OTTAWA – A new poll suggests nearly half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque as the cost of living crisis continues to squeeze household budgets, and young people are more likely to s...
I'm not convinced this issue has an easy solution. Most people who voice their opinions here always seem to have a silver bullet to the housing problem yet in most cases I can't find any evidence supporting what they are proposing will work. People seem to just be guessing what the problem is based on anecdotal evidence. The only thing I can find evidence for is there is not enough housing being built in Canada but this seems like a tough problem to solve.
I'm also not even convinced this is a purely national problem. It seems like a lot of countries are dealing with the same problem right now. This isn't to say there is no answer but it seems to suggest this is a tough problem and no one has a great solution to it.
You're right. It's not a purely Canadian problem, and the solution is not easy.
But we've long since left behind any semblance of a world where easy solutions are enough. We need politicians who will embrace hard choices.
The hard choice behind housing comes down to one simple fact; for housing to be an investment, there must be a housing crisis. The scarcity of housing is what forces home prices to continuously rise. Any solution that doesn't end the utility of housing as an investment will ultimately be insufficient. And no one wants to seriously talk about the idea that housing shouldn't be an investment anymore.
And we need to be absolutely clear that the Conservatives have even less interest in tackling investment property than either the Liberals or NDP. Taking care of the wealthy is always their number one priority.
What we should be talking about is something like this. That's the kind of big idea that would make a real difference.
The difference is other countries are at least trying things. The federal Liberals have only done things that actively make things worse (boosting demand via savings plans or RRSP withdrawals).They are all in on subsiding the landowners via the youth. It's disgusting and I'm sick of it. It has destroyed the economic outlook of this country for decades IMO.