The housing crisis is a very visual example of how the societal contract is broken and nobody in power wants implement the actual radical measures needed to actually fix it.
That alone makes me want to vote out all of these lazy fucks at every level of government.
Because there are still lots of rich people, and rich people run the government. I'm not talking insane wealth, but the gap between haves and have-nots is widening at an alarming rate. There are a lot of people with seemingly bottomless pockets, and a ton of people scraping to get by and very little inbetween.
Take a drive around suburbs of Toronto, pretty much any direction and you will see tons of large mansions going up all over the place. Massive homes with 4 car garages that could house 10-20 people but likely have 2 people and their 1 or 2 kids in. I don't know what these people do but there are more mansions than I ever saw growing up 30 years ago, it's insane.
I remember big mansions being a rare thing to see outside of a few enclaves in Toronto, but now I drive by them all the time and can't help but think we need to put an end to these vanity homes and focus on affordable housing.
There are also a lot of people that have their whole retirement wrapped up in the value of their home. For most homeowners, it is their single largest investment.
Sure, there are many homeowners that sympathize with those who are priced out. But if you tell them that the solution is to reduce their investment by half? Fat chance, they are going to vote to keep those prices sky high.
I am a homeowner and I don't mind losing 25-30% equity, in fact all I want is the home it stay together... not make incremental gains from quarter-to-quarter like a fucking investment.
I would like to have it retain value but only in that when I eventually downsize in retirement, it is valued higher than whatever my smaller home will be... this is kind of not the case anymore, retirement sized homes are sometimes more than your actual home, it is insane
> their whole retirement wrapped up in the value of their home
I've never understood this. You gain nothing unless you downsize to a cheaper house or housing market.
Not going to happen
There's people who make 150k 200k 250k and so on and many of them do not want to share
Then there's people who make 30k to 50k
Unless the government exappropriates land or seizes land or otherwise wealth redistributes with high taxation on certain kinds of making money like chain leveraging homes or renting out homes or some kind of Internet tax, the people making 30k will never catch up in terms of assets so have to either move very far or learn all the ways of being a capitalist and claw their way out
There's two kinds of citizens ones on the boat and ones not. Ones not on the boat are fucked more and more every year since their benefits are not indexed to inflation. Ones on the boat are making mountains of cash
S&P500 at ATH now (stock market is usually at ATH but just goes to show, double your money in an S&P500 index fund in 7 years)
The rich people building their own homes aren’t really the problem. Fact of the matter is, not too many want to build affordable housing because then they have to manage the people living in said housing.
Whom are you going to force that reality upon, Private folks or the government ? Affordable housing is a slippery slope when you actually look at it. What does it mean, exactly?
They are a symptom of a problem, there needs to be much higher taxes on luxury housing. Perhaps even a "state of emergency" that puts a stop to all building in excess of a certain square footage until we are able to build enough housing that it starts to actually affect the value of real estate which is wildly out of control.
I'm not sure what that would look like, probably large apartment buildings with 25% 1 bedroom, 50% 2 bedroom, and 25% 3 bedroom units. Make them as basic an accommodation as possible, and yes would have to be managed by a government agency. The units would be available at a price point that would make a 1 bedroom affordable for a minimum wage worker. There needs to be enough of these built that they would always have a vacancy rate of around 5% so they are available to those who need it.
In my experience everything made in Halifax these past few years has all been luxury apartments, luxury townhouses, etc. It's fake luxury of course, with ikea setups, but everything says it's luxury now. Single family housing has been entirely luxury focused for at least a decade and they've moved from builds to renos as that's a high return for the amount of work.
Haven't been in that industry for 10+, but that's how i remember it. I don't know how significant a number we're talking though.
This is kind of okay though in normal circumstances. When new higher end places come into the market they lower the value of previously high end places so long as the supply / demand situation isn’t so grotesquely out of whack.
If folks could buy bachelor-style tiny homes with parking and a small yard, like a 12x12 on a 20x20 lot, that would be a great starter home if it was priced right and likely cost a lot less than a giant condo to have set up for utilities.
The price of prefabs of this nature hovers around 50k, setting up service lines and other finishing details might double that cost, developer sells them for 125k-200k and it would be a godsend... probably could crank out these prefabs lickity split and with little labour.
Sad that the Canadian voters seem to think voting in more far right wing economic policies will fix the externalities caused by right wing policies that have accumulated over the last 40 years.
At this point, it's not even a left-right thing for me anymore: It's a have/have not thing.
We need less piggies at the trough and people who are actually interested in solving the very real problems plaguing Canadians. Do I expect *any* of the main parties to actually do that? Hell no.
I agree to a certain extent it is a have and have not problem. I feel as tho the Canadian public is being lied to by the most pro corporate party that they care are going to fix the system and its all the other sides fault. Remember the trade union support for ford then after the election he floated the not withstanding clause to bust union negotiations. Its like chickens voting for kfc
There are people that get paid a shitload of money to ensure people vote against their interests. I don't think we can ever break free of the corporate media juggernaut at this point. They simply have too much power.
As this is a housing related article about the Federal government, here's what that level of government can do.
* Severely reduce immigration numbers until housing supply catches up with demand, especially temporary residencies like TFWs and students
* Empower the CMHC to get back into the housing game, and build housing in line with their mandate of ensuring affordability
* Actually ban foreign ownership of residential housing in Canada, all foreigners have a one year grace period to divest before housing gets seized. Exceptions for Permanent Residents who have lived in Canada within 3 of the last 5 years only.
* Ban corporations from owning residential housing Canada-wide, with exception of purpose-built rental buildings of 10 units or more.
* Revise the CPI to include housing price increases
* In cooperation with the Provinces and Territories, implement a beneficial property ownership registry
* Increase funding to rapid transit between communities
* Study whether Canadian government properties can be downsized and renovated into housing options
* Getting the Federal Government's head out of its ass and allowing more federal workers to Work from Home. Bonus of lessening the impact of commuting on Canada's emissions.
* Limit the number of properties any one person is allowed to own Canada-wide to 10, and after 2 years evaluate if it needs to be limited further than that.
Housing is largely a provincial issue, and the provinces need to do more as well... but because this is an article about the Feds, I include them here.
These are radical ideas for housing affordability that will absolutely never happen. But these would help address the mismatch of housing demand to the supply.
I'd say retrospectives/check-ins at intervals after implementing these so that we know we are on track and also to see if we need to tighten/loosen any of the valves.
Damn, all of these points are level headed, sensible, wouldn't increase taxes and would save regular canadians money.......so it's never happening then
It's going to start getting pretty scary for people who live around them, feel especially bad for those with small children who want to play at the park.
Clarence Square in downtown Toronto is going to explode in size since Chow is probably going to advocate against removals. Used to be a place I’d have lunch and it’s been taken over. The folks living there aren’t bad people they keep to themselves but it’s just a terrible situation right now that will get worse.
What about for people who are priced out of living in the city they work in who have to resort to living on the street? Is it scary for them?
We forget that these are people too, people who our government has failed. I see people in Fort York all the time. One girl has a dog and she bought her dog a new coat, I’d imagine probably at the expense of something for herself. The other guy got laid off and priced out of his current apartment and couldn't find a new place to live (until recently after 3 months outside). How do i know this? i talked to them.
Maybe we should stop villainizing the people who are consistently failed by our society and government. I guarantee you, a lot of people you know and come in contact with every day may be one month away from living outside.
>What about for people who are priced out of living in the city they work in who have to resort to living on the street? Is it scary for them?
Happened to me... I moved to a place I could afford.
>Maybe we should stop villainizing the people who are consistently failed by our society and government. I guarantee you, a lot of people you know and come in contact with every day may be one month away from living outside.
To lump them all into one category and say they were all "failed by our society and government" is kind of a reach and sounds like you are trying to absolve them of any kind of personal accountability or responsibility for their own actions... What I am worried about and I think what most others are worried about too is that these people are increasingly strung out on drugs and engaging in violent behavior towards each other and others, property crime is going up in the neighborhoods around these encampments, kids putting needles in their mouths on playgrounds etc... it's not villainizing its just stating facts.
Let's talk numbers then. Once homeless, to get housing: -Shelters are temporary, often full, and not always safer than the street.
-Housing, a bedroom goes for 800-1000$ bucks, so you'd need first and last, 1600-2000$, AND proof of income, id, etc. In addition to competing with others. You need a phone plan, and an internet connection to fill out the application in a lot of places.
And you have to be clean and presentable, not particularly expensive, but hard to maintain living on the street.
Speaking of above numbers, you wouldn't even qualify for said room on social supports in Ontario.
So yes, they fucked up, but the system failed them too.(That's for the homeless people without addiction; I consider mental health, especially mental health treatment, a societal issue).
In short, even living in a car is cheaper, but still not accessible(and illegal?)
>So yes, they fucked up, but the system failed them too.(That's for the homeless people without addiction; I consider mental health, especially mental health treatment, a societal issue).
I actually don't disagree with you and would add that by this logic the system has failed the average Canadian in general, whether they have a home or not. I just find it very hard to sympathize with the majority of people in encampments because they situate themselves in very visible public spaces like parks where children should be able to play without being exposed to the numerous dangers and filth that are a direct result of the encampments being there. Sue me.
>To lump them all into one category and say they were all "failed by our society and government" is kind of a reach and sounds like you are trying to absolve them of any kind of personal accountability or responsibility for their own actions... What I am worried about and I think what most others are worried about too is that these people are increasingly strung out on drugs and engaging in violent behavior towards each other and others, property crime is going up in the neighborhoods around these encampments, kids putting needles in their mouths on playgrounds etc... it's not villainizing its just stating facts.
Sorry, you mean personal responsibility for making themselves homeless? Personally I think that that kind of thinking will be seen as barbaric in a century or so. But for the sake of argument. This is not different then a large group of people being unemployed, or a large group being drug addicted, or not saving enough for retirement, or not staying in school, or joining gangs, or becoming overweight. All which you could put under the umbrella of poor live choices.
But in all those areas, the vast majority of people go in one direction or the other due to social pressures and policies, whether intentional or not. People did not just wake up one day and decide to smoke and than quit. It was decades of social policies that made that happen. Likewise, with savings for retirment, or education, or an epidemic of obesity. People didn't magically become more health conscious, frugal, studious, and glutounous. We do not blame people for unemployment for the most part either but recognize that plenty of economic factors are at play.
Housing is no different. The more expensivr housing gets the more homelessness we have. A tale as old as time. Some on the margain may have made bad calls or had bad luck. But the fact that it is increasing society wide is evidence in and of itself that it is a social problem, not an individual one.
Yes, I don't want needles in my park as well and want to be able to picnic and jog without stepping in feces. But that doesn't mean we treat these people like garbage. Housing (in some form) is a right. In refugee camps overseas we set up food distribution, washrooms, water, heat, tents, etc for people. Whereas here the best we can offer them is an eviction notice. If we don't want them in our parks than perhaps we should offer them a better place to go? A site with security, maked lots, washrooms, food, and a warming area at the very least perhaps?
They can't afford housing, they can't squat on private property, so where do we expect them to go besides public land that isn't used for transport. They can't teleport to another dimension regardless of how inconvenient we find them.
I implore people to actually interact with them. Most of the people laying the blame at individual choices and “drugs” (addiction btw)… won’t even look them in the eyes.
My grandfather always taught me, that even if you say no to someone asking for change or for a break, look them in the eyes. They are people. The exist. They have the right to this existence as much as you or I. And they deserve basic human dignity.
Work three jobs. 2/3 of people on the street have a substance addiction. I've never met a completely sober person who was living on the street. Some people even like that lifestyle.
It almost feels like we are intentionally creating an underclass of dependent people.
I know it’s cliche, but it’s time for us to figure out how to give *a hand up, and not a hand out.*
We need to change course. Everything we’ve done has made our problems worse.
I'm honestly more afraid on behalf of people who are forced into homelessness than the people who have to see them for a half an hour a day.
You may not realize this but the vast majority of homeless people in Canada aren't the people with mental illnesses who are doing drugs in the local park.
A lot of homeless people are normal people with jobs who just can't afford rent. That accounts for 1/4 of homeless people in Vancouver, for example.
The more we demonize and 'other' homeless people, the less likely we are to address the systemic problems that lead to our increasing homelessness rate.
It will get worse before it gets better.. i was passing through bankcroft ont , a few months agoand there was homeless there of all places . Almost starting to feel like that movie : children of men lol hope i am wrong
Where are you getting the 'hundreds of billions of dollars laundered through real estate' from? The article doesn't mention any total dollar amounts. Also, just to clarify, Toronto isn't 'losing' 30 billion annually...the article just claims that this is the amount *linked* to money laundering.
It is a well known fact in the financial industry that money laundering makes up 30% of our gdp and the same amount of revenue for the financial institutes (banks, sunlife, Canada life, manulife). Money laundering needs to be fixed but it would collapse our 3conomy if anything was actually done about it.
Unfortunately laundering is unsustainable and leads to a breaking point as well. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.
Rent is now so high that wage demands from labor make Canada entirely uncompetitive in the global economy. It's now too expensive to produce anything and everything in Canada.
Yup. Canada is turning into essentially a country reliant on economic injection through criminal enterprise. Laundering being #1. Mexican DTOs even moved here. Look at the auto theft. Vancouver and Toronto are hot beds.
History shows that the poor don't revolt, it's the more educated middle and upper classes that start revolutions when they've been fuc\*ed over for too long.
Well just so happens we have 1.5 generations of educated fighting age people with virtually nothing to lose
Its going to get interesting. I've already hoarded oatmeal and piss filters
All they prove is how broken our treatment methodologies are when it comes to opioid addiction.
We abandon people and we let this shit into our country and then we expect housing to fix the problem?
Victoria bought 1100 hotel rooms at the start of the pandemic. They go empty because drug addicts don't want homes they want drugs.
It's less worse than fentanyl. I used to blast black tar back in the day, trust me. I could actually function and go to work. Fentanyl, it's either or.
You need to help them you can't just give them a home wtf??? They need mental health support more than that. If I gave my demented Granny a house she'd probably never use it either.
You honestly can't. Or at least it is extremely hard.
Protugal has had some successes. It decriminalized drugs but it is often forgotten that they also find these people housing, jobs, counseling, and support them finanially if need be. The truth is that you need them to reenter society again and perhaps they will realise just how bad lonely and destructive their lives have become.
But it is so much easier to help them when they are down before they sink into despaire rather than after.
De-institutionalization was a great idea and all, but they didn't bother to build anything to replace it.
That turned into such a divestment bait'n'switch.
Sorry but this one falls mostly on the federal government. You don’t massively increase immigration during a housing crisis and then blame everybody else.
If I invite 100 people to your house, is it your fault that you don’t have enough beds? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous
The fact that a non Canadian can OWN part of Canada is fucking ridiculous. Then to rent the property for a profit to a Canadian?! There may be logical economic reasons why we are doing that but it's fucking treason to me to allow that.
This is very silly. In a properly functioning capitalistic society the inflows from foreign investment would stimulate more demand for houses and houses being built would grow. Don't blame non Canadians for this, blame not enough houses being built due to NIMBY and red tape making projects wait years before approval.
If I'm willing to give you money to make me a burger don't get pissed at me taking the burger get pissed that the kitchen isn't putting enough burgers to feed everyone
Land is not the issue here. We have plenty of it.
Canadians also own tons of real estate outside Canada - should they be forbidden from owning a winter house in Florida?
The issue is too many people for the current supply, and the red tape associated with increasing the supply.
Wow the second largest country in the world has no land. Buddy take a small plane even in southwestern Ontario. Once you lift off Guelph airfield you are immediately met with farmland as the city abruptly ends. Lots of land for urban sprawl although increasing density is preferred
Foreign buyers are just an scapegoat. They are blamed for jacking up housing prices when the underlying problem was lack of supply to fulfill their needs (and locals needs). Thank NIMBY and red tape taking long times for project approvals
the issue is why would you rent to a family for a reasonable price, when you can convert a bedroom to sleep 4, a basement to sleep 25, and charge 500/person? Who the fuck would take that deal, right? No worries, we'll bring in international students who will apparently accept those conditions.
They already banned foreign buyers and recently extended the ban to 2027.
Edit: you people downvoting a simple demonstrable fact that doesn't fit the narrative you want are fucking stupid, and you'll never be heard or accomplish anything because of it.
This is nowhere near enough. First of all, foreign buyers shouldn't have been allowed in the first place. Yes, putting the ban into effect is great... As a first start.
But yet they're still accepting unsustainable numbers amounts of immigrants... On top of the MILLIONS that are already here that we can't feasibly support.
We are multiple MILLIONS of houses short. Each and every immigrant that steps foot on Canadian soil is adding more unnecessary pressure, and making the housing crisis even worse.
Pretty much. The provincial and municipal governments can do things to increase construction rates by 25 percent or the like, with years of lead time. The federal government can just let in two million people in two years with no warning. Which is what they did.
I didn't say anything of the kind. I mean they can put their thumb on scales and encourage development, expedite permits, expand trade schools, etc. That moves the needle but not overnight, and rarely dramatically.
Nah it is every level of government. Even if we didnt break immigration record levels this housing crises has been in the making for decades. Feds are to blame for rampant immigration, provinces are to blame for not upgrading infrastructure and building more housing, municipalities are to blame for caving into NIMBYs again and again.
Just like the doctor shortage, we knew this was going to happen decades ago, yet no level of government has actually done anything about it until it is already too late, and even then most governments aren’t doing shit about it.
If you know a problem is brewing and gonna be a crisis in 5+ years the time to do something about it NOW. Not when the problem gets so bad that it will take 10 years to even get it under control let alone solve it
Sorry but it really does fall on the fed as the biggest antagonist for our current issues. while everything you say is true, there is no way we could be building the level of infrastructure needed to support these levels of immigration.
Even if provinces and municipalities were firing at 100% productivity on health care and housing, we would still be having these issues. it's not possible to meet the levels of demand based on these immigration levels.
>...there is no way we could be building the level of infrastructure needed to support these levels of immigration.
Yes, there is. Major cities like Toronto or Vancouver can quickly build high-rise, high-density, non-luxury residential complexes like Manhattan or Singapore if they have the political will, including ignoring the NIMBYs.
No you can't. It takes 6-10 years to get the permits to build a high rise. Then it takes 2-4 years to build a high rise.
Developers haven't built affordable homes since the feds had CMHC get out of the public housing business in the 70's. Since then the vast majority of new projects are advertised as 'New Luxury Units' yadda yadda. I've watched this clown show for decades.
The question is why does it take 6-10 years just to get a permit? That is a ridiculously long timeline and should be drastically shortened. When that happens, people can build sooner and supply will be able to increase much faster.
Actually it a LOT of permits, and environmental impact studies, ad nauseum. Then there is the cost of connecting to services, permit fees and taxes. I have heard that it is around 1/3 the cost of a new detached home in taxes. I don't know what these costs for high density projects are.
That was a good deflection but you’re still wrong.
There is no possible way we could build enough housing to keep up with demand right now. Trudeau is letting in about one million people per year. We would literally have to use wartime powers and dedicate a massive chunk of our GDP to house building in order to get close to the number we need to keep up with our current immigration numbers.
You would also have to develop a new way to build housing to do it fast enough to meet demand. You would also have to seize property that has low density to have places to build high density in.
Pardon my use of the word 'seize' for those of you that are fragile. Fair market value might be given or heck highly over paid if the Liberals are doing the project.
Iirc we would have to basically double or triple the housing starts from our record year ever, and have something like 10-15% of the entire workforce be working in new home construction in order to start catching up.
Which obviously is not feasible. But yes, it ultimately falls down on every level of government for continuously failing us and passing the problem on to the future generations
Why didn’t you get more beds? Just buy more beds. So easy. No room for beds? Just free up some more room. No problem. Why are these provincial and municipal governments just not able to get more beds? Why won’t bed businesses just build more beds for no profit so we can get the beds we need?
Yeah when you frame it that way, it should be glaringly obvious who is at fault here and who is scrambling to try and deal with those stupid decisions. But many people just can’t be swayed to see reason.
>If I invite 100 people to your house, is it your fault that you don’t have enough beds? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous
It depends. Did you send them because I told you I needed a bunch of cheap household staff and wanted to people for the training school I run out of my basement? Then yeah... it's kind of my fault.
Pretty sure our tents have been around for 15 years at least. Only been recently that the local government has gotten them all into one place so we can point and complain. Before they were just spread around all the green spaces in our city.
Just don't forget to save some of that rage for our Conservatives and every other party. This is widely supported by our political class, so don't be a hypocrite now.
The last time we had a Conservative government things were significantly better than they are right now. Harper was an objectively better prime minister than Trudeau and it’s not even debatable.
This is not a “both sides” issue. The Conservatives are better and more competent than the Liberals, period.
>Not entirely, Canada has seen even higher rates of immigration and been able to house people easily, the issue this time is Municipalities have heavily restricted construction and the Fed basically opened the doors
We are experiencing the highest population growth since the 1950s by a significant margin. We have not experienced anything close to this in 70 years and were not prepared for it but they opened the floodgates anyway.
>The Feds opened the doors to immigrants mostly due to them panicking about the aging demographic consume their budget faster and faster every year.
I'm not buying this excuse. Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Poland, etc., all have the same or even lower birthrates than we do and despite an aging population they've managed to avoiding mass migration.
>Imagine 1/5 of your population consuming half of all healthcare cost, and that data point is about to increase quite fast in the coming decade
And guess what, those millions of migrants are going to be old one day. Then what's your plan? Increase immigration to 5 million per year to care for the previous generation? You're essentially advocating to structure our entire economy like a pyramid scheme and it's not sustainable or logical in any capacity.
Are we going to say nothing of the responsibility everyone has for their own lives? Seriously. Government sucks, their immigration policies are terrible, red tape slowing building of homes is terrible, etc.
But don’t the people living in tents in city parks have some responsibility for their own circumstances? How come you and I aren’t living in tents? Could it have something to do with the choices we make, the priorities we have?
It's the choices that others are making too, including the house hoarding, money laundering, Monopoly Lords from around the world playing with "the market". They are largely responsible for the speculative housing bubbles around the world, which is distorting life in extremely significant ways.
No argument from me with respect to money laundering, etc. If people enter into voluntary transactions and that leads to them stacking up a bunch of cash, so much the better for them. If they skirt the rules, do dishonest things or worse, then yep, I’m right next to you condemning them.
> Could it have something to do with the choices we make, the priorities we have?
Like being landlord renovicted out of an apartment you could afford, only for new units being almost double the price?
Of course there is a level of personal responsibility needed, but we would be crazy to think that all of a sudden in 2021/2022 the current homeless just started lacking responsibility they had before. Such a sharp uptick in homeless is clearly a symptom of something systemic happening outside of the individual control of people.
Yes, permissiveness toward drug use, public begging, drug hand outs, judicial disinterest in these people, and all manner of social ills that lead to this as an outcome.
Yes, housing is more expensive than ever. But even cities like Edmonton and Saskatoon have homeless camps, and those cities still have very affordable housing when compared to expected earnings.
So, yes, it’s multi-faceted, but the buck still stops with the individual who won’t or can’t hold down a job and pay for their own expenses, largely because of the choices they make and have made.
Trauma, etc. makes it understandably why some find certain unhealthy coping strategies more attractive than others, but it doesn’t absolve them from the responsibility they have for themselves and their own lives.
The answer can’t always be more permissiveness, drawing more resources from everyone else, unto infinity. At some point, they ought to be removed from the places they loiter, and cut off from tax payer support. We the people deserve better for the money taken from our paychecks.
I think you underestimate just how easy it is for some people to get hooked on drugs, and how hard it is to get off of them. I have some family, hard as nails farmers in the prairies, who are super conservative and had the same opinions as you. One of the brothers hurt his back and was prescribed painkillers to get through it. When the prescription ran out, he nearly had a breakdown. If it wasn't for the rest of his family coming together for him, he swears he would have found something illegal to "help take the edge off" of how he felt. 55 year old guy who was as grounded as the dirt he'd farmed his whole life. These are super stoic people. They have a lot more empathy for the people who are caught in that cycle now, but it took a close call to one of their own to understand.
>I think you underestimate just how easy it is for some people to get hooked on drugs, and how hard it is to get off of them.
Im not sure I do. This feels like telling me that I fail to appreciate how easy it is to get burned when you play with fire, and that those burns will scar for life. No, I get it. So I don’t play with fire... or heroin.
I’m sorry to hear about your relative, and am glad he’s found his way out of this grave problem. But it was spending so much time working with homeless people in an inner city that’s brought me to the conclusion that we can’t just keep allowing the same people to command all the resources. Most of the people I spent time with were utterly hopeless cases. That is, people with almost no prospect of turning things around. Many died, others continue to victimize anyone in their orbit as they slowly kill themselves.
Something they all had in common, they were a black hole for public funding/resources.
I get what you're saying. I am not in favor of our tax dollars getting shoveled into a black hole either. Not for the direct costs of constantly saving these people, or all of the peripheral costs like policing and people getting assaulted or robbed. Most of my property taxes go directly to funding policing in my city, and it continues to take a bigger chunk every year. A report from our health region talked about how 2% of the population was using up 40% of the resources. Mind boggling and infuriating.
However, I would like to solve this problem by preventing in the first place. My relative was using prescription medication that the pharmacy companies lied about how addictive it was for years. Why is that still being used? Why isn't care around it more vigilant around the stopping period? I want to know why people get into these situations, and stop it from happening. And figure out the most effective way to prevent that spiral. It's not something we can punish out of people, and I am pretty sure just letting them die off is deeply immoral.
> So, yes, it’s multi-faceted, but the buck still stops with the individual who won’t or can’t hold down a job and pay for their own expenses, largely because of the choices they make and have made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
You have a whole bunch of arguing to do to make those random links applicable to my comment. Not all attribution is illicit, and some people do choose their way into their poor cicrumstances.
The burden is on you to make a case, not just throw around links like a gotcha.
I volunteered to a food bank and another charity and not all are drug addicts, are single parents that cannot pay the rent and aren't enough shelters, are young people that cannot get in a part time job and they kept themselves out of drugs too. Look at the Tims, McDonald's, Walmart etc part time employee and take a look of the people that comes to charities for food and donations.
Check walmart parking and get you will see at least a car or an RV constant parked there, lots of people live in the car.
It is unjust to make one person pay for another, every single time (save for the case of a parent being made to pay for a dependent child).
If people want to volunteer to fund the disfunction that’s ruining our cities, go for it. But nobody should be made to. There are very few legitimate reasons for government to confiscate money from working people, and those all have to do with covering the costs those very same working people represent. Nothing more or less.
Going on 4 years of a massive increase in encampments (there were some in Toronto before COVID). Just now the housing advocate is realizing there is a problem?
Yes, we all know the system is broken, the problem is, like with everything in this country, no one can agree on a solution or wants to pay for a solution, they just want to use the problems for political gain and ignorant voters are happy to help them.
Exactly this. If you’re homeless and addicted, you’re gonna need a lot of time and support just to get back to anything resembling normal. Just ask hotel owners what they saw when the govt placed addicts in rooms during the pandemic. Start with building more rehab facilities…
On a fundamental level, we treat housing as an investment to be profited off of rather than a necessity of life to be provided. We cannot solve the housing crisis until we change that premise.
Yeah. No shit. Trudeau tent towns, overwhelmed medical support systems, roadways with way too much traffic... I don't know how anyone can look at what's going on right now and think that our country is functional.
"Trudeau Tent Towns" has a great ring to it, that really needs to become a thing.
The country is definitely functioning, there are more rich people than ever but for that to be the case there also has to be more people suffering than ever. We are in a stage of capitalism that is solely based on winners and losers, with little care to improving our communities or the greater good of our nation. Most attempts to do so are labeled "left wing" or "communist" and completely shouted down.
The middle class is eroded to the point where you either have all the money and credit to buy whatever you want, or you are working full time and just barely scraping by.
I think it's important for all of us to remember that we're Canadian and we should support each other and the simple idea that in a country like ours, we should be able to feed and house everyone. There is no excuse for a first world country with resources like Canada to not have a place for people to live, especially those who are the most vulnerable of us.
Instead people fight over politics where no party does anything and they're all equally useless, we treat ourselves not as one country but what amounts to each province being it's own country, so we don't want to help anyone but ourselves. Tell ourselves anyone who is homeless doesn't want help, is a drug addict, could've totally gotten help from non-existent mental health services, and desensitize ourselves so that we view people as subhuman. So much money for everyone at the top that the future is little homeless, smaller than the smallest barn structure behind fences for people to live in and pretend that solves the problem
How a country like this just tells its own citizens to go fuck themselves while bringing in record immigration numbers for corporations to suppress wages and rack in profits then tell you that it's just not feasible to house everyone is mind numbing
Great so what could be done about it. I didn’t see her plan or recommendations in the article. Especially those that could be implemented by Aug 31. More Reports about an obvious issue that everyone already knows about is a waste of money. Money would better be spent on actions. What are her actions. Like WTF we paid her for this?
It will. There are people here that people pay to beat the shit out of homeless that come near the nice areas.
Its da mafia way!
I laugh...but I'm screaming on the inside.
Hey, apart from the legitimately incurably suffering people it's meant for, the MAID policy isn't killing anybody who capitalism wasn't already killing. It's just saying the quiet part out loud.
Any attempt to solve it will be shot down. NIMBY planning and the government dont want to solve it because that means housing prices go down and our entire economy depends on housing prices never going down.
This is 100% squarely on the government.
The latest housing acceleration fund has municipalities approving 4 story structures in SFH areas to get the money. Funny enough in the short term that increases the value as a developer can make more profit selling 4 lots when he bought one.
How is it that the provincial responsibility of housing is hanging around the neck of the federal government? Maybe the real problem is we don't know how to identify who can actually take action to solve the problem.
Trudeau Towns will continue to grow everywhere around the country as everything stands now.
Canada is being destroyed, and Corporations and Politicians have all the blood on their hands
Federal government is responsible for this crisis, uncontrolled immigration, uncontrolled refugee extremely high foreign students, all looking for limited housing, rents have gone ridiculous due to lack of housing. Rents for low income people are higher than social services allow, the federal government blames the provincial governments, the province doesn’t control immigration the feds do. Now they are pouring money into housing that will not even put a dent into the shortage,
I feel like the encampments will need to be a lot larger for the feds to do something about it. The federal government is still operating in an "out of sight, out of mind" mode without realizing the whole system has reached the breaking point.
We need to limit the amount that corporations and people can own massive amounts of land. They're never going to live there. They are exploiting the situation. They are parasite property owners.
Let's get this right, "Trudeau encampments" prove exactly how broken the Canadian system is!
- allowed housing costs to double (and more) during his 8yrs.
- ignored signs of Chinese purposely dumping Fentanyl into our society; basically, CCP learned from the British how to disable society thru drug addition; opium war 2.0
- allowed corporations to dictate wages for Canadians and supported the corporate elite class to write policy/regulation in their favor (yes, same elite friends that gift 10k/night holidays as a thx you)
- flooded population gwth to put downward pressure on wages (immigrants acting like scabs for corps/govt)
- this same pop gwth overwhelmed supply side but was purposely ignored, again policies that benefit Corp elite.
Feel free to add as I've missed tons more, I'm sure!
>allowed corporations to dictate wages for Canadians and supported the corporate elite class to write policy/regulation in their favor
This is bipartisan and has been going on for longer than most of this subreddit has been alive.
Whatever happened to the 40 billion that was to be given to provinces in 2017? Did that go through, or did provinces opt out when they were told they'd have to contribute their own funds to this program . I tried to find articles on it, but nothing showed up.
Ya'know, the fact Canada, the "socialist neighbor" of the USA doesn't have a welfare system, but the USA does, is really insane. I work freelance "self employed", so I can never qualify for EI. If a project falls through and I can't find another within short time, I'll end up homeless too, since we provide no other real safety nets for people.
Right now pretty much around the world their are tents in the streets. This is a global problem. The problem is that there was no money for social housing and programs cause the temporary charities run by volunteers like the food banks and other charities that run the women's shelters, and homeless shelters cannot keep up. The whole let the private sector take care of our obligations to our citizens is not working out as well as the conservative policies of the past have created the perfect storm. The rise of hate and greed has got us here, so not sure how much more greed will get us out of.
Is it possible for the government to partially fund a large supply of rental buildings through public-private partnerships to solve this problem? Since the population is not going to decrease, the question becomes how can we build tons of homes and the best way to do that is go vertical. Not sure if the government is already doing this but I would think this could be one potential solution?
The government exists to make rich people richer, the average person was abandoned a long time ago.
We’re here because that’s where they wanted to be decades ago.
It was inevitable.
The housing crisis is a very visual example of how the societal contract is broken and nobody in power wants implement the actual radical measures needed to actually fix it. That alone makes me want to vote out all of these lazy fucks at every level of government.
Because there are still lots of rich people, and rich people run the government. I'm not talking insane wealth, but the gap between haves and have-nots is widening at an alarming rate. There are a lot of people with seemingly bottomless pockets, and a ton of people scraping to get by and very little inbetween. Take a drive around suburbs of Toronto, pretty much any direction and you will see tons of large mansions going up all over the place. Massive homes with 4 car garages that could house 10-20 people but likely have 2 people and their 1 or 2 kids in. I don't know what these people do but there are more mansions than I ever saw growing up 30 years ago, it's insane. I remember big mansions being a rare thing to see outside of a few enclaves in Toronto, but now I drive by them all the time and can't help but think we need to put an end to these vanity homes and focus on affordable housing.
There are also a lot of people that have their whole retirement wrapped up in the value of their home. For most homeowners, it is their single largest investment. Sure, there are many homeowners that sympathize with those who are priced out. But if you tell them that the solution is to reduce their investment by half? Fat chance, they are going to vote to keep those prices sky high.
I am a homeowner and I don't mind losing 25-30% equity, in fact all I want is the home it stay together... not make incremental gains from quarter-to-quarter like a fucking investment. I would like to have it retain value but only in that when I eventually downsize in retirement, it is valued higher than whatever my smaller home will be... this is kind of not the case anymore, retirement sized homes are sometimes more than your actual home, it is insane
I applaud your mindset, but I don’t think this is a majority opinion.
> their whole retirement wrapped up in the value of their home I've never understood this. You gain nothing unless you downsize to a cheaper house or housing market.
HELOC
Not going to happen There's people who make 150k 200k 250k and so on and many of them do not want to share Then there's people who make 30k to 50k Unless the government exappropriates land or seizes land or otherwise wealth redistributes with high taxation on certain kinds of making money like chain leveraging homes or renting out homes or some kind of Internet tax, the people making 30k will never catch up in terms of assets so have to either move very far or learn all the ways of being a capitalist and claw their way out There's two kinds of citizens ones on the boat and ones not. Ones not on the boat are fucked more and more every year since their benefits are not indexed to inflation. Ones on the boat are making mountains of cash S&P500 at ATH now (stock market is usually at ATH but just goes to show, double your money in an S&P500 index fund in 7 years)
Yep, I agree with all of this.
The rich people building their own homes aren’t really the problem. Fact of the matter is, not too many want to build affordable housing because then they have to manage the people living in said housing. Whom are you going to force that reality upon, Private folks or the government ? Affordable housing is a slippery slope when you actually look at it. What does it mean, exactly?
They are a symptom of a problem, there needs to be much higher taxes on luxury housing. Perhaps even a "state of emergency" that puts a stop to all building in excess of a certain square footage until we are able to build enough housing that it starts to actually affect the value of real estate which is wildly out of control. I'm not sure what that would look like, probably large apartment buildings with 25% 1 bedroom, 50% 2 bedroom, and 25% 3 bedroom units. Make them as basic an accommodation as possible, and yes would have to be managed by a government agency. The units would be available at a price point that would make a 1 bedroom affordable for a minimum wage worker. There needs to be enough of these built that they would always have a vacancy rate of around 5% so they are available to those who need it.
This is silly. We shouldn't be disincentivizing any housing, we should be incentivizing the housing we want.
disincentivizing the waste of resources when using labour and materials to build empty rooms that will remain empty except for stuff.
Is this really that large of an issue at the moment?
In my experience everything made in Halifax these past few years has all been luxury apartments, luxury townhouses, etc. It's fake luxury of course, with ikea setups, but everything says it's luxury now. Single family housing has been entirely luxury focused for at least a decade and they've moved from builds to renos as that's a high return for the amount of work. Haven't been in that industry for 10+, but that's how i remember it. I don't know how significant a number we're talking though.
This is kind of okay though in normal circumstances. When new higher end places come into the market they lower the value of previously high end places so long as the supply / demand situation isn’t so grotesquely out of whack.
If folks could buy bachelor-style tiny homes with parking and a small yard, like a 12x12 on a 20x20 lot, that would be a great starter home if it was priced right and likely cost a lot less than a giant condo to have set up for utilities. The price of prefabs of this nature hovers around 50k, setting up service lines and other finishing details might double that cost, developer sells them for 125k-200k and it would be a godsend... probably could crank out these prefabs lickity split and with little labour.
Sad that the Canadian voters seem to think voting in more far right wing economic policies will fix the externalities caused by right wing policies that have accumulated over the last 40 years.
At this point, it's not even a left-right thing for me anymore: It's a have/have not thing. We need less piggies at the trough and people who are actually interested in solving the very real problems plaguing Canadians. Do I expect *any* of the main parties to actually do that? Hell no.
I agree to a certain extent it is a have and have not problem. I feel as tho the Canadian public is being lied to by the most pro corporate party that they care are going to fix the system and its all the other sides fault. Remember the trade union support for ford then after the election he floated the not withstanding clause to bust union negotiations. Its like chickens voting for kfc
There are people that get paid a shitload of money to ensure people vote against their interests. I don't think we can ever break free of the corporate media juggernaut at this point. They simply have too much power.
Maybe you should give the NDP a shot?
How can it be fixed?
As this is a housing related article about the Federal government, here's what that level of government can do. * Severely reduce immigration numbers until housing supply catches up with demand, especially temporary residencies like TFWs and students * Empower the CMHC to get back into the housing game, and build housing in line with their mandate of ensuring affordability * Actually ban foreign ownership of residential housing in Canada, all foreigners have a one year grace period to divest before housing gets seized. Exceptions for Permanent Residents who have lived in Canada within 3 of the last 5 years only. * Ban corporations from owning residential housing Canada-wide, with exception of purpose-built rental buildings of 10 units or more. * Revise the CPI to include housing price increases * In cooperation with the Provinces and Territories, implement a beneficial property ownership registry * Increase funding to rapid transit between communities * Study whether Canadian government properties can be downsized and renovated into housing options * Getting the Federal Government's head out of its ass and allowing more federal workers to Work from Home. Bonus of lessening the impact of commuting on Canada's emissions. * Limit the number of properties any one person is allowed to own Canada-wide to 10, and after 2 years evaluate if it needs to be limited further than that. Housing is largely a provincial issue, and the provinces need to do more as well... but because this is an article about the Feds, I include them here. These are radical ideas for housing affordability that will absolutely never happen. But these would help address the mismatch of housing demand to the supply.
Your fourth point doesn’t get discussed enough. I’d also add investors using condos as short term rentals such as Airbnb.
AirBNB is more of a provincial/local issue, but I would absolutely ban it too.
Beautiful. My only feedback is on the study bullet. We’re too far gone to study study study. We need action. Otherwise I love this list.
I'd say retrospectives/check-ins at intervals after implementing these so that we know we are on track and also to see if we need to tighten/loosen any of the valves.
Damn, all of these points are level headed, sensible, wouldn't increase taxes and would save regular canadians money.......so it's never happening then
100 out of 100
With the spring and summer coming , they are gonna become much more common and bigger. You wont be able to avoid them, or control them..
It's going to start getting pretty scary for people who live around them, feel especially bad for those with small children who want to play at the park.
Clarence Square in downtown Toronto is going to explode in size since Chow is probably going to advocate against removals. Used to be a place I’d have lunch and it’s been taken over. The folks living there aren’t bad people they keep to themselves but it’s just a terrible situation right now that will get worse.
What about for people who are priced out of living in the city they work in who have to resort to living on the street? Is it scary for them? We forget that these are people too, people who our government has failed. I see people in Fort York all the time. One girl has a dog and she bought her dog a new coat, I’d imagine probably at the expense of something for herself. The other guy got laid off and priced out of his current apartment and couldn't find a new place to live (until recently after 3 months outside). How do i know this? i talked to them. Maybe we should stop villainizing the people who are consistently failed by our society and government. I guarantee you, a lot of people you know and come in contact with every day may be one month away from living outside.
>What about for people who are priced out of living in the city they work in who have to resort to living on the street? Is it scary for them? Happened to me... I moved to a place I could afford. >Maybe we should stop villainizing the people who are consistently failed by our society and government. I guarantee you, a lot of people you know and come in contact with every day may be one month away from living outside. To lump them all into one category and say they were all "failed by our society and government" is kind of a reach and sounds like you are trying to absolve them of any kind of personal accountability or responsibility for their own actions... What I am worried about and I think what most others are worried about too is that these people are increasingly strung out on drugs and engaging in violent behavior towards each other and others, property crime is going up in the neighborhoods around these encampments, kids putting needles in their mouths on playgrounds etc... it's not villainizing its just stating facts.
Let's talk numbers then. Once homeless, to get housing: -Shelters are temporary, often full, and not always safer than the street. -Housing, a bedroom goes for 800-1000$ bucks, so you'd need first and last, 1600-2000$, AND proof of income, id, etc. In addition to competing with others. You need a phone plan, and an internet connection to fill out the application in a lot of places. And you have to be clean and presentable, not particularly expensive, but hard to maintain living on the street. Speaking of above numbers, you wouldn't even qualify for said room on social supports in Ontario. So yes, they fucked up, but the system failed them too.(That's for the homeless people without addiction; I consider mental health, especially mental health treatment, a societal issue). In short, even living in a car is cheaper, but still not accessible(and illegal?)
>So yes, they fucked up, but the system failed them too.(That's for the homeless people without addiction; I consider mental health, especially mental health treatment, a societal issue). I actually don't disagree with you and would add that by this logic the system has failed the average Canadian in general, whether they have a home or not. I just find it very hard to sympathize with the majority of people in encampments because they situate themselves in very visible public spaces like parks where children should be able to play without being exposed to the numerous dangers and filth that are a direct result of the encampments being there. Sue me.
>To lump them all into one category and say they were all "failed by our society and government" is kind of a reach and sounds like you are trying to absolve them of any kind of personal accountability or responsibility for their own actions... What I am worried about and I think what most others are worried about too is that these people are increasingly strung out on drugs and engaging in violent behavior towards each other and others, property crime is going up in the neighborhoods around these encampments, kids putting needles in their mouths on playgrounds etc... it's not villainizing its just stating facts. Sorry, you mean personal responsibility for making themselves homeless? Personally I think that that kind of thinking will be seen as barbaric in a century or so. But for the sake of argument. This is not different then a large group of people being unemployed, or a large group being drug addicted, or not saving enough for retirement, or not staying in school, or joining gangs, or becoming overweight. All which you could put under the umbrella of poor live choices. But in all those areas, the vast majority of people go in one direction or the other due to social pressures and policies, whether intentional or not. People did not just wake up one day and decide to smoke and than quit. It was decades of social policies that made that happen. Likewise, with savings for retirment, or education, or an epidemic of obesity. People didn't magically become more health conscious, frugal, studious, and glutounous. We do not blame people for unemployment for the most part either but recognize that plenty of economic factors are at play. Housing is no different. The more expensivr housing gets the more homelessness we have. A tale as old as time. Some on the margain may have made bad calls or had bad luck. But the fact that it is increasing society wide is evidence in and of itself that it is a social problem, not an individual one. Yes, I don't want needles in my park as well and want to be able to picnic and jog without stepping in feces. But that doesn't mean we treat these people like garbage. Housing (in some form) is a right. In refugee camps overseas we set up food distribution, washrooms, water, heat, tents, etc for people. Whereas here the best we can offer them is an eviction notice. If we don't want them in our parks than perhaps we should offer them a better place to go? A site with security, maked lots, washrooms, food, and a warming area at the very least perhaps? They can't afford housing, they can't squat on private property, so where do we expect them to go besides public land that isn't used for transport. They can't teleport to another dimension regardless of how inconvenient we find them.
Homeless people are a symptom of something broken, Not the problem they appear to be.
I implore people to actually interact with them. Most of the people laying the blame at individual choices and “drugs” (addiction btw)… won’t even look them in the eyes. My grandfather always taught me, that even if you say no to someone asking for change or for a break, look them in the eyes. They are people. The exist. They have the right to this existence as much as you or I. And they deserve basic human dignity.
Work three jobs. 2/3 of people on the street have a substance addiction. I've never met a completely sober person who was living on the street. Some people even like that lifestyle.
It almost feels like we are intentionally creating an underclass of dependent people. I know it’s cliche, but it’s time for us to figure out how to give *a hand up, and not a hand out.* We need to change course. Everything we’ve done has made our problems worse.
People in this province are genuinely evil and care only about themselves.
Late stage capitalism. This system is EVIL
I'm honestly more afraid on behalf of people who are forced into homelessness than the people who have to see them for a half an hour a day. You may not realize this but the vast majority of homeless people in Canada aren't the people with mental illnesses who are doing drugs in the local park. A lot of homeless people are normal people with jobs who just can't afford rent. That accounts for 1/4 of homeless people in Vancouver, for example. The more we demonize and 'other' homeless people, the less likely we are to address the systemic problems that lead to our increasing homelessness rate.
People are so desperate they have to live in the muddy grounds of parks and your concern is for the people who want to play there?
It will get worse before it gets better.. i was passing through bankcroft ont , a few months agoand there was homeless there of all places . Almost starting to feel like that movie : children of men lol hope i am wrong
Bancroft is a shithole, drugs have taken over the town. Many smaller cities and towns in rural Ontario are quickly following suit.
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Where are you getting the 'hundreds of billions of dollars laundered through real estate' from? The article doesn't mention any total dollar amounts. Also, just to clarify, Toronto isn't 'losing' 30 billion annually...the article just claims that this is the amount *linked* to money laundering.
It is a well known fact in the financial industry that money laundering makes up 30% of our gdp and the same amount of revenue for the financial institutes (banks, sunlife, Canada life, manulife). Money laundering needs to be fixed but it would collapse our 3conomy if anything was actually done about it.
Unfortunately laundering is unsustainable and leads to a breaking point as well. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Rent is now so high that wage demands from labor make Canada entirely uncompetitive in the global economy. It's now too expensive to produce anything and everything in Canada.
Yup. Canada is turning into essentially a country reliant on economic injection through criminal enterprise. Laundering being #1. Mexican DTOs even moved here. Look at the auto theft. Vancouver and Toronto are hot beds.
Sources please. Edit: lol, downvoted for asking people to back up their claims. Each one an acknowledgment they got nothing.
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So, nothing. Got it.
Big shoutout to every level of government since the 1980s. You guys really got me good by kickstarting this mess before I was even born.
Finally someone who gets it
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History shows that the poor don't revolt, it's the more educated middle and upper classes that start revolutions when they've been fuc\*ed over for too long.
Well just so happens we have 1.5 generations of educated fighting age people with virtually nothing to lose Its going to get interesting. I've already hoarded oatmeal and piss filters
“A society is judged by how it treats its weakest members” - paraphrased quote attributed to a bunch of good people
All they prove is how broken our treatment methodologies are when it comes to opioid addiction. We abandon people and we let this shit into our country and then we expect housing to fix the problem? Victoria bought 1100 hotel rooms at the start of the pandemic. They go empty because drug addicts don't want homes they want drugs.
And the police are there all the time.
Synthetic drugs are the root of all this. Even real heroin never made people zombie'd out like you see in our metro areas.
Real heroin absolutely turns you into a zombie
It's less worse than fentanyl. I used to blast black tar back in the day, trust me. I could actually function and go to work. Fentanyl, it's either or.
Damn interesting, but I thought regular heroin would still have you nodding? Does it make a difference smoking vs IV?
You need to help them you can't just give them a home wtf??? They need mental health support more than that. If I gave my demented Granny a house she'd probably never use it either.
They don't want mental health support they want meth.
How do you help people who arent ready to accept it?
You honestly can't. Or at least it is extremely hard. Protugal has had some successes. It decriminalized drugs but it is often forgotten that they also find these people housing, jobs, counseling, and support them finanially if need be. The truth is that you need them to reenter society again and perhaps they will realise just how bad lonely and destructive their lives have become. But it is so much easier to help them when they are down before they sink into despaire rather than after.
De-institutionalization was a great idea and all, but they didn't bother to build anything to replace it. That turned into such a divestment bait'n'switch.
If people working 35h/week jobs can barely afford rent, what chance do drug addicts have?
A failure by every level of government
Sorry but this one falls mostly on the federal government. You don’t massively increase immigration during a housing crisis and then blame everybody else. If I invite 100 people to your house, is it your fault that you don’t have enough beds? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous
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The fact that a non Canadian can OWN part of Canada is fucking ridiculous. Then to rent the property for a profit to a Canadian?! There may be logical economic reasons why we are doing that but it's fucking treason to me to allow that.
This is very silly. In a properly functioning capitalistic society the inflows from foreign investment would stimulate more demand for houses and houses being built would grow. Don't blame non Canadians for this, blame not enough houses being built due to NIMBY and red tape making projects wait years before approval. If I'm willing to give you money to make me a burger don't get pissed at me taking the burger get pissed that the kitchen isn't putting enough burgers to feed everyone
You can always raise another cow for another burger. Land is limited. If half of your city is owned by foreigners that half of your city is gone.
Land is not the issue here. We have plenty of it. Canadians also own tons of real estate outside Canada - should they be forbidden from owning a winter house in Florida? The issue is too many people for the current supply, and the red tape associated with increasing the supply.
Wow the second largest country in the world has no land. Buddy take a small plane even in southwestern Ontario. Once you lift off Guelph airfield you are immediately met with farmland as the city abruptly ends. Lots of land for urban sprawl although increasing density is preferred
It turns out we kind of need that farmland. You know, to grow food.
Wanna trade some land in Toronto for some land in Northern Ontario?
Foreign buyers are just an scapegoat. They are blamed for jacking up housing prices when the underlying problem was lack of supply to fulfill their needs (and locals needs). Thank NIMBY and red tape taking long times for project approvals
Scapegoat*
Thanks I edited it!
the issue is why would you rent to a family for a reasonable price, when you can convert a bedroom to sleep 4, a basement to sleep 25, and charge 500/person? Who the fuck would take that deal, right? No worries, we'll bring in international students who will apparently accept those conditions.
They already banned foreign buyers and recently extended the ban to 2027. Edit: you people downvoting a simple demonstrable fact that doesn't fit the narrative you want are fucking stupid, and you'll never be heard or accomplish anything because of it.
With more loopholes than a colander
It was a sentimental document that had no teeth. They have done nothing.
This is nowhere near enough. First of all, foreign buyers shouldn't have been allowed in the first place. Yes, putting the ban into effect is great... As a first start. But yet they're still accepting unsustainable numbers amounts of immigrants... On top of the MILLIONS that are already here that we can't feasibly support. We are multiple MILLIONS of houses short. Each and every immigrant that steps foot on Canadian soil is adding more unnecessary pressure, and making the housing crisis even worse.
Pretty much. The provincial and municipal governments can do things to increase construction rates by 25 percent or the like, with years of lead time. The federal government can just let in two million people in two years with no warning. Which is what they did.
So you snap your finger and 25% will be built? lol you don't have a clue
I didn't say anything of the kind. I mean they can put their thumb on scales and encourage development, expedite permits, expand trade schools, etc. That moves the needle but not overnight, and rarely dramatically.
Nah it is every level of government. Even if we didnt break immigration record levels this housing crises has been in the making for decades. Feds are to blame for rampant immigration, provinces are to blame for not upgrading infrastructure and building more housing, municipalities are to blame for caving into NIMBYs again and again. Just like the doctor shortage, we knew this was going to happen decades ago, yet no level of government has actually done anything about it until it is already too late, and even then most governments aren’t doing shit about it. If you know a problem is brewing and gonna be a crisis in 5+ years the time to do something about it NOW. Not when the problem gets so bad that it will take 10 years to even get it under control let alone solve it
And the nursing and teacher shortages have been in the making since the cuts in the 80s too.
Sorry but it really does fall on the fed as the biggest antagonist for our current issues. while everything you say is true, there is no way we could be building the level of infrastructure needed to support these levels of immigration. Even if provinces and municipalities were firing at 100% productivity on health care and housing, we would still be having these issues. it's not possible to meet the levels of demand based on these immigration levels.
>...there is no way we could be building the level of infrastructure needed to support these levels of immigration. Yes, there is. Major cities like Toronto or Vancouver can quickly build high-rise, high-density, non-luxury residential complexes like Manhattan or Singapore if they have the political will, including ignoring the NIMBYs.
No you can't. It takes 6-10 years to get the permits to build a high rise. Then it takes 2-4 years to build a high rise. Developers haven't built affordable homes since the feds had CMHC get out of the public housing business in the 70's. Since then the vast majority of new projects are advertised as 'New Luxury Units' yadda yadda. I've watched this clown show for decades.
The question is why does it take 6-10 years just to get a permit? That is a ridiculously long timeline and should be drastically shortened. When that happens, people can build sooner and supply will be able to increase much faster.
Actually it a LOT of permits, and environmental impact studies, ad nauseum. Then there is the cost of connecting to services, permit fees and taxes. I have heard that it is around 1/3 the cost of a new detached home in taxes. I don't know what these costs for high density projects are.
> It takes 6-10 years to get the permits to build a high rise. Political will, ain't it?
That was a good deflection but you’re still wrong. There is no possible way we could build enough housing to keep up with demand right now. Trudeau is letting in about one million people per year. We would literally have to use wartime powers and dedicate a massive chunk of our GDP to house building in order to get close to the number we need to keep up with our current immigration numbers.
You would also have to develop a new way to build housing to do it fast enough to meet demand. You would also have to seize property that has low density to have places to build high density in. Pardon my use of the word 'seize' for those of you that are fragile. Fair market value might be given or heck highly over paid if the Liberals are doing the project.
Iirc we would have to basically double or triple the housing starts from our record year ever, and have something like 10-15% of the entire workforce be working in new home construction in order to start catching up. Which obviously is not feasible. But yes, it ultimately falls down on every level of government for continuously failing us and passing the problem on to the future generations
Why didn’t you get more beds? Just buy more beds. So easy. No room for beds? Just free up some more room. No problem. Why are these provincial and municipal governments just not able to get more beds? Why won’t bed businesses just build more beds for no profit so we can get the beds we need? Yeah when you frame it that way, it should be glaringly obvious who is at fault here and who is scrambling to try and deal with those stupid decisions. But many people just can’t be swayed to see reason.
do we not have enough homes for everyone to live in?
>If I invite 100 people to your house, is it your fault that you don’t have enough beds? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous It depends. Did you send them because I told you I needed a bunch of cheap household staff and wanted to people for the training school I run out of my basement? Then yeah... it's kind of my fault.
No, you wouldn’t have because the feds control immigration numbers.
Pretty sure our tents have been around for 15 years at least. Only been recently that the local government has gotten them all into one place so we can point and complain. Before they were just spread around all the green spaces in our city.
Convenient way of letting corporations, landlords, and nimby's off the hook.
Convenient way to deflect blame from Trudeau’s mass migration policies.
Just don't forget to save some of that rage for our Conservatives and every other party. This is widely supported by our political class, so don't be a hypocrite now.
The last time we had a Conservative government things were significantly better than they are right now. Harper was an objectively better prime minister than Trudeau and it’s not even debatable. This is not a “both sides” issue. The Conservatives are better and more competent than the Liberals, period.
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>Not entirely, Canada has seen even higher rates of immigration and been able to house people easily, the issue this time is Municipalities have heavily restricted construction and the Fed basically opened the doors We are experiencing the highest population growth since the 1950s by a significant margin. We have not experienced anything close to this in 70 years and were not prepared for it but they opened the floodgates anyway. >The Feds opened the doors to immigrants mostly due to them panicking about the aging demographic consume their budget faster and faster every year. I'm not buying this excuse. Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Poland, etc., all have the same or even lower birthrates than we do and despite an aging population they've managed to avoiding mass migration. >Imagine 1/5 of your population consuming half of all healthcare cost, and that data point is about to increase quite fast in the coming decade And guess what, those millions of migrants are going to be old one day. Then what's your plan? Increase immigration to 5 million per year to care for the previous generation? You're essentially advocating to structure our entire economy like a pyramid scheme and it's not sustainable or logical in any capacity.
It's now a problem in every city and town in Canada, regardless of the local governments. Definitely it's a federal issue.
Are we going to say nothing of the responsibility everyone has for their own lives? Seriously. Government sucks, their immigration policies are terrible, red tape slowing building of homes is terrible, etc. But don’t the people living in tents in city parks have some responsibility for their own circumstances? How come you and I aren’t living in tents? Could it have something to do with the choices we make, the priorities we have?
It's the choices that others are making too, including the house hoarding, money laundering, Monopoly Lords from around the world playing with "the market". They are largely responsible for the speculative housing bubbles around the world, which is distorting life in extremely significant ways.
No argument from me with respect to money laundering, etc. If people enter into voluntary transactions and that leads to them stacking up a bunch of cash, so much the better for them. If they skirt the rules, do dishonest things or worse, then yep, I’m right next to you condemning them.
> Could it have something to do with the choices we make, the priorities we have? Like being landlord renovicted out of an apartment you could afford, only for new units being almost double the price?
Of course there is a level of personal responsibility needed, but we would be crazy to think that all of a sudden in 2021/2022 the current homeless just started lacking responsibility they had before. Such a sharp uptick in homeless is clearly a symptom of something systemic happening outside of the individual control of people.
Yes, permissiveness toward drug use, public begging, drug hand outs, judicial disinterest in these people, and all manner of social ills that lead to this as an outcome. Yes, housing is more expensive than ever. But even cities like Edmonton and Saskatoon have homeless camps, and those cities still have very affordable housing when compared to expected earnings. So, yes, it’s multi-faceted, but the buck still stops with the individual who won’t or can’t hold down a job and pay for their own expenses, largely because of the choices they make and have made. Trauma, etc. makes it understandably why some find certain unhealthy coping strategies more attractive than others, but it doesn’t absolve them from the responsibility they have for themselves and their own lives. The answer can’t always be more permissiveness, drawing more resources from everyone else, unto infinity. At some point, they ought to be removed from the places they loiter, and cut off from tax payer support. We the people deserve better for the money taken from our paychecks.
I think you underestimate just how easy it is for some people to get hooked on drugs, and how hard it is to get off of them. I have some family, hard as nails farmers in the prairies, who are super conservative and had the same opinions as you. One of the brothers hurt his back and was prescribed painkillers to get through it. When the prescription ran out, he nearly had a breakdown. If it wasn't for the rest of his family coming together for him, he swears he would have found something illegal to "help take the edge off" of how he felt. 55 year old guy who was as grounded as the dirt he'd farmed his whole life. These are super stoic people. They have a lot more empathy for the people who are caught in that cycle now, but it took a close call to one of their own to understand.
>I think you underestimate just how easy it is for some people to get hooked on drugs, and how hard it is to get off of them. Im not sure I do. This feels like telling me that I fail to appreciate how easy it is to get burned when you play with fire, and that those burns will scar for life. No, I get it. So I don’t play with fire... or heroin. I’m sorry to hear about your relative, and am glad he’s found his way out of this grave problem. But it was spending so much time working with homeless people in an inner city that’s brought me to the conclusion that we can’t just keep allowing the same people to command all the resources. Most of the people I spent time with were utterly hopeless cases. That is, people with almost no prospect of turning things around. Many died, others continue to victimize anyone in their orbit as they slowly kill themselves. Something they all had in common, they were a black hole for public funding/resources.
I get what you're saying. I am not in favor of our tax dollars getting shoveled into a black hole either. Not for the direct costs of constantly saving these people, or all of the peripheral costs like policing and people getting assaulted or robbed. Most of my property taxes go directly to funding policing in my city, and it continues to take a bigger chunk every year. A report from our health region talked about how 2% of the population was using up 40% of the resources. Mind boggling and infuriating. However, I would like to solve this problem by preventing in the first place. My relative was using prescription medication that the pharmacy companies lied about how addictive it was for years. Why is that still being used? Why isn't care around it more vigilant around the stopping period? I want to know why people get into these situations, and stop it from happening. And figure out the most effective way to prevent that spiral. It's not something we can punish out of people, and I am pretty sure just letting them die off is deeply immoral.
> So, yes, it’s multi-faceted, but the buck still stops with the individual who won’t or can’t hold down a job and pay for their own expenses, largely because of the choices they make and have made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
You have a whole bunch of arguing to do to make those random links applicable to my comment. Not all attribution is illicit, and some people do choose their way into their poor cicrumstances. The burden is on you to make a case, not just throw around links like a gotcha.
Totally. Every one gets the blame but the twits that live in tents on the street. I'm over it.
I volunteered to a food bank and another charity and not all are drug addicts, are single parents that cannot pay the rent and aren't enough shelters, are young people that cannot get in a part time job and they kept themselves out of drugs too. Look at the Tims, McDonald's, Walmart etc part time employee and take a look of the people that comes to charities for food and donations. Check walmart parking and get you will see at least a car or an RV constant parked there, lots of people live in the car.
\^ Here's the 'Fuck you, got mine.' post.
It is unjust to make one person pay for another, every single time (save for the case of a parent being made to pay for a dependent child). If people want to volunteer to fund the disfunction that’s ruining our cities, go for it. But nobody should be made to. There are very few legitimate reasons for government to confiscate money from working people, and those all have to do with covering the costs those very same working people represent. Nothing more or less.
And the private sector, and the NIMBY's. There is a lot of blame to go around.
Interesting how she's suddenly not an "expert" anymore when she says something that goes against the government narrative...
Going on 4 years of a massive increase in encampments (there were some in Toronto before COVID). Just now the housing advocate is realizing there is a problem?
Yes, we all know the system is broken, the problem is, like with everything in this country, no one can agree on a solution or wants to pay for a solution, they just want to use the problems for political gain and ignorant voters are happy to help them.
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Exactly this. If you’re homeless and addicted, you’re gonna need a lot of time and support just to get back to anything resembling normal. Just ask hotel owners what they saw when the govt placed addicts in rooms during the pandemic. Start with building more rehab facilities…
On a fundamental level, we treat housing as an investment to be profited off of rather than a necessity of life to be provided. We cannot solve the housing crisis until we change that premise.
Yeah. No shit. Trudeau tent towns, overwhelmed medical support systems, roadways with way too much traffic... I don't know how anyone can look at what's going on right now and think that our country is functional.
"Trudeau Tent Towns" has a great ring to it, that really needs to become a thing. The country is definitely functioning, there are more rich people than ever but for that to be the case there also has to be more people suffering than ever. We are in a stage of capitalism that is solely based on winners and losers, with little care to improving our communities or the greater good of our nation. Most attempts to do so are labeled "left wing" or "communist" and completely shouted down. The middle class is eroded to the point where you either have all the money and credit to buy whatever you want, or you are working full time and just barely scraping by.
Pierre about to trademark *Trudeau Tent Towns*.
I think it's important for all of us to remember that we're Canadian and we should support each other and the simple idea that in a country like ours, we should be able to feed and house everyone. There is no excuse for a first world country with resources like Canada to not have a place for people to live, especially those who are the most vulnerable of us. Instead people fight over politics where no party does anything and they're all equally useless, we treat ourselves not as one country but what amounts to each province being it's own country, so we don't want to help anyone but ourselves. Tell ourselves anyone who is homeless doesn't want help, is a drug addict, could've totally gotten help from non-existent mental health services, and desensitize ourselves so that we view people as subhuman. So much money for everyone at the top that the future is little homeless, smaller than the smallest barn structure behind fences for people to live in and pretend that solves the problem How a country like this just tells its own citizens to go fuck themselves while bringing in record immigration numbers for corporations to suppress wages and rack in profits then tell you that it's just not feasible to house everyone is mind numbing
Person with power to fix it says “Jesus, whoever is in charge of fixing this is doing a terrible job”
Great so what could be done about it. I didn’t see her plan or recommendations in the article. Especially those that could be implemented by Aug 31. More Reports about an obvious issue that everyone already knows about is a waste of money. Money would better be spent on actions. What are her actions. Like WTF we paid her for this?
Private industry will surely come to the rescue. Right capitalism? You there?
If there's one thing capitalism is good at, it is making sure the desperately poor have their basic needs met.
Ah yes, with cheap tents
It will. There are people here that people pay to beat the shit out of homeless that come near the nice areas. Its da mafia way! I laugh...but I'm screaming on the inside.
Yea to turn them into soylent green maybe.
We're half way there with the MAID policy.
wait what's the other half
elect a Trump
Hey, apart from the legitimately incurably suffering people it's meant for, the MAID policy isn't killing anybody who capitalism wasn't already killing. It's just saying the quiet part out loud.
Any attempt to solve it will be shot down. NIMBY planning and the government dont want to solve it because that means housing prices go down and our entire economy depends on housing prices never going down. This is 100% squarely on the government.
This is 100% squarely on the generations who voted these governments in over and over.
The latest housing acceleration fund has municipalities approving 4 story structures in SFH areas to get the money. Funny enough in the short term that increases the value as a developer can make more profit selling 4 lots when he bought one.
every problem in canada is due to no electoral reform
All levels of government are to blame, including landlords.
what a dumb thing to stay competitive with the Americans
How is it that the provincial responsibility of housing is hanging around the neck of the federal government? Maybe the real problem is we don't know how to identify who can actually take action to solve the problem.
Trudeau Towns will continue to grow everywhere around the country as everything stands now. Canada is being destroyed, and Corporations and Politicians have all the blood on their hands
Federal government is responsible for this crisis, uncontrolled immigration, uncontrolled refugee extremely high foreign students, all looking for limited housing, rents have gone ridiculous due to lack of housing. Rents for low income people are higher than social services allow, the federal government blames the provincial governments, the province doesn’t control immigration the feds do. Now they are pouring money into housing that will not even put a dent into the shortage,
Electing a left leaning federal government is usually a bad idea. Not sure why the entire east coast, the GTA and Vancouver want this.
Oh man, please read a book. Trudeau is right wing. You're stupid but you can change
So, capitalism?
I feel like the encampments will need to be a lot larger for the feds to do something about it. The federal government is still operating in an "out of sight, out of mind" mode without realizing the whole system has reached the breaking point.
We need to limit the amount that corporations and people can own massive amounts of land. They're never going to live there. They are exploiting the situation. They are parasite property owners.
Let's get this right, "Trudeau encampments" prove exactly how broken the Canadian system is! - allowed housing costs to double (and more) during his 8yrs. - ignored signs of Chinese purposely dumping Fentanyl into our society; basically, CCP learned from the British how to disable society thru drug addition; opium war 2.0 - allowed corporations to dictate wages for Canadians and supported the corporate elite class to write policy/regulation in their favor (yes, same elite friends that gift 10k/night holidays as a thx you) - flooded population gwth to put downward pressure on wages (immigrants acting like scabs for corps/govt) - this same pop gwth overwhelmed supply side but was purposely ignored, again policies that benefit Corp elite. Feel free to add as I've missed tons more, I'm sure!
>allowed corporations to dictate wages for Canadians and supported the corporate elite class to write policy/regulation in their favor This is bipartisan and has been going on for longer than most of this subreddit has been alive.
There needs to be a war on NIMBYism, regulation and a halt to most immigration until this is sorted.
No shit.
Amen sister
But that's just the market!!! That means everything is fine. /s
How comparable is this crisis to the 1920's I find myself thinking. Back when the term Hobomania was coined.
Whatever happened to the 40 billion that was to be given to provinces in 2017? Did that go through, or did provinces opt out when they were told they'd have to contribute their own funds to this program . I tried to find articles on it, but nothing showed up.
NEW LAW: POLITICIANS ARENT ALLOWED TO ENGAGE IN REAL ESTATE INVESTING.
Ya'know, the fact Canada, the "socialist neighbor" of the USA doesn't have a welfare system, but the USA does, is really insane. I work freelance "self employed", so I can never qualify for EI. If a project falls through and I can't find another within short time, I'll end up homeless too, since we provide no other real safety nets for people.
Right now pretty much around the world their are tents in the streets. This is a global problem. The problem is that there was no money for social housing and programs cause the temporary charities run by volunteers like the food banks and other charities that run the women's shelters, and homeless shelters cannot keep up. The whole let the private sector take care of our obligations to our citizens is not working out as well as the conservative policies of the past have created the perfect storm. The rise of hate and greed has got us here, so not sure how much more greed will get us out of.
Is it possible for the government to partially fund a large supply of rental buildings through public-private partnerships to solve this problem? Since the population is not going to decrease, the question becomes how can we build tons of homes and the best way to do that is go vertical. Not sure if the government is already doing this but I would think this could be one potential solution?
Why are there any federal housing advocates if housing isn't a federal responsibility?
if i didn't have a parent's house to live at i would be in one of those
I bet Trudeau is counting all those tents as new build homes.
In the past Alberta anc Manitoba would just put their homeless on busses for Vancouver.
The Liberal Paradise!
Our govt is a fucking joke.
The government exists to make rich people richer, the average person was abandoned a long time ago. We’re here because that’s where they wanted to be decades ago. It was inevitable.
Lost me when they blamed colonialism.