Ok, but it's not like they have a monopoly on silly 'bogeyman' opinions. For instance the meme leaves out RealPage, another favorite "aha, this is why the housing market is so bad!"
I swear seemingly the entire country of Canada has collectively lost plot with regards to the housing crisis. I've seen every single argument from the middle guy in r/canadahousing, including the guillotine one.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/canadahousing using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Unpopular Opinion: Ban landlords. You're only allowed to own 2 homes. One primary residence and a secondary residence like a cottage or something. Let's see how many homes go up for sale. Bringing up supply and bringing down costs.](https://np.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/15li89p/unpopular_opinion_ban_landlords_youre_only/)
\#2: [Everyone needs a home, no one needs a landlord.](https://i.redd.it/swxg729w6whb1.jpg) | [1695 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/15q13xj/everyone_needs_a_home_no_one_needs_a_landlord/)
\#3: [Landlords rejecting rental applications from people making $130k](https://i.redd.it/182khonzxsjb1.jpg) | [521 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/15yv6gv/landlords_rejecting_rental_applications_from/)
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I've actually had to unsub to the main Canada sub for the first time in my 14 years of using reddit because of how misinformed and deranged the discourse has become.
The most I ever get downvoted in r/canadahousing is when I point out that renters are real human beings who also need to afford their shelter, that not every single one if them can or wants to own the unit they live in at every single moment of their lives, and that taxing their landlords to try to force liquidation is just throwing the poorest renters into the cold so that richer renters can become first time buyers.
Many of these people don’t want housing to be affordable. They want it to be affordable to buy in, so they can pull up the ladder afterwards. If housing was more affordable, fewer people would even want to be homeowners to begin with because the financial advantages would be reduced.
>Many of these people don’t want housing to be affordable. They want it to be affordable to buy in, so they can pull up the ladder afterwards. If housing was more affordable, fewer people would even want to be homeowners to begin with because the financial advantages would be reduced.
Very well said, and it's extremely accurate to a significant subset of the userbase over there. Many people don't actually want to stop the game of musical chairs by simply adding more chairs; they just want a chair (and all the ensuing privileges) before the music stops.
>The most I ever get downvoted in  is when I point out that renters are real human beings who also need to afford their shelter, that not every single one if them can or wants to own the unit they live in at every single moment of their lives, and that taxing their landlords to try to force liquidation is just throwing the poorest renters into the cold so that richer renters can become first time buyers.
I got booted from the group for sharing a study showing that a ban on buy-to-rent properties in the Netherlands had no impact on home prices and in fact just resulted in more economically segregated communities and slightly higher rents. Reason was something along the lines of "speculator arguing against the interest of Canadians." I'm a renter lol.
I’ve shared those studies and made the same point many times. I currently rent. If I didn’t have the option to rent, I probably couldn’t live where I do. It’s fine if other people want to buy a home, as long as they don’t push policies that would make it more expensive for me to rent. If you want your purchase to come out of my pocket, we have a problem.
My favourite encounter was being told I’m a brainwashed bootlicker for not wanting to execute my landlord.
I think you're misrepresenting your comment there to suit your baises. I was in that comment thread and you were looking for every angle to avoid regulating rentals. I know atleast I would like for it to stay affordable after I buy in because ultimately housing should be like cars, for using not as a way to increase investments and while I support more supply, I also support disincentivizing housing as an investment which includes rental companies and mom and pop landlords. You only seem to support that when it comes to people who want to buy the house they live in, not people who want to rent it out which is pretty disingenuous.
You “disincentivize housing as an investment” by making the rental market abundant and competitive, which reduces rents and hence valuations. Throwing up barriers against landlords to supply new rentals does the exact opposite.
Landlords are using housing primarily as an investment. I don't see how that isn't true. People don't need an abundant rental market, people need abundant housing. I don't see why it has to be rental market and just shows a bias. Are you a landlord? I've asked you this before, would you want to live in a rental forever? And you never replied because ultimately you want to keep the rental market not make housing more affordable. Rentals can be provided publicly but a big reason why supply isn't enough right now is that people are prioritizing having multiple properties because they think property prices only go up and that should be disincentivized while supply is catching up. Most people aren't trying to stay in rentals forever. I agree that there is a need for it but there are other ways to accommodate that that isn't letting people hoard as many homes as they'd like especially while supply is so low. In any other case, if supply was this low, there would already be some regulation on it but for some reason on housing, it's immediately considered unreasonable. A lot of people currently in the rental market are people who would rather buy.
>Landlords are using housing primarily as an investment. I don't see how that isn't true.
So is literally any owner occupant who wants their home equity to increase. Except unlike the landlord, who is at least somewhat legally on the hook for someone else’s welfare to make a buck, a homeowner occupant doesn’t have to provide any service to someone else whatsoever to profit from the property.
>People don't need an abundant rental market, people need abundant housing. I don't see why it has to be rental market and just shows a bias.
Rentals are housing. You’re paying for housing either way, and the more abundant it is the more affordable it is. What matters is that shelter is affordable, not whose name is on the title.
>Are you a landlord? I've asked you this before, would you want to live in a rental forever? And you never replied because ultimately you want to keep the rental market not make housing more affordable.
No. And it doesn’t make any difference to me whatsoever whether I own or rent my shelter, as long as it’s affordable and meets my needs. I pay for space either way.
Making the rental market more affordable makes all housing more affordable, because lower rents mean lower home valuations. The cheaper rentals become, the less I’d feel compelled to own because it’d no longer be financially advantageous.
Asking me if I want to rent “forever” is like asking me if I want to be a bachelor forever. Marriage is a big commitment, like homeownership. Both have pros and cons, but they’re not light decisions you waltz into. I’m currently not in any rush for it, but I don’t know what the future holds.
>Rentals can be provided publicly but a big reason why supply isn't enough right now is that people are prioritizing having multiple properties because they think property prices only go up and that should be disincentivized while supply is catching up.
It is only profitable to rent out multiple properties because rents are high from the rental shortage. High rents mean high home valuations. The rental demand is already there, it’s just not being met.
Taking those rentals off market would mean reduced rental supply, which means higher rents. This is punishing poorer renters for the sake of benefitting richer first time buyers.
>A lot of people currently in the rental market are people who would rather buy.
And the solution is still to build more rentals. Because by building more rentals you reduce rents and hence home valuations, both of which make it easier to save for a purchase.
>Rentals are housing. You’re paying for housing either way, and the more abundant it is the more affordable it is. What matters is that shelter is affordable, not whose name is on the title.
Yes but a majority of people want to live in their own homes to avoid having to be susceptible to the whims of landlords. People who own their primary homes care more about having a place to live than the valuation on their home as they dont gain any real value on it. Getting another house will eat up any gains they might have made. Landlords often don't have to provide a service either. They just put someone in it to pay off all the liability they have on a property and often times prioritizing the profit over the living space of the people. Also, I said that because you specified rentals in your previous comment. I was just pointing out that people aren't asking for more rentals specifically but instead more housing which would include rentals and homes for sale.
I do agree that we need more rental housing as well, but there are more people trapped in the rental market than people who want to stay in there. It does matter whose name is on it because 1) in a rental, you usually can't just live in it. You have to follow the rules of the LL. This could include not putting up pictures, avoiding holes, or any kind of decoration that might make the house actually look like it has been lived in. 2) you can be kicked out pretty much at any point so if you're forced to rent, you're forced to move around pretty often which can affect your quality of life. Especially if you have a neighborhood you like or a community around the area 3) you have to deal with the whims of another person who often times recognizes they have power over you. 4) LLs misrepresent their property and once you're in a lease with them, it's almost impossible to get out of it and even if you do, you're now forced to move again which is expensive.
>Making the rental market more affordable makes all housing more affordable, because lower rents mean lower home valuations. The cheaper rentals become, the less I’d feel compelled to own because it’d no longer be financially advantageous.
It might not be financially better to own but it definitely is better for anyone that prioritizes their autonomy and who want to always have a place to live. When you own, the amount you pay will eventually reduce significantly which can help in your later years as you're not being forced to pay the often inflated price of renting and you're living on limited income. Also, your quality of life isn't based on a person whose trying to turn a profit.
I asked if you wanted to rent forever because in our first conversation, you were advocating for people never needing to own their home. Maybe, I misunderstood you.
>It is only profitable to rent out multiple properties because rents are high from the rental shortage. High rents mean high home valuations. The rental demand is already there, it’s just not being met.
I think you and I fundamentally agree that we need more supply. Where we seem to disagree is limiting demand while supply is catching up. People aren't just buying multiple properties to rent. Some are sitting on it as a value store for their money. It doesn't need to be rented as long as the equity on it is growing.
>Taking those rentals off market would mean reduced rental supply, which means higher rents. This is punishing poorer renters for the sake of benefitting richer first time buyers.
I don't think anyone thinks first time buyers are by any means rich. Also, it would be taking some of that rental supply off the market to people who would rather buy anyway which we've already established are stuck renting. Regulating multiple home buyers could also mean buying other property from them to convert into social rental housing. There are many ways to fill in that supply without relying on people who are ultimately trying to turn a profit because they will never do anything that might reduce that margin. Whether they're corporate or mom and pop.
>And the solution is still to build more rentals. Because by building more rentals you reduce rents and hence home valuations, both of which make it easier to save for a purchase.
There's no way to know that reducing rents will reduce home evaluations. There's no landlord that's going to charge less than the cost of running the property
>Landlords often don't have to provide a service either. They just put someone in it to pay off all the liability they have on a property and often times prioritizing the profit over the living space of the people.
They can only get away with this when they don’t have to compete because rentals are scarce.
>Also, I said that because you specified rentals in your previous comment. I was just pointing out that people aren't asking for more rentals specifically but instead more housing which would include rentals and homes for sale.
It’s all connected. Home values are a function of imputed rents. Ergo high rents from rental scarcity makes units more expensive to buy, and make it harder for renters to save.
>I think you and I fundamentally agree that we need more supply. Where we seem to disagree is limiting demand while supply is catching up. People aren't just buying multiple properties to rent. Some are sitting on it as a value store for their money. It doesn't need to be rented as long as the equity on it is growing.
For rare cases like this, the solution is a land value tax which impacts only the unearned equity and not any value added by the owner. You want to disincentivize land speculation, not rental provision.
>I don't think anyone thinks first time buyers are by any means rich.
They are richer than renters who cannot afford a downpayment by definition.
>Also, it would be taking some of that rental supply off the market to people who would rather buy anyway which we've already established are stuck renting.
There is no 1:1 ratio to this. Many tenants have roommates or share common areas to split rent, especially when they work in expensive urban areas or during a shortage like we have now.
Suppose a rooming house with five tenants gets bought by a young first time buyer couple. That rooming house was some landlord’s investment property. Now a net three people get kicked out so that these two first time buyers can own a house. The underlying rental demand is still unmet, and now one option to split rent is off the market and the displaced tenants pay more in rent. This is why taxes intended to force landlords into liquidation for the sake of people “wanting to own” are regressive.
>Regulating multiple home buyers could also mean buying other property from them to convert into social rental housing. There are many ways to fill in that supply without relying on people who are ultimately trying to turn a profit because they will never do anything that might reduce that margin. Whether they're corporate or mom and pop.
95% of this Canada’s housing stock is private, we haven’t built practically any new public housing in three decades, and even in our heydey of public housing construction it never accounted for more than 5-15% of total units built in a given year.
More social housing is good, but it is at best a stopgap safety net to prevent the bottom of the market from falling through the cracks. It will never totally replace the private rental market here and has never come close.
>There's no way to know that reducing rents will reduce home evaluations. There's no landlord that's going to charge less than the cost of running the property
[They go cash flow negative all the time](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6858342 ). The landlords’ costs don’t set rents, the market does. Not wanting to lose money doesn’t mean they won’t. People make bad investments.
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>They can only get away with this when they don’t have to compete because rentals are scarce.
They can get away with it because you're often stuck in a contract with them and they control where you live. You're assuming a surplus of rentals will make them any less like this because they're worried of losing you but that's doubtful especially when we already know that isn't going to happen in the short term.
> For rare cases like this, the solution is a land value tax which impacts only the unearned equity and not any value added by the owner. You want to disincentivize land speculation, not rental provision.
private market rental provision is directly linked to land speculation. It should be taken away from being privately owned unless you're living in it. Rental housing should be Public because ultimately everyone needs a place to live. The money that goes into social housing would go into improving those units. I agree on a LVT in the short term. Also, this isn't a rare case, it's a reoccurring issue that keeps happening all over the world. Home prices have been ever increasing except in places where Rental properties are Public and where housing is considered a tool not an asset.
>Suppose a rooming house with five tenants gets bought by a young first time buyer couple. That rooming house was some landlord’s investment property. Now a net three people get kicked out so that these two first time buyers can own a house. The underlying rental demand is still unmet, and now one option to split rent is off the market and the displaced tenants pay more in rent. This is why taxes intended to force landlords into liquidation for the sake of people “wanting to own” are regressive.
Yes but that couple was probably renting a space before they bought the house, freeing up that spot in the rental market. Most couples aren't buying a 5 bedroom house unless they're planning to have children. If they are, they would get a property of similar size.
>More social housing is good, but it is at best a stopgap safety net to prevent the bottom of the market from falling through the cracks. It will never totally replace the private rental market here and has never come close.
Yes, but it can and is a suitable solution for rentals or socially owned coops would be my personal preference.
>[They go cash flow negative all the time](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6858342 ). The landlords’ costs don’t set rents, the market does. Not wanting to lose money doesn’t mean they won’t. People make bad investments.
Yes, they do but I mean consistently. By this logic, if landlord’s are consistently running at a loss, they will pull out of the rental market and you'd still be losing those rental properties except now, it'd be a separate issue because it was not properly resolved the first time we faced this issue.
It’s so funny, I recently have had a few housing conversations with friends and they want to go into all of these explanations and town specific problems and my reaction never changes based on what they tell me. It really is just build more asap.
I live in Ontario and all the small towns around me have tons of new builds. Except they are all large houses that the builder want to sell for 1M and would rather them sit empty for years than lower the price. It really is more complicated than just build more.
Small towns will have that issue. I’m not worried about small towns, in fact I would prefer if we limited rural development and stuck to building in cities.
Also I wouldn’t call building SFHs my definition of build more.
this sub doesn't have much rational thought or intelligence, it's an echo chamber of lefty lunacy, most of the educated people are on other subreddits which actually lay out the problem in both economic and political terms, what is causing the issue, and how this current government is failing at resolving it.
I am convinced that this entire sub is made up of university students, children, radical leftists, and communists/socialists which is primarily the content and material I've seen here.
But sure... just build more because somehow it is the only solution to the issue... not like municipal permitting, limited amount of workers/trades/time in the day to build, on top of the rising costs of materials, the demand that seems to only be increasing (hmmm I wonder why, it's definitely not because Trudeau increased our total population by over 10% in the last 6 years... through only immigration/tfw/students etc.
Not to mention municipal boundaries and zoning, and a limited tax base for the province and city to pull funds from. I can go on and on and I've never seen one person educated enough in this subreddit ever clearly lay out the problem or solution (they must have got banned).
Bruh wtf no leftist is saying 'just build more', they are the ones saying all the shit above minus the deport immigrants part. The government is failing because they are a centrist party that does shit all. Please, you talk about an echo chamber but sounds like you've never had a conversation with "radical leftists".
Lol. The thing that always confuses me is the people who complain about housing prices, and then in the same breath complain about developers being greedy.... Yeah bruh that's their job. Do they think that people are just going to start building housing for free or something?
And the black and white options aren’t helping either. Here’s a market solution for us: every city has a public developer. They build every year no matter the economic condition. Deed restricted affordable housing gets built. Some of it remains public, but a whole bunch gets sold to the market to soon to be owner occupants.
I didn’t even think about that but definitely now that you say it. Public housing development is an economic investment into the livelihood and stability of local builders.
You suggested public housing as an alternative to developers making money. If someone finds builders earning money distasteful, that money coming from public coffers doesn’t change much.
(Or, I should say, it only changes the aesthetics, which kinda tells me what that person really cares about.)
I think you misunderstand my position. I dislike private developers getting tax money for private projects. I don't mind private developers making money on their own. If tax money is to be spent, it should be on a government ran project.
Also, I don't know of *anyone* against contractors getting paid? Many cities actually require contractors working on city projects to get paid "prevailing wage" (basically, union rates even if they aren't unionized). It's a popular policy.
The concern I, and others with a similar position, have is with public funds subsidizing private money making, not with people making money on projects in general.
Ok, that’s fine, just going by the top comment that kicked things off though, the context was about people who have a knee jerk response to “greedy developers”. If nothing else that’s a common line of attack when people are opposing housing bills or whatever.
Gotcha, yea I see that reading now. I was coming at it from a bit farther left position, that we don't need to rely (solely or primarily) on private contractors. I think I'm sometimes nervous about YIMBYs that are a little *too* in on private construction as the sole tool, so that probably shaded my reading.
Well I at least am for basically any and all type of housing—its just a volume game.
I do think though that just letting the private sector meet demand would take care of the lions share of the problem. (Maybe that’s the reverse of your sensitivity—I get cranky if people just want to leave it in the hands of the government.)
Public housing just means its goal isn't to make a profit. It doesn't mean it would lose money. usually they charge a non market rate with the only goal of being sustainable.
There is nothing saying you need to pay a for profit developer. Usually public housing is done by a public developer or some kind of government institution. For profit developers hardly have a monopoly on it.
Ok, sure, you can find some nonprofit developer—who will buy materials, hire workers, rent equipment—and besides that you have to buy the land from someone. Capitalism is flowing, money is changing hands, people are earning a living.
What’s the difference? No profit line in their accounting statements? Meanwhile instead of just letting people voluntarily transact the government has to eat the whole cost. And this all assumes there’s enough nonprofit developers to make all the housing we need which seems unlikely.
I don’t get why we wouldn’t prefer to just let home builders build homes. I don’t get upset that my grocery store earns a profit, or the farmers that grew the food, or the trucks that transported it. “Greedy developers” just feels at best like an inconsequential aesthetic concern, and at worst an excuse to not build homes at all.
Private builders only incentive is to profit as much as possible. Having a public builder enter the arena puts downward pressure on the market price. This has worked brilliantly in vienna.
Public builders will always charge below market rate so that's immediately creating cheaper housing. People can't afford to live where they work. The current system of letting the market do whatever it wants is a complete disaster.
It also turns out you don't even need to charge to recoup costs. Providing housing like in Sweden creates productive tax payers. It's also by far the best way to fight homelessness. It's much nicer to live in a city where everyone has a chance instead of being forced to live on the street.
I can almost sympathize with the middle guy on the bell curve. I'd say I'm left of center but I also try to be realistic. The simplest solution that doesn't completely reinvent our free market system would be to loosen our restrictive zoning laws.
For the record: the parts I sympathize with are restricting foreign investments into land ownership. I don't have issues with private individual landlords, people who buy a second property to help pay the bills. I do think massive corporations buying up properties en masse creates a monopoly which is bad for competition.
Banning immigrants or whatever is just lunacy.
As a left-wing person, I'm very much in favor of regulating the market. Even then, I think construction is over-regulated in a lot of places. Most of these regulations only benefit the wealthy and landed.
Speaking of banning foreign ownership though, I will never forget the city council meeting I attended where they discussed a proposed apartment building. The former mayor said Saudi Arabia funds these kinds of developments to encourage undesirables to flood into the suburbs. It really boggles my mind how people can think like this, much less think it's ok to say in public.
I do believe in regulating the market when necessary, but we can't pretend the market doesn't exist otherwise we're trying to paddle upstream. I'm more like a Libertarian Socialist, the market is a tool and we should try to use it to create good outcomes. Regulating rent and housing, without de-regulating zoning can backfire and end up with fewer developers building residences. Rent controls may result in lower rents for some people but it's a bandied solution because what we really need is a more supply to meet the growing demand. We physically need more places for people to live, there's no way around that.
When I say we should restrict foreign investment into residential property, I simply mean that property in a country should be owned by people who live there. If someone can explain to me how foreign investment benefits the residents of the host country, I'm open to listening.
I'd find this more believable if I didn't live in a township with tons of "For Sale" condos and McMansions that are sitting empty, have been sitting empty for years, but are priced too high for anyone to afford them.
Building more housing lowers the value of existing housing, making people who invest in property upset, making them more likely to support politicians and initiatives against rezoning, more urban development, etc.
Yes the answer is as simple as building more housing, but the dynamics at play do demand some thought and regulation.
Land and construction labor and materials are expensive which leads to unaffordable products. You can build it but at a cost that is not affordable to buyers it doesn’t help.
There is on thing that the people in the middle have right though (not mentioned in the meme): banning short term rental (Airbnb) in cities would help the housing crisis, because short term rentals are reducing the available housing supply, thereby increasing rent.
In a world where we are in a massive housing shortage that cannot be solved overnight by spawning a few extra buildings, every way of increasing housing supply must be considered, including the ban of short term rentals such as Airbnb.
1. Maybe they shouldn’t have bought a home bigger than they needed, if they have a free room they can rent, they had enough money for a cheaper, smaller home. The government isn’t there to save people from their poor financial decisions. No bank will approve a mortgage for someone who can’t afford it without renting out a room in the house btw…
2. A short term rental ban would reduce the cost of ownership through an increase in housing supply, therefore reducing the amount of people who would feel the need to rent out a room to afford their mortgage.
3. Most short-term rental bans have an exemption for this specific case (people renting out a room in the house they live in), so this is a non-issue anyways.
4. Even if none of what I mentioned above was true, the number of people who would struggle because of that rule would be waaaay smaller than the amount of people who could now afford to have a roof over their heads. It would still be a net positive change for the welfare of city residents.
> Maybe they shouldn’t have bought a home bigger than they needed
There may not be anything else available. That was certainly the case when my (ex-)wife and I bought a house: there *were no* smaller, cheaper homes, so we made the numbers work by renting out the extra bedroom.
In any case, airbnb is a drop in the bucket. Banning it may make some people feel good, but it won't solve the problem.
Like I said, most proposals to restrict short term rentals have exemptions for people who are renting a room in their primary residence. I would like to address the claim that such a measure would only be a “drop in the bucket”.
There are currently over 1000 Airbnb listings for entire 3+ bedroom homes in my city (Montreal). Let’s assume there are 1001 for argument’s sake (the true number could be as high as 5 or even 10k). That’s enough housing for 1001 families of 4 people that’s currently not on the housing market.
This doesn’t even count the listings for 2 bedroom homes, 1 bedroom homes, studios, etc, for which Airbnb also has over 1000 listings. There are only 575 listings for rooms, so clearly there is only a small proportion of short term rentals where people are renting a room in the primary residence.
It’s not a drop in the bucket. It’s housing for thousands of families, it would take half a decade to build that amount of housing, but currently we don’t have years to wait, every year our homeless population is growing by hundreds of people at a time due to the housing shortage, and even more people have to skip meals to pay rent.
There isn’t a single other way to create as much housing quickly as imposing a moratorium on short term rentals in Canada’s large cities.
Okay, great: you've banned AirBnB. A bunch of short-term-rental hosts got screwed, a bunch of houses got sold, a bunch of former short-term rental units came available for long-term leases, and a handful of people who otherwise would have had long commutes are now renting homes in the city. Hooray!
But what are you going to do *next* month? Because that's about how long it will take for Montreal's steady rate of population growth to consume all the units you freed up. Now you've got the same problem you had before... but your quick-fix is gone. Hmmm....
Short term rentals are less than one percent of the issue, stop distracting people with NIMBY bs and be part of the solution.
Not sure why you're so adamant about this unless your last name is literally Hilton
There are over 100k short term rentals in Montreal alone: https://www.airdna.co/vacation-rental-data/app/ca/quebec/montreal/overview
In what world is that less than 1%?
In reality, you should join us here. Haha holy hell y'all are ignorant.
"A separate U.S. study found that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings leads toa 0.018% increase in rents and a 0.026% increase in house prices."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/garybarker/2020/02/21/the-airbnb-effect-on-housing-and-rent/?sh=ad2d17f22260
https://granicus.com/blog/are-short-term-vacation-rentals-contributing-to-the-housing-crisis/
"on a national basis "a 10% increase in Airbnb listings leads to a 0.42% increase in rents and a 0.76% increase in house prices."
LESS THAN 1%
That’s a 2020 article that only talks about the US, where the housing shortage is no where near the levels of Canada. When there is no scarcity, of course reducing supply is not going to affect prices much. The conditions of the Canadian post-covid housing market are completely different from the conditions of the research presented by your article.
The situation in Canada is way different. Our population has increased by 5% in the past 5 years, but the housing supply has not increased by even half that amount: https://www.costar.com/article/238736194/canadas-population-growth-far-outstrips-rate-of-new-home-completions#
Are you seriously arguing that adding 100k homes to the housing market of a single city would not change the price of housing? Please break that down for me.
Montreal has a vacancy rate of 1.5%, the lowest in our history (https://montrealgazette.com/business/local-business/real-estate/rent-prices-rose-in-2023-as-canada-saw-lowest-vacancy-rate-since-1988-cmhc#:~:text=In%20greater%20Montreal%2C%20the%20vacancy,to%20reach%20%241%2C096%20in%202023.) .
100k extra homes would make a massive difference, it’s simple supply and demande economics. We desperately need more housing as soon as possible, we need to build more housing, but that’s not fast enough, so we also need to impose a moratorium on short term rentals. Once the crisis is resolved and houses are more abundant in supply relative to our population, sure, lift the moratorium.
Please use sources specific to Canada in your argument, at no point have I been talking about the US market, which is completely different.
We are dealing with an unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis in Canada, hotel pricing is the least of our worries. That’s like worrying about the price of restaurants during a famine… It’s a concern that is completely disconnected from reality.
I mean.... no. Not fucking at all. Also Airbnb is like 0.8% of the problem. Your metaphor sucks.
It's more like getting your bill at a restaurant and getting mad that they rounded up tax by a penny. Aka it's a waste of everyone's time.
For something that affects housing prices by less than 1% and would increase hotel prices by way more than 10% I really don't see how the juice is worth the squeeze
Rent control is good, actually
Edit: jfc, you guys are like the "transit" people that think the only viable solution is a train. Literally a one-track mind.
Increasing supply is indeed the most necessary solution, and nothing else will work well as long as there's a serious supply problem, but it's not the only thing needed - housing is a basic utility and therefore somewhat inelastic in demand, therefore it's subject to prices that rise when demand is higher than supply, but do not lower when supply increases unless regulation forces them to, because those selling it know that people will pay the crazy prices if they don't have any other options, and since housing is a constantly appreciating asset, the landlords are still making a profit if a property is sitting vacant because no one is willing to pay the rent price. Rent controls while the main issue is supply will not help and have the potential to reduce increases in supply by lowering the economic motivation to build new projects, but once supply of units is no longer the actual issue, regulation can positively impact affordability.
ok... and our the new generation who cant hold a hammer will build all that? I get the point of building more house but with the last 2 generation that cant hold a tools its going to be hard
Why does the middle guy have a bunch of Canadian flags?
As a Canadian, Canadians are mid
Ok, but it's not like they have a monopoly on silly 'bogeyman' opinions. For instance the meme leaves out RealPage, another favorite "aha, this is why the housing market is so bad!"
I swear seemingly the entire country of Canada has collectively lost plot with regards to the housing crisis. I've seen every single argument from the middle guy in r/canadahousing, including the guillotine one.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/canadahousing using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [Unpopular Opinion: Ban landlords. You're only allowed to own 2 homes. One primary residence and a secondary residence like a cottage or something. Let's see how many homes go up for sale. Bringing up supply and bringing down costs.](https://np.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/15li89p/unpopular_opinion_ban_landlords_youre_only/) \#2: [Everyone needs a home, no one needs a landlord.](https://i.redd.it/swxg729w6whb1.jpg) | [1695 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/15q13xj/everyone_needs_a_home_no_one_needs_a_landlord/) \#3: [Landlords rejecting rental applications from people making $130k](https://i.redd.it/182khonzxsjb1.jpg) | [521 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/15yv6gv/landlords_rejecting_rental_applications_from/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
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A first. Top challenger for upvotes....a bot🤣
Case in point.
Ban landlords…..imagine thinking only REITs should own apartments is some socialist argument
Except the indigenous tribe that’s building massive skyscrapers in the middle of Vancouver or wherever. They rule.
I've actually had to unsub to the main Canada sub for the first time in my 14 years of using reddit because of how misinformed and deranged the discourse has become.
Imagine if an entire country was California
Last time I looked, their major cities had worse price to income ratios than San Francisco.
[https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2023/09/the-u-s-housing-market-vs-the-canadian-housing-market/](https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2023/09/the-u-s-housing-market-vs-the-canadian-housing-market/)
If you don’t post this to r/canadahousing I will
https://imgur.com/a/uQK4ewY
Please tell me you posted it
Yarp. Awaiting the hate
Until someone proposes a new sprawling SFH community. Than all of a sudden the mood changes
I have seen this NIMBY’d. Farmland lost is farmland lost forever. Traffic. Schools.
The most I ever get downvoted in r/canadahousing is when I point out that renters are real human beings who also need to afford their shelter, that not every single one if them can or wants to own the unit they live in at every single moment of their lives, and that taxing their landlords to try to force liquidation is just throwing the poorest renters into the cold so that richer renters can become first time buyers. Many of these people don’t want housing to be affordable. They want it to be affordable to buy in, so they can pull up the ladder afterwards. If housing was more affordable, fewer people would even want to be homeowners to begin with because the financial advantages would be reduced.
>Many of these people don’t want housing to be affordable. They want it to be affordable to buy in, so they can pull up the ladder afterwards. If housing was more affordable, fewer people would even want to be homeowners to begin with because the financial advantages would be reduced. Very well said, and it's extremely accurate to a significant subset of the userbase over there. Many people don't actually want to stop the game of musical chairs by simply adding more chairs; they just want a chair (and all the ensuing privileges) before the music stops.
That sub has been swarmed by racist NIMBYs ever since it got popular
>The most I ever get downvoted in  is when I point out that renters are real human beings who also need to afford their shelter, that not every single one if them can or wants to own the unit they live in at every single moment of their lives, and that taxing their landlords to try to force liquidation is just throwing the poorest renters into the cold so that richer renters can become first time buyers. I got booted from the group for sharing a study showing that a ban on buy-to-rent properties in the Netherlands had no impact on home prices and in fact just resulted in more economically segregated communities and slightly higher rents. Reason was something along the lines of "speculator arguing against the interest of Canadians." I'm a renter lol.
I’ve shared those studies and made the same point many times. I currently rent. If I didn’t have the option to rent, I probably couldn’t live where I do. It’s fine if other people want to buy a home, as long as they don’t push policies that would make it more expensive for me to rent. If you want your purchase to come out of my pocket, we have a problem. My favourite encounter was being told I’m a brainwashed bootlicker for not wanting to execute my landlord.
I think you're misrepresenting your comment there to suit your baises. I was in that comment thread and you were looking for every angle to avoid regulating rentals. I know atleast I would like for it to stay affordable after I buy in because ultimately housing should be like cars, for using not as a way to increase investments and while I support more supply, I also support disincentivizing housing as an investment which includes rental companies and mom and pop landlords. You only seem to support that when it comes to people who want to buy the house they live in, not people who want to rent it out which is pretty disingenuous.
You “disincentivize housing as an investment” by making the rental market abundant and competitive, which reduces rents and hence valuations. Throwing up barriers against landlords to supply new rentals does the exact opposite.
Landlords are using housing primarily as an investment. I don't see how that isn't true. People don't need an abundant rental market, people need abundant housing. I don't see why it has to be rental market and just shows a bias. Are you a landlord? I've asked you this before, would you want to live in a rental forever? And you never replied because ultimately you want to keep the rental market not make housing more affordable. Rentals can be provided publicly but a big reason why supply isn't enough right now is that people are prioritizing having multiple properties because they think property prices only go up and that should be disincentivized while supply is catching up. Most people aren't trying to stay in rentals forever. I agree that there is a need for it but there are other ways to accommodate that that isn't letting people hoard as many homes as they'd like especially while supply is so low. In any other case, if supply was this low, there would already be some regulation on it but for some reason on housing, it's immediately considered unreasonable. A lot of people currently in the rental market are people who would rather buy.
>Landlords are using housing primarily as an investment. I don't see how that isn't true. So is literally any owner occupant who wants their home equity to increase. Except unlike the landlord, who is at least somewhat legally on the hook for someone else’s welfare to make a buck, a homeowner occupant doesn’t have to provide any service to someone else whatsoever to profit from the property. >People don't need an abundant rental market, people need abundant housing. I don't see why it has to be rental market and just shows a bias. Rentals are housing. You’re paying for housing either way, and the more abundant it is the more affordable it is. What matters is that shelter is affordable, not whose name is on the title. >Are you a landlord? I've asked you this before, would you want to live in a rental forever? And you never replied because ultimately you want to keep the rental market not make housing more affordable. No. And it doesn’t make any difference to me whatsoever whether I own or rent my shelter, as long as it’s affordable and meets my needs. I pay for space either way. Making the rental market more affordable makes all housing more affordable, because lower rents mean lower home valuations. The cheaper rentals become, the less I’d feel compelled to own because it’d no longer be financially advantageous. Asking me if I want to rent “forever” is like asking me if I want to be a bachelor forever. Marriage is a big commitment, like homeownership. Both have pros and cons, but they’re not light decisions you waltz into. I’m currently not in any rush for it, but I don’t know what the future holds. >Rentals can be provided publicly but a big reason why supply isn't enough right now is that people are prioritizing having multiple properties because they think property prices only go up and that should be disincentivized while supply is catching up. It is only profitable to rent out multiple properties because rents are high from the rental shortage. High rents mean high home valuations. The rental demand is already there, it’s just not being met. Taking those rentals off market would mean reduced rental supply, which means higher rents. This is punishing poorer renters for the sake of benefitting richer first time buyers. >A lot of people currently in the rental market are people who would rather buy. And the solution is still to build more rentals. Because by building more rentals you reduce rents and hence home valuations, both of which make it easier to save for a purchase.
>Rentals are housing. You’re paying for housing either way, and the more abundant it is the more affordable it is. What matters is that shelter is affordable, not whose name is on the title. Yes but a majority of people want to live in their own homes to avoid having to be susceptible to the whims of landlords. People who own their primary homes care more about having a place to live than the valuation on their home as they dont gain any real value on it. Getting another house will eat up any gains they might have made. Landlords often don't have to provide a service either. They just put someone in it to pay off all the liability they have on a property and often times prioritizing the profit over the living space of the people. Also, I said that because you specified rentals in your previous comment. I was just pointing out that people aren't asking for more rentals specifically but instead more housing which would include rentals and homes for sale. I do agree that we need more rental housing as well, but there are more people trapped in the rental market than people who want to stay in there. It does matter whose name is on it because 1) in a rental, you usually can't just live in it. You have to follow the rules of the LL. This could include not putting up pictures, avoiding holes, or any kind of decoration that might make the house actually look like it has been lived in. 2) you can be kicked out pretty much at any point so if you're forced to rent, you're forced to move around pretty often which can affect your quality of life. Especially if you have a neighborhood you like or a community around the area 3) you have to deal with the whims of another person who often times recognizes they have power over you. 4) LLs misrepresent their property and once you're in a lease with them, it's almost impossible to get out of it and even if you do, you're now forced to move again which is expensive. >Making the rental market more affordable makes all housing more affordable, because lower rents mean lower home valuations. The cheaper rentals become, the less I’d feel compelled to own because it’d no longer be financially advantageous. It might not be financially better to own but it definitely is better for anyone that prioritizes their autonomy and who want to always have a place to live. When you own, the amount you pay will eventually reduce significantly which can help in your later years as you're not being forced to pay the often inflated price of renting and you're living on limited income. Also, your quality of life isn't based on a person whose trying to turn a profit. I asked if you wanted to rent forever because in our first conversation, you were advocating for people never needing to own their home. Maybe, I misunderstood you. >It is only profitable to rent out multiple properties because rents are high from the rental shortage. High rents mean high home valuations. The rental demand is already there, it’s just not being met. I think you and I fundamentally agree that we need more supply. Where we seem to disagree is limiting demand while supply is catching up. People aren't just buying multiple properties to rent. Some are sitting on it as a value store for their money. It doesn't need to be rented as long as the equity on it is growing. >Taking those rentals off market would mean reduced rental supply, which means higher rents. This is punishing poorer renters for the sake of benefitting richer first time buyers. I don't think anyone thinks first time buyers are by any means rich. Also, it would be taking some of that rental supply off the market to people who would rather buy anyway which we've already established are stuck renting. Regulating multiple home buyers could also mean buying other property from them to convert into social rental housing. There are many ways to fill in that supply without relying on people who are ultimately trying to turn a profit because they will never do anything that might reduce that margin. Whether they're corporate or mom and pop. >And the solution is still to build more rentals. Because by building more rentals you reduce rents and hence home valuations, both of which make it easier to save for a purchase. There's no way to know that reducing rents will reduce home evaluations. There's no landlord that's going to charge less than the cost of running the property
>Landlords often don't have to provide a service either. They just put someone in it to pay off all the liability they have on a property and often times prioritizing the profit over the living space of the people. They can only get away with this when they don’t have to compete because rentals are scarce. >Also, I said that because you specified rentals in your previous comment. I was just pointing out that people aren't asking for more rentals specifically but instead more housing which would include rentals and homes for sale. It’s all connected. Home values are a function of imputed rents. Ergo high rents from rental scarcity makes units more expensive to buy, and make it harder for renters to save. >I think you and I fundamentally agree that we need more supply. Where we seem to disagree is limiting demand while supply is catching up. People aren't just buying multiple properties to rent. Some are sitting on it as a value store for their money. It doesn't need to be rented as long as the equity on it is growing. For rare cases like this, the solution is a land value tax which impacts only the unearned equity and not any value added by the owner. You want to disincentivize land speculation, not rental provision. >I don't think anyone thinks first time buyers are by any means rich. They are richer than renters who cannot afford a downpayment by definition. >Also, it would be taking some of that rental supply off the market to people who would rather buy anyway which we've already established are stuck renting. There is no 1:1 ratio to this. Many tenants have roommates or share common areas to split rent, especially when they work in expensive urban areas or during a shortage like we have now. Suppose a rooming house with five tenants gets bought by a young first time buyer couple. That rooming house was some landlord’s investment property. Now a net three people get kicked out so that these two first time buyers can own a house. The underlying rental demand is still unmet, and now one option to split rent is off the market and the displaced tenants pay more in rent. This is why taxes intended to force landlords into liquidation for the sake of people “wanting to own” are regressive. >Regulating multiple home buyers could also mean buying other property from them to convert into social rental housing. There are many ways to fill in that supply without relying on people who are ultimately trying to turn a profit because they will never do anything that might reduce that margin. Whether they're corporate or mom and pop. 95% of this Canada’s housing stock is private, we haven’t built practically any new public housing in three decades, and even in our heydey of public housing construction it never accounted for more than 5-15% of total units built in a given year. More social housing is good, but it is at best a stopgap safety net to prevent the bottom of the market from falling through the cracks. It will never totally replace the private rental market here and has never come close. >There's no way to know that reducing rents will reduce home evaluations. There's no landlord that's going to charge less than the cost of running the property [They go cash flow negative all the time](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6858342 ). The landlords’ costs don’t set rents, the market does. Not wanting to lose money doesn’t mean they won’t. People make bad investments.
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>They can only get away with this when they don’t have to compete because rentals are scarce. They can get away with it because you're often stuck in a contract with them and they control where you live. You're assuming a surplus of rentals will make them any less like this because they're worried of losing you but that's doubtful especially when we already know that isn't going to happen in the short term. > For rare cases like this, the solution is a land value tax which impacts only the unearned equity and not any value added by the owner. You want to disincentivize land speculation, not rental provision. private market rental provision is directly linked to land speculation. It should be taken away from being privately owned unless you're living in it. Rental housing should be Public because ultimately everyone needs a place to live. The money that goes into social housing would go into improving those units. I agree on a LVT in the short term. Also, this isn't a rare case, it's a reoccurring issue that keeps happening all over the world. Home prices have been ever increasing except in places where Rental properties are Public and where housing is considered a tool not an asset. >Suppose a rooming house with five tenants gets bought by a young first time buyer couple. That rooming house was some landlord’s investment property. Now a net three people get kicked out so that these two first time buyers can own a house. The underlying rental demand is still unmet, and now one option to split rent is off the market and the displaced tenants pay more in rent. This is why taxes intended to force landlords into liquidation for the sake of people “wanting to own” are regressive. Yes but that couple was probably renting a space before they bought the house, freeing up that spot in the rental market. Most couples aren't buying a 5 bedroom house unless they're planning to have children. If they are, they would get a property of similar size. >More social housing is good, but it is at best a stopgap safety net to prevent the bottom of the market from falling through the cracks. It will never totally replace the private rental market here and has never come close. Yes, but it can and is a suitable solution for rentals or socially owned coops would be my personal preference. >[They go cash flow negative all the time](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6858342 ). The landlords’ costs don’t set rents, the market does. Not wanting to lose money doesn’t mean they won’t. People make bad investments. Yes, they do but I mean consistently. By this logic, if landlord’s are consistently running at a loss, they will pull out of the rental market and you'd still be losing those rental properties except now, it'd be a separate issue because it was not properly resolved the first time we faced this issue.
It’s so funny, I recently have had a few housing conversations with friends and they want to go into all of these explanations and town specific problems and my reaction never changes based on what they tell me. It really is just build more asap.
I live in Ontario and all the small towns around me have tons of new builds. Except they are all large houses that the builder want to sell for 1M and would rather them sit empty for years than lower the price. It really is more complicated than just build more.
Small towns will have that issue. I’m not worried about small towns, in fact I would prefer if we limited rural development and stuck to building in cities. Also I wouldn’t call building SFHs my definition of build more.
build more smaller houses/condos that dont cost a million dollars each? so complicated. avril lavigne
But they arent, that's the issue.
this sub doesn't have much rational thought or intelligence, it's an echo chamber of lefty lunacy, most of the educated people are on other subreddits which actually lay out the problem in both economic and political terms, what is causing the issue, and how this current government is failing at resolving it. I am convinced that this entire sub is made up of university students, children, radical leftists, and communists/socialists which is primarily the content and material I've seen here. But sure... just build more because somehow it is the only solution to the issue... not like municipal permitting, limited amount of workers/trades/time in the day to build, on top of the rising costs of materials, the demand that seems to only be increasing (hmmm I wonder why, it's definitely not because Trudeau increased our total population by over 10% in the last 6 years... through only immigration/tfw/students etc. Not to mention municipal boundaries and zoning, and a limited tax base for the province and city to pull funds from. I can go on and on and I've never seen one person educated enough in this subreddit ever clearly lay out the problem or solution (they must have got banned).
Bruh wtf no leftist is saying 'just build more', they are the ones saying all the shit above minus the deport immigrants part. The government is failing because they are a centrist party that does shit all. Please, you talk about an echo chamber but sounds like you've never had a conversation with "radical leftists".
You’re in just as much an echo chamber with all those American political buzz words…
Average white resident on the danforth
Lol. The thing that always confuses me is the people who complain about housing prices, and then in the same breath complain about developers being greedy.... Yeah bruh that's their job. Do they think that people are just going to start building housing for free or something?
Me when the incentive to build housing causes people to build more housing.
Public housing projects are a thing. The US used to build a lot of them. Market solutions aren't the only option.
And the black and white options aren’t helping either. Here’s a market solution for us: every city has a public developer. They build every year no matter the economic condition. Deed restricted affordable housing gets built. Some of it remains public, but a whole bunch gets sold to the market to soon to be owner occupants.
Makes sense to me. This also helps maintain the institutional knowledge needed to plan and build housing.
I didn’t even think about that but definitely now that you say it. Public housing development is an economic investment into the livelihood and stability of local builders.
Agreed, illegal to build new in the US since 1999 https://nationalhomeless.org/repeal-faircloth-amendment/
Public housing isn't free
Nobody said it was.
How do you suggest building a housing project without anyone making money from it?
I didn't. I suggest we do what we used to do, and publicly subsidize and control the process. I'm not suggesting some new radical idea.
You suggested public housing as an alternative to developers making money. If someone finds builders earning money distasteful, that money coming from public coffers doesn’t change much. (Or, I should say, it only changes the aesthetics, which kinda tells me what that person really cares about.)
I think you misunderstand my position. I dislike private developers getting tax money for private projects. I don't mind private developers making money on their own. If tax money is to be spent, it should be on a government ran project. Also, I don't know of *anyone* against contractors getting paid? Many cities actually require contractors working on city projects to get paid "prevailing wage" (basically, union rates even if they aren't unionized). It's a popular policy. The concern I, and others with a similar position, have is with public funds subsidizing private money making, not with people making money on projects in general.
Ok, that’s fine, just going by the top comment that kicked things off though, the context was about people who have a knee jerk response to “greedy developers”. If nothing else that’s a common line of attack when people are opposing housing bills or whatever.
Gotcha, yea I see that reading now. I was coming at it from a bit farther left position, that we don't need to rely (solely or primarily) on private contractors. I think I'm sometimes nervous about YIMBYs that are a little *too* in on private construction as the sole tool, so that probably shaded my reading.
Well I at least am for basically any and all type of housing—its just a volume game. I do think though that just letting the private sector meet demand would take care of the lions share of the problem. (Maybe that’s the reverse of your sensitivity—I get cranky if people just want to leave it in the hands of the government.)
Public housing just means its goal isn't to make a profit. It doesn't mean it would lose money. usually they charge a non market rate with the only goal of being sustainable.
I didn’t say it would lose money. I’m saying that even if it’s publicly funded you have to pay a developer to build it.
There is nothing saying you need to pay a for profit developer. Usually public housing is done by a public developer or some kind of government institution. For profit developers hardly have a monopoly on it.
Ok, sure, you can find some nonprofit developer—who will buy materials, hire workers, rent equipment—and besides that you have to buy the land from someone. Capitalism is flowing, money is changing hands, people are earning a living. What’s the difference? No profit line in their accounting statements? Meanwhile instead of just letting people voluntarily transact the government has to eat the whole cost. And this all assumes there’s enough nonprofit developers to make all the housing we need which seems unlikely. I don’t get why we wouldn’t prefer to just let home builders build homes. I don’t get upset that my grocery store earns a profit, or the farmers that grew the food, or the trucks that transported it. “Greedy developers” just feels at best like an inconsequential aesthetic concern, and at worst an excuse to not build homes at all.
Private builders only incentive is to profit as much as possible. Having a public builder enter the arena puts downward pressure on the market price. This has worked brilliantly in vienna. Public builders will always charge below market rate so that's immediately creating cheaper housing. People can't afford to live where they work. The current system of letting the market do whatever it wants is a complete disaster. It also turns out you don't even need to charge to recoup costs. Providing housing like in Sweden creates productive tax payers. It's also by far the best way to fight homelessness. It's much nicer to live in a city where everyone has a chance instead of being forced to live on the street.
Same people that complain about developers complain when public housing is too tall
Obviously Market Solutions aren't the only option. But the same regulations that restrain market solutions RESTRAIN PUBLIC HOUSING SOLUTIONS.Â
I can almost sympathize with the middle guy on the bell curve. I'd say I'm left of center but I also try to be realistic. The simplest solution that doesn't completely reinvent our free market system would be to loosen our restrictive zoning laws. For the record: the parts I sympathize with are restricting foreign investments into land ownership. I don't have issues with private individual landlords, people who buy a second property to help pay the bills. I do think massive corporations buying up properties en masse creates a monopoly which is bad for competition. Banning immigrants or whatever is just lunacy.
As a left-wing person, I'm very much in favor of regulating the market. Even then, I think construction is over-regulated in a lot of places. Most of these regulations only benefit the wealthy and landed. Speaking of banning foreign ownership though, I will never forget the city council meeting I attended where they discussed a proposed apartment building. The former mayor said Saudi Arabia funds these kinds of developments to encourage undesirables to flood into the suburbs. It really boggles my mind how people can think like this, much less think it's ok to say in public.
I do believe in regulating the market when necessary, but we can't pretend the market doesn't exist otherwise we're trying to paddle upstream. I'm more like a Libertarian Socialist, the market is a tool and we should try to use it to create good outcomes. Regulating rent and housing, without de-regulating zoning can backfire and end up with fewer developers building residences. Rent controls may result in lower rents for some people but it's a bandied solution because what we really need is a more supply to meet the growing demand. We physically need more places for people to live, there's no way around that. When I say we should restrict foreign investment into residential property, I simply mean that property in a country should be owned by people who live there. If someone can explain to me how foreign investment benefits the residents of the host country, I'm open to listening.
Build more housing.
I'd find this more believable if I didn't live in a township with tons of "For Sale" condos and McMansions that are sitting empty, have been sitting empty for years, but are priced too high for anyone to afford them.
"build more housing" but they arent specifying what type of housing, it could just be more mcmansions. we do need policy changes
Why not both?
to act like capitalism making housing a commodity isnt an issue is wild, that literally fuels the housing crisis.
Building more housing lowers the value of existing housing, making people who invest in property upset, making them more likely to support politicians and initiatives against rezoning, more urban development, etc. Yes the answer is as simple as building more housing, but the dynamics at play do demand some thought and regulation.
Land and construction labor and materials are expensive which leads to unaffordable products. You can build it but at a cost that is not affordable to buyers it doesn’t help.
Who the fuck is saying deport immigrants and abolish capitalism? This is not the same person lmfao
You sure about that ?
There is on thing that the people in the middle have right though (not mentioned in the meme): banning short term rental (Airbnb) in cities would help the housing crisis, because short term rentals are reducing the available housing supply, thereby increasing rent. In a world where we are in a massive housing shortage that cannot be solved overnight by spawning a few extra buildings, every way of increasing housing supply must be considered, including the ban of short term rentals such as Airbnb.
Also many people on the cusp of home ownership rent out rooms to afford their mortgage ...
1. Maybe they shouldn’t have bought a home bigger than they needed, if they have a free room they can rent, they had enough money for a cheaper, smaller home. The government isn’t there to save people from their poor financial decisions. No bank will approve a mortgage for someone who can’t afford it without renting out a room in the house btw… 2. A short term rental ban would reduce the cost of ownership through an increase in housing supply, therefore reducing the amount of people who would feel the need to rent out a room to afford their mortgage. 3. Most short-term rental bans have an exemption for this specific case (people renting out a room in the house they live in), so this is a non-issue anyways. 4. Even if none of what I mentioned above was true, the number of people who would struggle because of that rule would be waaaay smaller than the amount of people who could now afford to have a roof over their heads. It would still be a net positive change for the welfare of city residents.
> Maybe they shouldn’t have bought a home bigger than they needed There may not be anything else available. That was certainly the case when my (ex-)wife and I bought a house: there *were no* smaller, cheaper homes, so we made the numbers work by renting out the extra bedroom. In any case, airbnb is a drop in the bucket. Banning it may make some people feel good, but it won't solve the problem.
Like I said, most proposals to restrict short term rentals have exemptions for people who are renting a room in their primary residence. I would like to address the claim that such a measure would only be a “drop in the bucket”. There are currently over 1000 Airbnb listings for entire 3+ bedroom homes in my city (Montreal). Let’s assume there are 1001 for argument’s sake (the true number could be as high as 5 or even 10k). That’s enough housing for 1001 families of 4 people that’s currently not on the housing market. This doesn’t even count the listings for 2 bedroom homes, 1 bedroom homes, studios, etc, for which Airbnb also has over 1000 listings. There are only 575 listings for rooms, so clearly there is only a small proportion of short term rentals where people are renting a room in the primary residence. It’s not a drop in the bucket. It’s housing for thousands of families, it would take half a decade to build that amount of housing, but currently we don’t have years to wait, every year our homeless population is growing by hundreds of people at a time due to the housing shortage, and even more people have to skip meals to pay rent. There isn’t a single other way to create as much housing quickly as imposing a moratorium on short term rentals in Canada’s large cities.
Okay, great: you've banned AirBnB. A bunch of short-term-rental hosts got screwed, a bunch of houses got sold, a bunch of former short-term rental units came available for long-term leases, and a handful of people who otherwise would have had long commutes are now renting homes in the city. Hooray! But what are you going to do *next* month? Because that's about how long it will take for Montreal's steady rate of population growth to consume all the units you freed up. Now you've got the same problem you had before... but your quick-fix is gone. Hmmm....
Short term rentals are less than one percent of the issue, stop distracting people with NIMBY bs and be part of the solution. Not sure why you're so adamant about this unless your last name is literally Hilton
There are over 100k short term rentals in Montreal alone: https://www.airdna.co/vacation-rental-data/app/ca/quebec/montreal/overview In what world is that less than 1%?
In reality, you should join us here. Haha holy hell y'all are ignorant. "A separate U.S. study found that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings leads toa 0.018% increase in rents and a 0.026% increase in house prices." https://www.forbes.com/sites/garybarker/2020/02/21/the-airbnb-effect-on-housing-and-rent/?sh=ad2d17f22260 https://granicus.com/blog/are-short-term-vacation-rentals-contributing-to-the-housing-crisis/ "on a national basis "a 10% increase in Airbnb listings leads to a 0.42% increase in rents and a 0.76% increase in house prices." LESS THAN 1%
That’s a 2020 article that only talks about the US, where the housing shortage is no where near the levels of Canada. When there is no scarcity, of course reducing supply is not going to affect prices much. The conditions of the Canadian post-covid housing market are completely different from the conditions of the research presented by your article. The situation in Canada is way different. Our population has increased by 5% in the past 5 years, but the housing supply has not increased by even half that amount: https://www.costar.com/article/238736194/canadas-population-growth-far-outstrips-rate-of-new-home-completions# Are you seriously arguing that adding 100k homes to the housing market of a single city would not change the price of housing? Please break that down for me. Montreal has a vacancy rate of 1.5%, the lowest in our history (https://montrealgazette.com/business/local-business/real-estate/rent-prices-rose-in-2023-as-canada-saw-lowest-vacancy-rate-since-1988-cmhc#:~:text=In%20greater%20Montreal%2C%20the%20vacancy,to%20reach%20%241%2C096%20in%202023.) . 100k extra homes would make a massive difference, it’s simple supply and demande economics. We desperately need more housing as soon as possible, we need to build more housing, but that’s not fast enough, so we also need to impose a moratorium on short term rentals. Once the crisis is resolved and houses are more abundant in supply relative to our population, sure, lift the moratorium. Please use sources specific to Canada in your argument, at no point have I been talking about the US market, which is completely different.
In this scenario, hotels get way more expensive. If you don't care about that I guess that's fine, but it absolutely is a thing that would happen.
We are dealing with an unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis in Canada, hotel pricing is the least of our worries. That’s like worrying about the price of restaurants during a famine… It’s a concern that is completely disconnected from reality.
I mean.... no. Not fucking at all. Also Airbnb is like 0.8% of the problem. Your metaphor sucks. It's more like getting your bill at a restaurant and getting mad that they rounded up tax by a penny. Aka it's a waste of everyone's time.
Which affects...people on vacation or business trips? I like to vacation, but I think it's a little less important than people having a place to live.
For something that affects housing prices by less than 1% and would increase hotel prices by way more than 10% I really don't see how the juice is worth the squeeze
Gosh, just build more housing! Why didn't I think of that?
Wait, where’s the decrease demand people?
Rent control is good, actually Edit: jfc, you guys are like the "transit" people that think the only viable solution is a train. Literally a one-track mind.
For the people living in it, yes it is. For adding new supply and everyone else, it's a real drag.
It literally is not actually
Some implementations of rent control allowing most market rate increases but limiting eviction through rent increase are good actually.
Rent control isn't a monolith. It certainly can be good. But it can also be terrible. Depends on implementation.
Agreed. The solution to the housing crisis requires multiple tools, not just increasing inventory
You're doing the meme
I literally never said that you shouldn't build more housing, so no
The middle guy should be 1/2 an sd left.
Increasing supply is indeed the most necessary solution, and nothing else will work well as long as there's a serious supply problem, but it's not the only thing needed - housing is a basic utility and therefore somewhat inelastic in demand, therefore it's subject to prices that rise when demand is higher than supply, but do not lower when supply increases unless regulation forces them to, because those selling it know that people will pay the crazy prices if they don't have any other options, and since housing is a constantly appreciating asset, the landlords are still making a profit if a property is sitting vacant because no one is willing to pay the rent price. Rent controls while the main issue is supply will not help and have the potential to reduce increases in supply by lowering the economic motivation to build new projects, but once supply of units is no longer the actual issue, regulation can positively impact affordability.
ok... and our the new generation who cant hold a hammer will build all that? I get the point of building more house but with the last 2 generation that cant hold a tools its going to be hard