Kevin Vuong π¨π¦π️ on X - "500,000 homes per year requires:
— 1,369 homes built per day
— 57 homes built per hour
— 0.95 homes built per minute
Listen, I’m no central bank governor, but I can do simple math. This #housing promise was ridiculous when @JustinTrudeau made it, and it’s just as ludicrous now. I’m not much of a sloganeer, but it’s election season! I believe the appropriate #cdnpoli slogan here is: #JustLikeJustin."
The MacPhail Report - by Russil Wvong - "It takes a long time to build more housing in response to high rents ("supply responsiveness"), because of delays in getting approval from local governments. That's the root cause. The report recommends setting time limits.
Incentives for local governments are backwards. Any major project requires a rezoning, and they negotiate to get 70-80% of the increase in land value. This means that local governments benefit from keeping land prices high. The report recommends finding some other way to finance local governments."
Opinion: Vancouver is not a bonsai plant, so just let it grow - "This past Sunday saw an angry crowd gather outside Vancouver City Hall. Infuriated by the City of Vancouver’s plan to allow 30,000 new homes along the new SkyTrain extension, various Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) groups came together to demand a pause on the Broadway Plan, in the name of preserving their nostalgic view of Mount Pleasant and Kitsilano’s quiet, tree-lined, residential streets. The fight over the Broadway Plan is a familiar one to those who follow Vancouver politics and is emblematic of something I call “Bonsai Vancouver.” Bonsai, if you’re not familiar, is a Japanese art form in which an artist takes a young sapling and, with a pair of shears, prunes it down to their desired size... It’s remarkably reminiscent of how the City of Vancouver has treated its neighbourhoods over the years. At some point in the past century, Vancouver decided that the end goal was a perfectly manicured city. Vancouverites were promised access to a quiet, suburban low-rise house — white picket fence and all — with unobstructed views of our mountains, oceans, and forests. To deliver on this promise, the City picked up its shears and set to work. Apartments were banned on over three-quarters of residential land, and restrictive view cones were instituted to limit the skyline, while larger buildings had floors slashed away for fear of casting their shadows darkening the sidewalks below. Today, any branches, buds, or leaves that don’t fit into this vision of a picturesque urban bonsai are now rapidly hacked away. Bonsai Vancouver has become such a key part of our city’s identity that it’s now self-regulating. Fearing the loss of the perfectly designed neighbourhoods they were promised, NIMBY municipal parties and neighbourhood associations have wholeheartedly joined in the pruning process, reacting furiously to even the mildest suggestion of increased height or density. While high-rise towers have been a particular focus of NIMBY ire, even low-rise apartment buildings with six storeys or less — the same ones Broadway Plan opponents now claim to want — have been repeatedly cancelled in the face of neighbourhood opposition. The thing about bonsai, however, is that your sapling is a living thing — one that still wants to grow. Bonsai artists must constantly trim their trees to prevent natural growth from ruining their deliberately cultivated aesthetic. So it is with Bonsai Vancouver, with the notable difference that this city wants to grow much bigger and faster than even the most ambitious tree... Unfortunately, Bonsai Vancouver has been so effective over the last century at pruning its new branches that the city has very few places available to grow. A Vancouver City Hall less hostile to apartments might have allowed its neighbourhoods to adapt to increased demand by gently upzoning over the years, allowing people to fill into modest apartment units rather than vying for space in a limited number of single-family detached houses. Instead, an obstinate insistence on preserving low-density neighbourhoods has left the city with a very small supply of homes to serve a rapidly growing population, plunging us into our current housing crisis. Developers are now stuck trying to fit decades of pent-up demand onto smaller and smaller parcels of land, resulting in the 20+ storey towers NIMBYs so love to hate. In the end, life finds a way, and Bonsai Vancouver’s endless attempts to stamp out new growth have resulted in only the strongest and most obtrusive branches breaking through... A well-kept bonsai is a beautiful thing to look at, but Vancouver deserves better than a strange, stunted, ornamental half-life. If we want to live in a great city, we must let it grow."
History shows Liberals' new housing plan failed the last time it was implemented - "Canada also has an interventionist history that has been questionable at times. For example, the Liberal government played the bogeyman approach to housing challenges instead of looking in the mirror to realize that its immigration policies were a significant contributor. To make things worse, the bogeymen were largely attacked through the taxation system... In case the above strokes of genius weren’t enough, the Liberals are now reaching back to a flawed 1970s’ playbook. Last week, they announced that they would “get back into the business of housing” by building 500,000 homes per year . You don’t need a grade 12 diploma or, in Mark Carney’s case, a PhD in economics to realize that such a target is simple bluster. Anyone who believes this is an achievable target should spend five minutes with our country’s great entrepreneurial homebuilders , since most will give you an earful on how unrealistic such a plan is. Buried in that announcement was a statement that the Liberals would like to resurrect a 1970s’ tax-shelter program to try to encourage rental property construction: the multiple unit residential building (MURB) program. Investors in certified MURB projects were allowed to claim accelerated capital cost allowance — essentially, depreciation — on the building and use those deductions to create or increase a rental loss for tax purposes. Those paper losses could be deducted against the investor’s other income, thereby sheltering that income from tax. This favourable tax treatment was intended to attract private capital into rental housing by improving after-tax returns. The MURB program did cause rental construction, but it came with some significant behavioural consequences. The Liberals’ recent announcement boasted that the MURB program helped produce almost 200,000 units from 1974 to 1981. However, a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. report in March 1981 said, “Estimates prepared in the course of this study indicate that at the end of 1980 there was a total of 170,000 MURB dwelling units either completed or under construction in Canada.” But the report made it clear that those estimates should not be interpreted as implying that the MURB provision stimulated additional rental starts. That’s a distinction with a difference. The report also said MURB projects were more expensive because investors valued the tax benefits and that it was not an efficient mechanism for promoting rental investment. It called the program a stopgap measure that didn’t solve the fundamental issues of high development costs and low rental yields. The main beneficiaries of the MURB program were found to be developers, promoters and investors with high marginal tax rates. Many investors were buying MURB investments simply for the tax shelter, with little to no consideration of the investment issues. “It appears likely that, if left to its own devices, the rental market would have begun to respond to the excess demand on its own — albeit at higher rents,” the report said. Yep, letting the market deal with supply and demand is almost always the most appropriate answer. Given the above, the famous Allan MacEachen budget on Nov. 12, 1981, terminated the MURB program for any new projects. In 1987, the complete repeal of the MURB program was announced and phased out over a three-year period. In other words, the MURB program’s economic and social benefits did not exceed nor justify its costs. Revisionist history has been quite popular in recent years. In the present case, having the Liberals think that resuscitating the MURB tax shelter is a good idea conveniently ignores historical facts and experiences. The study of history isn’t just a hobby; it’s a guide. If Carney truly understood history — or basic economics — he’d understand that real solutions come from unleashing market forces, not failed government tax vanity projects dressed up as housing plans."
Housing starts stuck at 1970s levels, despite pop. surge, study finds - "annual housing starts from 2022 to 2024 almost perfectly mirrored starts from 1972 to 1974, despite the country’s population growing more than three times faster."
Canada needs more homes. Prefabricated houses could fill the void : r/canadahousing - "I was a framing carpenter for a few years -- have worked on around 100 houses. Also built a few pre-fab buildings -- mostly seniors homes and student residences. I think pre-fab is being oversold, for the following reasons:
1. It already exists and has been around for decades. If it were really that much more efficient than normal techniques, then industry would be using it more already.
2. The trades don't like pre-fab because it involves lifting heavier materials and spending relatively more time on the roof. It takes the easier and more relaxing parts of the job away, leaving the more difficult and dangerous stuff.
3. Pre-fab requires a boom truck to be on site much longer. This costs money and creates bottlenecks.
4. Framing carpenters are not the bottleneck in the housing supply. A crew of four can build a modest house in about a week (~$7K in labour) and a McMansion in around 3 weeks (~$25K in labour).
In sum, pre-fab has some uses in larger buildings and already exists for those purposes. But there are a bunch of people who have never built a house before acting like pre-fab will solve all of our problems. It won't."
Who pays more for infrastructure and services in the GTA — the new home buyer or average ratepayer? - "The development charge system in Ontario has existed for more than 30 years. DCs are levied by municipalities on all types of development, including new homes, to offset the cost of roads, transit, emergency, water, sewer, and other services. What began as a small charge in the late 1990s has ballooned to more than $125,000 on a new single-family home in many GTA municipalities. DCs, by design, serve a useful purpose in establishing housing-supportive infrastructure, but now too much cost is being shifted to the new home buyer, thereby undermining affordability, and distorting the type and supply of new housing coming to market... In terms of public transportation, a new home buyer (based on the blended product type) paid $2,875 toward the Spadina subway extension — regardless of the home’s proximity to the transit corridor and whether its owner used that line. Additionally, the average home buyer paid another $34,877 for public transit. Conversely, the average ratepayer paid $542 toward transit. The $34,877 is equivalent to what a typical ratepayer would pay in 64 years through taxes; equivalent to 10,411 Toronto Transit Commission fares of $3.35 or equal to riding the TTC once a day for 28.5 years. To support roads, water, and waste water infrastructure, an average new home in Toronto paid $33024 compared to $700 in capital investments and financing paid by the average ratepayer. The DC is the equivalent of 47 years of annual taxes paid in one shot. The new home buyer contributed $13,287 toward parks and recreation while the ratepayer paid $324 for “other city operations,” which is broader than just parks and recreation. In one payment, the new home buyer paid what an existing ratepayer would pay in 41 years. Only for police, emergency services and social services is there any semblance of balance... There must be some cost split and new home buyers should pay their fair share, but roads, water infrastructure, parks and recreation, and transit services benefit everyone"
Opinion: Governments add red tape to stuff they want to suffocate — housing and bike lanes - "On a street like Craven, backyard tiny homes aren’t tucked away out of sight but sit right in people’s faces. Someone on Craven complained to their local city councillor — it might literally have been a single someone; Toronto is a city of 3 million people governed by elected officials congenitally incapable of applying any kind of filter to matters like this — and Paula Fletcher sprang into action. At last week’s council meeting, she introduced a successful motion asking staff to look at restricting permissions to build secondary suites on the street opposite Craven. Even Toronto’s perpetually overburdened staff should find this an easy report to write: since the city expanded its permissions, the province has followed up with legislation requiring municipalities to legalize these kinds of secondary suites on all residential properties. Fletcher and a majority of city council have asked staff to do something contrary to provincial law, and staff should (politely, deferentially) tell council to go pound sand. That said, it’s possible that staff will come back to council with a report outlining creative ways to restrict secondary suites without outright breaching the letter of provincial law. Cities put a lot of time and effort into finding legally creative ways to thwart provincial policy, and it’s possible we’ll see that here. More infuriating is that laneway houses are hardly an uncontrolled Wild West in Toronto: they’re still subject to city planning and to public hearings through the city’s committee of adjustment. They’re “permitted,” but not in the sense that you’re permitted to throw a ball around in a public park or borrow a library book. The process involved is still what a normal person would call lengthy and onerous. And there’s no guarantee that the committee of adjustment will approve even modest projects. Here, we need only look at the case of 91 Barton Avenue, also in Toronto, and a modest proposal to build infill apartments at walking distance to a subway station. This is also perhaps the only case of a committee-of-adjustment file achieving national prominence: the federal Conservatives (correctly) used it as an example of the city’s obstructing housing even as it was demanding — and receiving — billions of dollars from other orders of government in the name of easing the housing crisis. Last week, 91 Barton was finally approved in an appeals process, many months after it should have received permission to proceed. Both Craven Road and 91 Barton are what happens when housing is the opposite of a human right — when the entire administrative bureaucracy of housing production exists to say no first and only second to negotiate what will be allowed on a case-by-case basis. Planners have spent a generation trying to find ways to add “gentle density” in North American cities — the kinds of infill housing that are modest enough that they won’t set off a war with local NIMBYs. In 2024, perhaps, we can finally admit that this is a doomed endeavour: there is apparently no type of density gentle enough that it won’t be fought by someone, so the answer is to build a planning and legal system that doesn’t privilege the voices of the already comfortably housed. This kind of talk tends to give progressives the heebie-jeebies, as they see it as a Trojan Horse for a right-wing, deregulatory agenda."
Why the condo market is plummeting during a housing crisis : r/canadahousing - "Well then they should take the hit for taking the risk? They made the decision. If it fails even with all the help from govt then its a failed enterprise isnt it? Thats how stocks and investments work. There is risk involved, opposite that, profit to be had. Make good decisions, win! Make bad ones, lose! Massively wealthy developers SHOULD NOT get help from govt in regard to further privatizing housing. They can eat the risk, like everyone else. And F their margins anyways. We obviously dont need the condos we have as it is, so what service are they providing to society other than extracting wealth?"
"Again, the money has to come from somewhere, and it is not coming from the government at the amounts we need. Large amounts of housing can come from developers, but only if they like the deal, or they will go somewhere else."
Yet another example of a left winger who hates investors more than he loves people more housing will help. He is of course also unable to understand why higher margins are needed to compensate for the higher risk that he's keen for investors to shoulder
CHNA just broke all the records by building a 10-storey apartment in only 28 hours : r/canadahousing - "best we can do is 58 months"
"Rookie numbers, I think we can get even higher if we say the environmental impact assessment is only valid for 18 months then has to be re-submitted"
CHNA just broke all the records by building a 10-storey apartment in only 28 hours : r/canadahousing - "Yep, And I'm sure it was all done by well-paid, voluntary labor, with full consideration for their safety and entirely on par with Canadian building standards, practices, and environmental regulations."
"Exactly. Comparing labourers from a country with 800 million expendable lives and zero safety regulations with Canada, even with all it's short comings, is not an adequate comparison."
"China does have safety regulations. What are you on about?"
"In Myers book The Cleanest Race, an ideological analysis of the DPRK through official propaganda, it is suggested by the author that the regime presents itself as a victim of external aggression and domestic mismanagement because the North Korean people are too morally righteous and pure to compromise itself and make pragmatic changes. It's interesting to see that Canada has it's own version of this, but condescendingly Orientalist."
"Just because it's from another country doesn't mean they don't have regulations. Their structures need to survive earthquakes just as much as ours, and their builders get hounded for bad practices more than ours."
"arrogance and prejudice towards other countries will not bring development to Canada."
Clearly, the rest of the world including Japan and Western Europe use slave labour and their buildings will crumble in a few years
Municipal climate plans under threat by new Ontario housing bill, critics say - "A spokesperson for Ontario's housing minister says changes under Bill 17, introduced this month, would "clarify" that municipalities don't have the authority to "require their own unique standards that supersedes the Ontario building code." "This will help standardize construction requirements and provide consistency, setting the same set of rules for everyone in Ontario, leading to faster approvals and reduced costs," wrote Alexandra Sanita, press secretary for Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack."
Time to blame greedy developers for pricey housing
Opinion: Will Canadians buy the pre-fab housing Ottawa wants to sell them? - "good instincts won’t save a policy that ignores how manufacturing does or doesn’t scale. In Sweden, where nearly half of new homes are modular, factories reached profitability only after two decades of continuous output. In Canada, the sector still has just a low single-digit market share, and even industry veterans concede that pre-fab will remain more expensive on most projects until volumes rise. It’s hardly the overnight bargain voters are being sold. The good news, however, is that the pitfalls are predictable and avoidable. Our “national” building code is anything but. Door-width rules change at provincial borders, and snow-load formulas vary by municipality. An assembly line designed for Ontario stalls the moment a B.C. buyer orders a tweak. Unless governments and the industry fast-track a single, harmonized code, BCH could spend billions subsidizing bespoke production lines that never hit efficient rates of output. Another challenge is labour. Traditional builders can lay off crews when a recession hits. But a robot-filled factory saddled with municipal permitting delays can’t go idle nearly as cheaply. You can’t park half-built bungalows in a field the way Tesla stores excess inventory. Walls warp, and warranties die. The Liberals hinted that BCH might step in as an “anchor buyer” during downturns, but details on that are thin — and most likely haven’t been worked out yet. Canada’s previous pre-fab waves — during post-war boom in the late 1940s and in the 1970s energy crisis — collapsed when demand cooled. Without a counter-cyclical safety net, those shiny pre-fab plants risk turning into recession traps — high-fixed-cost factories that drown in red ink the minute housing starts stall. Conservatives argue the Liberals’ plan is pre-fab fiction , an attempt to cover up their failure to cut provincial and municipal red tape in the first place. They’re not entirely wrong: Pouring billions into loans without first clearing regulatory bottlenecks risks financing a warehouse of unsold Lego homes. What would success look like? By 2026: a single on-line permit portal and harmonized code. By 2027: a good number of home-grown factories running two shifts and shipping thousands of modules. By 2028: verified per unit costs at least 10 per cent below site-built equivalents. Anything less and the pre-fab push will land on the same scrap heap as past made-in-Ottawa industrial crusades. For now, however, the political optics are golden. Voters finally see a government that wants to unleash supply rather than tinker with demand. But Canadians will judge results, not announcements. If the Liberals can’t fasten the nuts-and-bolts of manufacturing discipline — which they’re not exactly known for — onto their splashy financing plan, their modular revolution could end up as just another set of flat-pack promises that never quite assemble."
Kelly McParland: How Toronto built a condo glut amid a housing shortage - "Toronto’s city council was so alarmed by the notion of six-plexes being introduced to local neighbourhoods that it banned them from all but nine of the city’s 25 wards. A much-watched vote in June balked at a proposal to allow six-unit low-rises across the city, limiting them to a few corners of the country’s most populous burg... So great does City Hall view the threat of six-plexes that Mayor Olivia Chow — the long-time New Democrat and advocate for Canada’s less advantaged — refused to intercede to force through approval. Under “strong mayor” powers introduced by Ontario Premier Doug Ford, leaders in many communities have the ability to override council decisions in certain instances. The contentious regulations were introduced to ensure municipal bodies adhered to certain provincial priorities, in particular Ford’s pledge to deal with a housing crunch by building more homes, roads and utilities... “I don’t believe a top-down way of doing things will mean that people are going to rush out and build housing,” she said in defence of her decision. “We need to work with the homeowners so that they feel comfortable doing it.” Chow believes in consensus, even if it means enabling those Torontonians fortunate enough to have acquired homes before prices tap-danced into the stratosphere to continue hindering less-affluent late-comers from moving in next door, across the back fence or somewhere down the street. Current Toronto stats show the average home lists for just under $1.1 million, and don’t expect to get much even at that price... SkyTower is just the first of six high-rises planned for an address that was previously home to the Toronto Star newspaper, traditionally a campaigner for a “liveable,” low-rise city, but which decamped last year for a posh location a short distance away."
Damn greedy developers, landlords and investors keeping housing expensive!
Housing Minister Holds Undisclosed Real Estate Portfolio Worth Nearly $11 Million - "Canada’s housing minister owns at least three properties worth millions of dollars, including a lakeside estate and Vancouver penthouse, creating what housing advocates call a substantial conflict of interest as the country grapples with a still severe housing affordability crisis that reached historic lows in 2023. Gregor Robertson, appointed by Prime Minister Mark Carney to address the housing emergency, refused to answer parliamentary questions about his real estate investments, according to a report published Friday by TheBreaker.news. British Columbia property records show Robertson has interests in a $5.6 million lakeside property in Squamish spanning nearly 17 acres, a $2.85 million property near Tofino through a company he registered in 2020, and a Vancouver penthouse assessed at $2.4 million. The revelations come as Canada faces an unprecedented housing affordability crisis... Like Robertson, a significant portion of federal politicians have real estate investments. In 2023, at least 128 of Canada’s 338 MPs — 38% of Parliament — own rental or investment properties, including 61 Liberals, 53 Conservatives, six Bloc Quebecois, four NDP members, and both Green MPs. Among federal cabinet ministers, roughly one-third own rental or investment real estate assets... Conservative MP Scot Davidson had sought details about Robertson’s property holdings during a House of Commons exchange, but the minister declined to provide specifics about the number of investment properties he owns."
Meme - "Immigration levels to Canada and annual national rent inflation, 2000-2024. Source:
Chart shows how rents have increased in Canada, along with rising rates of permanent and temporary (yellow) migration. PHOTO BY BANK OF MONTREAL /Bank of Montreal"
It's clear that immigration makes landlords and developers more greedy, and worsens zoning restrictions
