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New Canadian Politics Thread

“If there is no intention to bring down housing prices through supply”

?

“We need to deliver more supply”

Maybe I’m missing something.
 
hockeylover said:
“If there is no intention to bring down housing prices through supply”

?

“We need to deliver more supply”

Maybe I’m missing something.
Click to expand...
it sounds to me like even if we take Robertson at his word about what he proposes, it won't actually fix anything... or at least that is what og tweeter was saying
 
Sure, but Pee-Pee's plan is to give tax breaks to developers and remove regulation and oversight so that they can make more profit by building McMansions. That won't solve a goddamn thing related to affordability. Of course, it isn't supposed to, since the Cons' real intent is to enrich their donors.

The only way to get prices lower is to punish the greed of developers and real estate speculators. Yes, you need to build more homes but the government needs to control what kind of homes get built and how much they cost. The market cannot be trusted to do this because it is the thing that got us to this point.
 
Two random thoughts:

The construction sector in Canada has shown less productivity improvement than basically any other industry. Dinosaurs. Likely due to market power.

We are on the cusp of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in Canadian history. Now, that doesn’t address timing issues or distributional concerns, but it’s a thing.
 
lecoqsportif said:
Two random thoughts:

The construction sector in Canada has shown less productivity improvement than basically any other industry. Dinosaurs. Likely due to market power.

We are on the cusp of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in Canadian history. Now, that doesn’t address timing issues or distributional concerns, but it’s a thing.
Click to expand...
I have 0 faith that the 2nd point will actually happen. My assumption is most wealth will be eaten up by private care costs for an aging population.
 
Housing is going to be a delicate needle to thread for a reason no one really wants to talk about.

If you tell the public that you're going to lower home prices, no one over 45 will vote for you because we own houses and don't want our net worth to drop by 10-30% or more.
If you tell the public that you're not going to lower home prices, no one undder 45 will vote for you because that want to own a house one day.

imo, the approach seems to be pretty clear if you read between the lines. If the Liberals build 100's of thousands of engineered homes and do the whole Post WW2 plan again, they're going to be building a bunch of 1000 sq ft duplexes and towns on crown land.

Now...something that needs to be understood about that is "crown land" doesn't mean that they're building cheap townhouses at Yonge and Eglington. There are parcels of crown land to support 10's of thousands of new homes in and around the GTA, but they're rural parcels near towns like Barrie, Woodstock, Keswick, Holland Landing, Orangeville, Orono. Quite a lot more out past the Ottawa suburbs, in the 401 corridor, etc

https://lanternsearch.ca/ for anyone who wants to have a look themselves

You can't make housing in Toronto or Vancouver cheap because the land it sits on isn't cheap, because supply and demand is a thing. You can do some nibbling around the edges on that by streamlining permitting, making investment units harder to finance/build (which can also lead to fewer units being built....so year). But a square foot of land in Toronto is worth what it's worth and that's 80% of the cost of a home there.
 
MindzEye said:
Housing is going to be a delicate needle to thread for a reason no one really wants to talk about.

If you tell the public that you're going to lower home prices, no one over 45 will vote for you because we own houses and don't want our net worth to drop by 10-30% or more.
If you tell the public that you're not going to lower home prices, no one undder 45 will vote for you because that want to own a house one day.

imo, the approach seems to be pretty clear if you read between the lines. If the Liberals build 100's of thousands of engineered homes and do the whole Post WW2 plan again, they're going to be building a bunch of 1000 sq ft duplexes and towns on crown land.

Now...something that needs to be understood about that is "crown land" doesn't mean that they're building cheap townhouses at Yonge and Eglington. There are parcels of crown land to support 10's of thousands of new homes in and around the GTA, but they're rural parcels near towns like Barrie, Woodstock, Keswick, Holland Landing, Orangeville, Orono. Quite a lot more out past the Ottawa suburbs, in the 401 corridor, etc

https://lanternsearch.ca/ for anyone who wants to have a look themselves

You can't make housing in Toronto or Vancouver cheap because the land it sits on isn't cheap, because supply and demand is a thing. You can do some nibbling around the edges on that by streamlining permitting, making investment units harder to finance/build (which can also lead to fewer units being built....so year). But a square foot of land in Toronto is worth what it's worth and that's 80% of the cost of a home there.
Click to expand...
Who "owns" these homes? They're not all going to be built on crown lands, are they?
 
axlsalinger said:
Who "owns" these homes? They're not all going to be built on crown lands, are they?
Click to expand...

I would imagine that the homes will be put up for sale. Homes built directly by the Federal government will likely mostly be on crown land but that the scale of production they create will bring costs down for urban redevelopment using the same designs, pre built structures, etc. I know that part of their plan is providing the design and build packages free of charge for download that will be pre approved for municipal permitting. Go to city hall, tell them which design you're using and where, pay permitting fee, rubber stamp. But the plan on the Federal government end isn't and kind of can't be muscling their way in to the urban property development business. They would have a massive market distorting impact on the cost of urban development, and not in a good way. Imagine bidding for vacant lots in the GTA against Ottawa?
 
MindzEye said:
I would imagine that the homes will be put up for sale. Homes built directly by the Federal government will likely mostly be on crown land but that the scale of production they create will bring costs down for urban redevelopment using the same designs, pre built structures, etc. I know that part of their plan is providing the design and build packages free of charge for download that will be pre approved for municipal permitting. Go to city hall, tell them which design you're using and where, pay permitting fee, rubber stamp. But the plan on the Federal government end isn't and kind of can't be muscling their way in to the urban property development business. They would have a massive market distorting impact on the cost of urban development, and not in a good way. Imagine bidding for vacant lots in the GTA against Ottawa?
Click to expand...
Seems fairly obvious that there is a path to a great and much-needed program here, hopefully they put a bunch of the most knowledgeable people on this issue into a room to figure it out. But yeah, I don't think anybody wants the federal government to get into the landlord business on any sort of long-term basis.
 
axlsalinger said:
Seems fairly obvious that there is a path to a great and much-needed program here, hopefully they put a bunch of the most knowledgeable people on this issue into a room to figure it out. But yeah, I don't think anybody wants the federal government to get into the landlord business on any sort of long-term basis.
Click to expand...

They don't, but honestly they should and the lack of government involvement in the urban housing rentals is a signficant gap that is having a damaging effect on the cost of housing in the demographics who need it most.

In Paris, social housing makes up about 23% of all rental units and prices range from 600-1000 euros a month (940-1550 CAD). 10% of Toronto's is social housing and prices range from 1370 (1bd) to 2100 (4bd). London is 20% with prices similar to Paris. Helsinki the same percentage, though cheaper. Same story across the major cities of Europe. Good quality social housing has a deflationary impact on rental prices, which then has a knock on cooling effect on the housing market. If you have a good, clean, affordable 2bd apartment in the city, you're not in a huge rush to spend 1.3 million on a townhouse in Vaughan for a 3rd bedroom and a small yard. Imo the lack of that foundational social housing that is the original sin of sorts in our cost of housing issues and it's also probably the single biggest thing we can do in the future to keep costs under control.
 
lecoqsportif said:
Two random thoughts:

The construction sector in Canada has shown less productivity improvement than basically any other industry. Dinosaurs. Likely due to market power.

We are on the cusp of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in Canadian history. Now, that doesn’t address timing issues or distributional concerns, but it’s a thing.
Click to expand...
isn't our 'construction sector' just 'the mafia' though? would explain a lot
 
MindzEye said:
Housing is going to be a delicate needle to thread for a reason no one really wants to talk about.

If you tell the public that you're going to lower home prices, no one over 45 will vote for you because we own houses and don't want our net worth to drop by 10-30% or more.
If you tell the public that you're not going to lower home prices, no one undder 45 will vote for you because that want to own a house one day.

imo, the approach seems to be pretty clear if you read between the lines. If the Liberals build 100's of thousands of engineered homes and do the whole Post WW2 plan again, they're going to be building a bunch of 1000 sq ft duplexes and towns on crown land.

Now...something that needs to be understood about that is "crown land" doesn't mean that they're building cheap townhouses at Yonge and Eglington. There are parcels of crown land to support 10's of thousands of new homes in and around the GTA, but they're rural parcels near towns like Barrie, Woodstock, Keswick, Holland Landing, Orangeville, Orono. Quite a lot more out past the Ottawa suburbs, in the 401 corridor, etc

https://lanternsearch.ca/ for anyone who wants to have a look themselves

You can't make housing in Toronto or Vancouver cheap because the land it sits on isn't cheap, because supply and demand is a thing. You can do some nibbling around the edges on that by streamlining permitting, making investment units harder to finance/build (which can also lead to fewer units being built....so year). But a square foot of land in Toronto is worth what it's worth and that's 80% of the cost of a home there.
Click to expand...
And, of course, while one may be able to afford a government pre-built home in Orono, for example, what do they do for work? It's a long commute to the Big Smoke from there and if there's a public transit option available, I've not heard of it.

So with this building on crown land idea goes the concurrent need to increase the transportation infrastructure, particularly the mass-transportation infrastructure. That's a lot of cash.
 
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