this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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The Liberal Party is bigger than Justin Trudeau (www.nationalobserver.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

While I agree with you that the municipalities and provinces share a considerable amount of blame for the housing crisis, the suggestion that the federal government is somehow incapable of solving this problem is, I think, inaccurate.

I live in the UK now, where the same excuses could have been made in the 50s: the national government has no business sticking its nose into the affairs of cities and internal countries (the UK is weird). But they did it anyway. The national government spent mountains of money and resources, building an economy around building homes. The state built those homes, millions of them across the country.

Canada could do the same. Form a crown corporation that does nothing but builds high-density homes and sells or rents them at below-market rates to people in a given economic demographic. The "profit" in this model is a housing-secure nation full of happy, productive people. This, paired with an offer of big federal money exclusively for mass transit systems that connect these developments as well as a complete rollback of funding for road expansion, and Canada is well on its way to deflating the housing bubble and solving both the housing crisis and the environmental one.

But they don't want that, because the people that fund them like it when people are desperate.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The provinces have more power than the federal government does. The federal government doesn't have the current power to force a province or municipality to build or even zone for housing. The biggest issue is the restrictive zoning. There is a lot of political and NIMBY resistance to any amount of density. Even a 4plex that looks like a regular home will get significant push back. Provinces however have power over their municipalities. The provincial government could do a program like the one you suggest and ask for federal funding for it, but my province of Ontario would rather focus their resources on making it illegal to build bike lanes province wide, which is obviously the best use of our political resources.

Of course the bigger problem is that anyone in politics owns a home and they don't want to see their property values drop. A significant portion of our politicians are also landlords, essentially profiting off the housing crisis they refuse to solve.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Agreed on all fronts. In my activism experience in Ontario specifically, I remember how the province would often push back against municipalities that wanted to build something. NIMBYism is another big problem, but the often-overlooked issue is the fact that the private sector is deliberately holding back development because it's more profitable to do so, especially when interest rates are so high.

The amount of profit in building low-rise and even high-rise (non-luxury) developments just doesn't justify the costs, and when every unit you build effectively drives down the amount you can charge for for each unit, there's simply no incentive to build at the rate we need.

There are whole swathes of undeveloped or underdeveloped land in and around cities that would benefit from a crown corporation with deep pockets that would buy up land and build affordable housing on it. A body with the power to compel companies not using land to sell it to the state so that it can be developed for the public good, and with the political cover to piss off local NIMBY organisations without having to worry about political blowback.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

There is so much "I've got mine" attitude that solving the crisis has become such a political issue. Everyone wants to fix the housing crisis but only if they keep seeing 10% annual returns on their real estate. I agree that a crown corp buying land and building housing would be good, but many people would argue the government is subsidizing and "handing out housing" while others have had to struggle for a mortgage. This bubble has gotten so big its becoming impossible to deflate until it bursts catastrophically.

The best thing we could do for the housing crisis is focusing on infilling and upzoning density, as that could set us up for better transit projects that could snowball into more density and upzoning while also putting us in a better position to become more environmentally friendly and far less car dependant.