notion that “teeming masses are going to break down the doors” was rooted in racist fears around immigration... Whitzman said the big flaw in Canadian housing policy is that it does not count large swathes of people when it comes to measuring something called core housing need... Rho said there are horror stories of 10-12 students living in basements in crowded, unsafe conditions. “The crisis is simply the fact that people are coming into the country and are denied basic rights and protections.”... She said provinces and municipalities also need to share the burden, by implementing rent control, funding student housing and ending exclusionary zoning"
Supply and demand are racist
Given that the current definition of housing need already says supply is inadequate, I'm sure changing the definition will solve the problem
Clearly bringing even more students into the country will mean that they don't need to squeeze together, and having rent control in conjunction with making it impossible to evict tenants will incentivise more housing
Interest rates not to blame for housing crisis, Macklem says - "Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says the central bank can't solve the housing crisis with interest rates because the root cause is a supply shortage... The governor acknowledged that high interest rates are feeding into higher housing costs, but he noted that shelter price inflation has remained high during times of both low and high interest rates... Macklem said government should be focused on increasing housing supply to improve affordability, and warns policies that increase demand will worsen it... The Bank of Canada has singled out rapidly rising shelter costs as the primary reason why inflation is still above the two per cent target... Rent prices in Canada soared last year as supply struggled to keep up with demand, leading to the lowest national vacancy rate on record since the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. began tracking that data in 1988."
Clearly, it's all the fault of over a decade of low interest rates, which is why Japan, which has had super low rates since 1994 and negative interest rates since 2016, has the most explosive housing market in the world. Or maybe it's because in Japan they're not "greedy"
Brampton apartment listing seeks girl to share a bed with a boy and do all of the cooking - "the new renter will have to take on some responsibilities that feel pretty sexist, including cooking and overall "good behaviour." "Girl must know cooking, rest of the work boy will do," the landlord writes in the listing, adding that the washroom and kitchen are both shared, of course, in addition to the single room... The Toronto area has seen its fair share of horror listings lately, with spaces that have makeshift rooms with sheets as walls, beds in kitchens and some generally grim and unlivable conditions. Many geared toward international students, in particular, have multiple beds in one room, while other renters have tried to lease out half of their own bed or bedroom."
Apparently it's sexist for men to do household chores
Clearly more regulation and rent control will increase the supply of housing, so multiple people won't have to share a room
Dr. Mike P. Moffatt 🇨🇦🏅🏅 on X - "The Feds are completely asleep when it comes to releasing housing data:
- CMHC completions data getting worse
- Statcan hasn’t updated population projections in 18 months
- IRCC refuses to publish student visa data at institutional level Etc. etc.
An underrated cause of Canada’s housing crisis is the refusal of all three orders of government to release timely data, to allow researchers and analysts to alert policymakers about problems on the horizon."
Vancouver ‘cannot complain’ about high home prices while limiting development, French urbanist says - "Vancouver’s dizzying home prices will never come back down to earth until the city uses its limited land more efficiently, said the French writer and urbanist Alain Bertaud at a recent event in the city. Bertaud is the author of the book “Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities,” which argues that city planners should rely more on urban economics to dictate how a city develops, rather than arbitrary planning. Bertaud, who is a critic of land-use regulations in many cities, says much of Vancouver’s land is only zoned for single-family homes, which he says is a very inefficient way of using land. “Unless land is used extremely efficiently, there will be a shortage of land and therefore very high land prices,” says Bertaud. “One measure of housing affordability is the number of years of salary that a household needs in order to pay for a house, one of the highest in the world is in Vancouver.”... “I’m not saying it’s correct or incorrect, maybe high housing prices are a choice of the people,” says Bertaud. “But they cannot complain about high housing prices and at the same time, drastically limit the amount of land available (for development).” Owen Brady, a director with Abundant Housing Vancouver who attended Bertaud’s talk, agreed with his thesis that overly strict zoning regulations are detrimental to a city’s development. He also agrees that market mechanisms are an effective way to get more housing built. “Much of what gets said at public hearings is cheap talk. Market mechanisms are people voting with their dollars,” says Brady. “People wanting to share land to reduce their housing costs would be able to collectively outbid wealthier people who prefer single-family homes, except that it is generally illegal for them to do so.” Bertaud also notes that Vancouver’s proximity to the ocean and the mountains further constrains the amount of land that can be developed. He stresses that a city’s labour market is vital to its productivity and that there are consequences for many of its younger residents leaving Vancouver... Many opponents of densification cite concerns about altering the character of their neighborhoods, or accuse proponents of densification as tools of wealthy developers. “There’s a lot of hostility and a lot of lack of understanding of it,” says Sullivan. “It will take a while, I hope that we can move forward because it is harming so many people.”"
Opinion: Costly construction isn’t the culprit behind unaffordable housing. Costly land is - "In Toronto and Vancouver, the implementation of international urban planning principles, particularly those promoting anti-sprawl measures like greenbelts and agricultural preserves, has led to unprecedented price hikes. This “urban containment” approach has consistently driven up land values where it has been adopted. And high land values rather than increased construction costs are what explain the substantial disparity between severely unaffordable and more budget-friendly markets. Land restriction creates what amount to land cartels. A now smaller number of landowners gain windfall profits, which, of course, encourages speculation. Maintaining or restoring affordability requires eliminating windfall profits by ensuring a competitive market for land... What’s the solution? Give up on urban containment and make more land available for housing. But wouldn’t that threaten the natural environment, as critics of Ontario’s recent attempt to allow development of a sliver of its greenbelt argued? Not at all. It’s true that land under cultivation in Canada has been declining steadily over the years. But the culprit is improved agricultural productivity, not urban expansion"
Damn greedy developers and landlords!
New housing is crucial, yes, but businesses also need urban land - "Everyone knows about the housing shortage, but municipalities are facing pent-up demand for employment lands. In my community of Markham, Ont., which straddles Highway 407 north and east of Toronto, the current vacancy rate for industrial space is a tight 1.1 per cent, and that’s with more than 500,000 square feet of space either under construction or scheduled for it. Such shortages are common throughout southern Ontario. The health of our cities and our economic prosperity are directly related to how businesses start, grow and adapt. If space for new businesses is not available, opportunities will drift elsewhere and jobs with them."
Meme - Arielle Kayabaga @KayabagaArielle: "Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party is making fun of the fact that for many millennials the path towards homeownership hasn't been easy, I'm in a privileged position but my story is actually one that so many Canadians, and immigrant families have experienced.
Conservative Party @CPCHQ: "After 8 years of Trudeau, even a Liberal MP can't afford a home."
"EVEN TRUDEAU'S OWN MP CAN'T AFFORD A HOME
I'm 32 years old, I'm a member of Parliament. I haven't been able to purchase a home." - Liberal MP, Arielle Kayabaga
Viva Frei @thevivafrei: "It is absurdly disingenuous of you to criticize your political adversary for accurately quoting you, while highlighting the very problem you were complaining about. Liberalism truly is a mental disorder.
"ON A HOUSING PLAN
"I'm sort of sad that we're still talking about the same things... Why has housing continued to be the most pressing issue? I think it's because there's so many players that need to be at the table," said London West, Ont. MP Arielle Kayabaga. "I'm 32 years old, I'm a member of Parliament. I haven't been able to purchase a home. I came here to this country as a refugee, I've been a single mom for the last 14 years... So, it's not just a fight of... politicking. These are personal fights for some people, and they matter, and we need to see more housing for Canadians.""
Canadian Housing Affordability 2nd Worst In History, Recession To Follow: BMO - "“Looking ahead, note that the three prior spikes in unaffordability (early 1980s, early 1990s, and 2007/08) were followed in short order by Canadian recessions,” Porter notes. As shelter costs rise, it diverts funds from more productive areas like investing and consumption. The result is households have lower cash flow, leading to shrinking revenues for businesses."
The Liberal Party is largely responsible for mass migration and the housing crisis: here are the stats : TorontoRealEstate - "the housing they want is hyper density apartment complexes on public transit routes. Terrible places to raise a family and live, Canadians shouldn’t be forced to do that and lower our standard of living so corporations can make extra money and raise our population to 100 million... I’ll take a small but reasonable detached single family home rather than a cockroach infested social housing unit."
So many entitled people out there believing everyone has the god-given right to live in a single family home. He also goes on about how apartment living is like the third world (poor Europe)
Opinion: Why can’t Canada just let in more immigrants who can build houses? - The Globe and Mail - "Support for immigration in Canada is eroding in the wake of an unprecedented lack of affordable housing. Calls to cut immigration are growing and the concerns are not entirely without merit. But there is a more elegant solution than restricting immigration across the board. We should let in a much greater portion of immigrants who can build houses. Canada simply doesn’t have enough workers to construct homes, and this has produced a critical bottleneck in developing housing supply. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce said that nearly half of manufacturing and construction companies suffer from labour shortages. Benjamin Tal, the deputy chief economist of CIBC, estimates there are 80,000 vacancies in the industry, a number which is expected to reach nearly 300,000 by 2032 because of a rapidly aging labour force. This has contributed to soaring construction costs, limited supply, and thus an affordability crisis... Welcoming foreigners en masse certainly can’t help, especially if they have neither the background nor the desire to work in construction. Furthermore, the optics of doing so while existing Canadians are being priced out is damaging for the long-run sustainability of immigration. If the leadership cannot persuasively argue immigrants are helping rather than hurting on this front, the country’s flagship love for immigration is under threat. While the government is aware of these challenges, it is far too optimistic that its current immigration plan will address them... out of over 100,000 people let in annually under the EE program for the past few years, Canada has never taken in more than 565 permanent residents under the FSTP. Additionally, while construction drillers, mechanics and supervisors can qualify for FSTP, general-purpose labourers notably do not. When we consider all paths to permanent residency, the picture remains bleak. CIBC estimates that only 2 per cent of all immigrants go into the construction sector and that this number is falling. Even among temporary foreign workers only 11 per cent do so. Canada does not need fewer immigrants; it needs the right ones. There is a “third way” for those of us who still believe in the talent and diversity that immigrants bring to Canada, while also acknowledging the additional demand stresses that come with new people if they are not simultaneously contributing to housing supply. In principle, immigration ought to follow a “multiplier” rule until the crisis abates; more than one living unit built per new immigrant. It would take roughly 30 times the existing number of immigrants in construction over a decade to fill the labour gap in the sector. The scale of this challenge implies the need for a drastic reform. Canada must raise the blue-collar proportion of incoming cohorts without significantly increasing the rate of immigration overall... The fact is our immigration strategy currently does not value construction and trade work nearly enough. It is no coincidence that construction labourers make more than many entry-level bachelor degree holders"
If they come you will build it — Canada’s construction labour shortage - "There are currently just under 1.6 million construction workers in Canada, representing almost 8% of total employment, evenly split between residential and non-residential construction. That’s roughly 200K fewer workers than in the manufacturing sector... despite the booming housing market of the past decade, the share of construction employment in the total labour market has not risen in a way that is consistent with that growth... And it’s likely to get worse. The Canadian labour market is aging and the construction sector is no exception. The share of construction workers over the age of 55 is now at a record high, and given that the average retirement age in construction is notably lower than what’s seen in the rest of the economy, the demographic issue is much more pronounced"
Clearly the solution to the housing crisis is importing more IT professionals and retail staff
Canada Mortgage Costs Surge: Lenders Demand Delinquent Homeowners Pay - Bloomberg
Port Coquitlam mayor blasts federal government's immigration policy - "Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West is speaking out on the latest population growth numbers in B.C. and across the country. “My message to the federal government is they’ve got to come back to reality,” said West. B.C. has seen a record-setting net international migration of more than 150,000 people so far in 2023. It’s part of a larger national trend(opens in a new tab), with Canada surpassing the 40 million population mark. “The number is overwhelming,” West told CTV News. “You cannot build enough to keep up with the number of people who are seeking housing.” One economist told CTV News the rise in temporary foreign workers and international students has had an impact on the Lower Mainland’s soaring rental prices... “One of the most important things that we need to understand is that immigration is a source of opportunity of growth, of economic advantage for Canada,” said Trudeau at a housing funding press event on Dec. 15... Federal conservative leader Pierre Poilievre hasn’t announced a formal immigration plan, but recently said he would link immigration numbers with housing builds."
Declining GDP per capita is an economic advantage
Clearly there is no proof that Poilievre will reduce immigration, even though under Trudeau immigration far outpaces housing builds
Canada's immigration surge cancels out housing promises - "Say that you carved out an uninhabited piece of northern Saskatchewan and between July 1 and Oct. 1 you directed every single newcomer to move there and found a new city. By Oct. 2, that would be Canada’s 11th largest metro area; larger than Victoria, Halifax, Windsor or Saskatoon. More than a few economists have noted that Canada is now essentially bringing in a large city’s worth of people every quarter. “That’s like presto, here’s a new city of London, Ont., created in one quarter. Or almost a new city of Hamilton,” was the analysis of one Scotiabank economist, who also opined “immigration is excessive full stop.”... In just two years, Canada’s population of “non-permanent residents” has doubled to 2.5 million. That’s a population larger than all of Atlantic Canada composed of people who cannot vote, are mostly ineligible for government services and can be deported at any time. In the critical words of one analyst, Canada is building a “feudal underclass of temporary workers.” In 2014 — the last full year before the election of Justin Trudeau — Canada welcomed 260,400 immigrants. And that was really high for the time. As Statistics Canada noted, it was “one of the highest levels in more than 100 years.” The figure easily ranked then-prime minister Stephen Harper as the most pro-immigration conservative leader on the planet. A mere nine years later, 260,000 is a drop in the bucket. At current rates, that would account for just 52 days’ worth of immigration. Polls are clear that one of the main reasons Canadians are turning against the Trudeau government is because housing keeps reaching meteoric new highs of unaffordability. And so, Trudeau has been spending an inordinate amount of time in recent months flying around the country to promote his Housing Accelerator Fund — a system of providing cash rewards to municipalities that greenlight more housing. According to the absolute best-case scenario envisioned by Liberal planners, this fund could build 100,000 new homes by 2025. If each of the homes ends up being occupied by three people — the average Canadian household size — this means that the Trudeau government’s signature homebuilding policy will only provide enough shelter space for approximately 60 days’ worth of new migrants. One particularly telling statistic from last year was that Canada brought in roughly the same raw number of migrants as the United States — a country 10 times the size (and one with far more reasonable real estate prices). And that’s despite the fact that U.S. net migration is hitting 10-year highs. In almost all of Canada’s industrialized peer countries, immigration is actually being dialled down. Australia recently announced it is cutting its immigration intake in half. The U.K. just announced a plan to “slash migration levels.” Canada, by contrast, is set to end 2023 with the highest population growth rate in the developed world and it’s not even close. Given that it took just three months for the Canadian population to surge by one per cent, we could end 2023 with a population growth rate of more than three per cent. To find countries with anything near a three per cent annual growth rate, you typically have to look at high-fertility countries in the poorest corners of sub-Saharan Africa such as Angola or Uganda."
Clearly, Harper is to blame for high immigration and Trudeau didn't increase it