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 3 months ago by RandAlThor@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 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 3 months ago (2 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 3 months ago* (last edited 3 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.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The government needs to step in and turn the CMHC into what it originally did: creating massive supply of cheap viable housing.

I don’t think the evidence is supporting a pure free market on rentals is working. Markets need to serve a human need, and in this case they’re failing.

Subsidies provide zero incentive, they just transfer public funds to REITs and investors.

I would be in favour of adding steep taxes and fixing the amount profit delivered to investors through REITs, which would cap investor demand for them and favour a long tail of owners.

Then they can give credits/exemptions for large buildings and new builds. And maybe introduce a home buyers plan where older buildings that REITs want out of can be purchased by the tenants with the government contributing a direct loan for the upfront costs, and having an accountant in the mix to ensure proper Strata funding after.

I don’t know, it just feels like we haven’t tried much of anything here.

[–] prodigalsorcerer@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 months ago

I don’t know, it just feels like we haven’t tried much of anything here.

You're absolutely correct in that. We've mostly just allowed for monopolies and oligopolies to take over industries in a way that only supports their bottom line.

This is one place where I think the free market could have worked, given enough time and sufficient enforcement to prevent this sort of conflict of interest, but the time for that was a decade or two ago. Now we need strong interventions by multiple levels of government to fix this problem.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago

Housing can't really be a free market for a number of reasons: captive market; regional market restrictions; and high barrier to entry, to name a few.

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

"We're not tasked with building deeply affordable or social housing.

Maybe you should be, you greedy fucking parasites

[–] folkrav@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"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.

I mean, yes, by definition your landlords are in it for the ROI. But there is no line to be drawn. It’s the same housing market, the same people who can’t afford to live. Canadians can’t afford to draw a line.

[–] i_love_FFT@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago

"We're not tasked with providing clean affordable drinking water. We can't be there. We're in business."

"We're not tasked with preventing food poisoning or affordable healthy food. We can't be there. We're in business."

What other examples can we make where "business" is an excuse for acting in a sociopathic way?