this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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How 'financialized' landlords may be contributing to rising rents in Canada (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 4 months ago by RandAlThor@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

The industry says providing deeply affordable housing is not its job.

"We're not tasked with building deeply affordable or social housing. We can't be there. We're in business. Let's draw a line between these two," said Michael Brooks, president of Realpac, an organization that represents many of Canada's biggest landlords, including Starlight.

August says these landlords often like to buy older buildings, because it's cheaper than new construction and the potential for profit is higher

Cool, so if you’re not increasing supply then you’re failing your free market duty, and therefore need to be regulated out.

We’re humans using market incentives in this country. If you aren’t delivering value to the humans you should get swept off the board.

[–] prodigalsorcerer@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

if you’re not increasing supply then you’re failing your free market duty

I disagree. Brooks is correct in saying that it's not their job and that its two separate industries. Affordable/social housing is the government's job, not theirs.

In theory, the free market should see this increase in rental prices and react by building more units. Why isn't that happening? Largely it comes down to the fact that a lot of developers are also landlords, and thus have a huge conflict of interest in this area. This is where regulators need to step in. But landlords (on their own) do not, and should not, be responsible for building housing.

[–] RandAlThor@lemmy.ca 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It's obvious markets are not efficient. There is NOT a single market in North America that is NOT regulated. So let's throw out that "free market" bullshit. Free market existed in early days of industrialization. It didn't work. If it did we'd still have slave labor and child labors working 7 days a week up to now. So what is needed is for governmentS - with an emphasis on S - the freakin provincial, municipal, and feds, to make it WORK. Housing is a necessity, not just a capitalist investment tool.

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