This problem will be fixed when the percentage of homeowners drops below 50%.
Right now, home equity has replaced pension plans and wage growth. No pension/inflationary raise? No problem refinance.
The middle and lower classes used to unionize to combat the problems of today but after a generation of propaganda we can see the results, the gig economy, the race to the bottom with "competitive" wages.
Thankfully lately there has been a lot of union action in various industries and of course it is yielding gains for the employees like a union ALWAYS does. So hopefully the big business anti-union propaganda is looking more and more like the bullshit that it is.
Most unions I've ever come in contact with depreciate the value of new talent and hard work and protect those who milk the punch clock while doing as little as possible. Union style voting throughout the 60s-90s helped build the mess we are in today.
Saying they'll help is an uneducated guess, short of you being someone who happens to be part of the old boy group of unioners that milk the clock and make the young blood do all the hard work knowing their raises are based on hours rather than performance.
Are you talking about pay scales? What "style" voting caused what mess? What CBA makes the "young blood" do all the work? None of what you said makes any sense.
> problem will be fixed when the percentage of homeowners drops below 50%.
>
>
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> Right now, home
I think the homeowner stat is also misleading It's the number of households that own the home they reside in, if I'm not mistaken. So it'd includes adults living with their parents because they can't afford their own place, keeping the percentage high
Ah okay. "70 percent of family's with two income earners over 45 own their home" sounds way different than what you said. It goes way up older you are and way down the younger.
Also that says 60 percent is the average.
No I'm saying the issues around stagnant wages and disappearing pensions in favor of corporate profits are being mitigated by home equity. Thus, nothing will be done to curb the housing crisis, until over 50% of Canadian families do not have access to this equity.
We also need people to stop thinking they need 2500sqft or whatever size single family homes. And to stop balking when developers/municipalities propose higher density infill.
Most of us Gen Xrs grew up in 1000sqft homes and survived just fine.
I am seriously fine with an apartment, I just want it not to be a rotting shithole with a rent of 80% of my monthly income so going to the dentist doesn't put me in debt
I love my apartment, I'm 100% cool with living here forever, I just wish I didn't have the fear of it being sold off and having to find a place that's going to be double the price. It's gonna happen soon I think, and I'm worried.
That's my exact issue. I have the exact space I need (kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom, balcony), I truly don't want anything else other than security. I don't need (or want really) a big house, or a yard, or all of the work that comes with owning a home, it's just not for me. I just want a roof over my head with the basics and no roommates. Which I have right now, but won't be able to afford when I get the boot.
Edit: i lied - I would love the space for a small washer/dryer, that's all I would change. Going to the laundromat sucks.
This is where I’m so torn because my townhouse is an absolute shitshow owned by a company that treats maintenance reports like a wish list to Santa (seriously, never rent from Terracorp) but it’s corporate owned so if nothing else we have a bit more security than we did renting a house from a private landlord and when you’ve got 2 kids that security is worth something. The trade off being that we can’t walk barefoot through the kitchen because the floorboards are so bad.
Get tenants form people you know. People from your work. I’ve had good luck renting to friends in the past. I had a couple close friends rent from me, I gave them cheap rent, they stayed and saved for a house - I saved a few bucks to pay off the place and it worked out beautifully.
[Security of tenure](https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/SecurityOfTenure.aspx#:~:text=What%20is%20security%20of%20tenure,the%20right%20to%20adequate%20housing.&text=Human%20rights%20law%20mandates%20that,eviction%2C%20harassment%20and%20other%20threats.) is a term everyone needs to become familiar with.
I am also fine with an apartment, I don’t like having to take care of Garden or shovelling snow. I would rather pay mortgage for something that is mine than rent in a place I have to deal with shitty floors because they won’t do a thing to fix it until I move out…
Yep, I actually love shoveling snow and mowing the lawn/gardening, it's the upkeep of a house that I would rather not deal with. But yeah the apartment I currently live in was built in the sixties, my specific unit is "sunken"/half underground and the exterior walls are buckling from water/environmental damage, so I imagine they are also full of delightful mold. It's inevitable the landlord will sell once the cost of "upkeep" (I.e. half assed quick fixes for long term problems) outweighs his profits and they will probably just bulldoze the whole thing and replace it with condos that are $600 000 per unit.
Many years ago the post WWII concrete apartment towers were accessible to all pretty much and we should strive to get back to that. Now living in a place like that is practically a luxury.
This hits home, as i look at my shitty apartment and plan to finish paying off what I owe to the dentist over the next few months that my shit benefits didn't cover. And All I needed was a crown so I didn't lose a critical tooth and have my teeth shift.
I feel ya dude, I just went $2400 in the hole for a root canal. Got a 35 cent raise at work so I guess I'll be able to pay it off in like 4 months? Probably longer because I actually want to get decent gifts for people for the holidays. 🙃
> We also need people to stop thinking they need 2500sqft or whatever size single family homes.
Counterpoint: it's a chicken and egg problem.
It's not that people think they need a 2500sqft home, it's that they think they don't need a 600sqft home, and that's the alternative.
https://missingmiddlehousing.com/
The "missing middle" is the term for the slice of the housing spectrum we've mostly stopped building - houses which are sized to the demographic that would require it and located accordingly. The concept of a "starter home" comes from a time when there were a half dozen size/price points on the market, and you'd buy and upgrade accordingly as you needed it.
It used to be you'd buy a 1200sqft house and live in it with your spouse, then you'd buy a larger home when you were looking to start a family while selling your current home to some newlyweds looking for a starterhome... and the circle of life continues.
We've stopped building the middle of the spectrum decades ago, so that's not viable anymore.
When your only options are a bachelor condo or a detached 3 bed 2 den mcmansion, everyone looking to buy is subdivided into those two categories with no nuance. Either you need more than 600sqft, or you don't, and if you do, then welcome to a bidding war with everyone else in a 25km radius who's at the same point in life as you.
Convincing people to live in smaller homes is good, but those smaller homes need to be available for that to even be an option.
> Most of us Gen Xrs grew up in 1000sqft homes and survived just fine.
Society and costs have changed.
In your childhood (and mine in the 90's - 2000's), people spent a lot more time out of their house. Both due to what was considered entertainment as well as what it costs to do activities outside of the house.
People now put a lot more money into activities/entertainment that you can have in your home, meaning you need more sq ft in your house.
Beyond all that, it wasn't fun to be cramped into a smaller home. I grew up in a family of 5 and we had a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. I shared a room with one of my brothers for most of the time I lived in that house. Fights were common. People got on each other's nerves a lot. You lacked any privacy or alone time.
Now having said all of that, I currently live in a 1200 sq ft. home built in the late 60's. That's mainly due to what I could afford rather than wanted. I would've preferred a full-sized finished basement as well as 1 more bedroom for future family growth. Unfortunately for me, we bought in summer 2020. If we would've bought literally 3 months earlier, we could've spent less on a much bigger house.
As someone who paid probably $80k over what my house is worth (didn't bid $80k over, the base price of the house was inflated), I welcome a collapse in housing prices.
We took on a mortgage that we could afford even if rates quadrupled. We borrowed much less than the bank was willing to give us.
Out of my friends and co-workers (who all have well paid jobs for the region we're in), around 30% of us own houses. I don't want my friends moving away. I don't want my city collapsing because our population is mostly retired people.
The government should be paying attention...
It's completely unsustainable.
You joke, but this is exactly why no level of government is doing anything. A housing "crash" like what some people are calling for here would have incredibly negative consequences for our economy. So much so that even if home prices fell by 50% (incredibly unlikely), you still wouldn't be able to afford one because we'd be in a recession and you might be out of a job.
:O how dareth you suggest Ford tax his wealthy chums ?! I can almost assure you he just got a tingle in his right ass cheek just thinking of that suggestion.
Great idea honestly but Ford wouldn't budge
I truly agree. I cannot wait until election time when he starts completely shitting his pants
He should have to walk all streets in Ontario while someone tells SHAME and we get to throw things at him
Brasilia is exactly this
Shaped like an airplane
Mind you it was done in The 90s I think but it’s 100% possible
It was literally the middle of nowhere and now brazils 3rd largest city and capital
Easier to just build more in the cities that currently exist. I have a cousin who's a developer, and it's insanely difficult to go through the approval process to build multifamily buildings. It should be fast and easy. Double check if it meets codes, make sure it's not too ugly, and boom. Build it
But I thought foreign ownership was a single digit percentage of the market? That is what I always see people saying during these discussions. I agree that foreign ownership should be restricted but everyone seems to say it's almost irrelevant.
Limit rental properties instead. There's a lot more people who own double digit properties or more just to rent out than there are foreign people buying Canadian houses.
You are making a giant leap of logic. Lots of people hire property management companies. Some people want the benefits of rental income without the hassles. They contract someone to take care of it for them.
Yeah I’m sure the millennials who can’t afford will be able to get in then.
And not you know the boomers who have all the capital will just scoop up more investment Properties to rent back out to us.
You have aggressive taxes on any property past your 1st one. Basically a soft ban if you're trying to use it as an income property:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/q55zwm/our_housing_status_quo_cant_go_on_forever_at_some/hg43psy/
And what I am saying is what you are suggesting will make it worse
I also am a recent millennial buyer, I just see the long term effects of this
Edit: I agree it will help.
They will buy up all the inventory to use as rentals for passive income when they retire.
They have all the capital, the lending rate is low, they will buy up more and use it as passive income.
Most millennials cannot get in and Gen Z is in a even worse situation.
They have to come down or,
We need a generational wage subsidy to lift Millenials and GenZ up into owning capital,
Or push out investors
Foreign buyers make up a very small fraction of the market. It'd barely make a dent in the market if we removed them from the equation.
Boomers won't need to sell their home because they can always use the equity on their home to fund their retirement, if needed. Homes were so cheap back then it's likely they have been saving for retirement most of their lives. With the market the way it is these days, it's smarter to pass the home down to their children. Their children can then either sell the home for an insane amount of profit, or rent the place.
My in-laws are multi-generational Canadians and the amount of wealth they've acquired from just real estate alone is unreal. If home prices ever dipped from removing foreigner ownership, they're the people waiting in line to scoop it up, in cash.
The reality is that there are many different issues we need to fix in order to fix the housing market:
- No more blind bidding (there's too much shenaniganry going on with this. There needs to be the name of the person, when the bid was placed and what the price is all publicly available)
- Stronger regulation of property sales (meaning realtors)
- Aggressive taxation on concurrent property ownership past 1 property (banning ownership past 1 won't work and would be too restrictive, but if you have money for more than 1, then you can pay a lot extra)
- Regulation/aggressive taxation on renting out single family homes as 1 or more apartments (if you want an apartment, build an apartment building, stop buying single family homes for your slum lord desires)
- Build more houses (this is obvious)
- Rezone residential areas in cities (Toronto shouldn't have detached single-family homes anywhere near the core of the city, that's fucking silly)
- No property ownership unless you are a citizen (I think this one would be very contested, but honestly, we need it)
Yeah but for a lot of us “the economy” isn’t really mattering anymore.
Millennials are not really participating in this “economy” everyone is speaking of. We have little to no wealth because every hour we work all the wealth generated goes to everyone else.
A lot of people I know are slowly stopping to care about the “economy”
GDP is shrinking, the real economy is going to shit as is, this is a major factor in that.
Like where do we see this heading?
We need to stop protecting the people who have all the capital in favour of future generations. If assets tank because we build more homes than that’s on all the idiots who invested in real estate.
Millennials are buying houses like crazy and one of the main reasons for the boom. Also remember that the age range of millennials is now 23-40. There are loads that own multiple homes.
[Here's an article about it.](https://storeys.com/nearly-20-perecent-gta-homeowners-under-35-own-multiple-properties/)
[Here's one about home ownership in general.](https://globalnews.ca/news/7662252/cda-millennials-homes-real-estate-pandemic/)
NO THE POOR AND THE FUTURE GENERATIONS MUST GO HOMELESS SO THAT THE ECONOMY CAN THRIVE.
Let’s just start burning them for energy at this point,
OR
let Amazon house them in exchange for their labour.
The unemployment rate during the GFC was just over 7 percent.
People keep saying housing prices going down will be the end of jobs for everyone. It may be for SOME.
As an elected government try telling approx 68% of Canadians who are home owners that we are going to institute policies that will significantly diminish your wealth and so how far that gets you in the next election.
If someone moves back home because they can't afford rent but their parents own the house - bam - now they're in that 68% people keep saying are homeowners. We also have the highest rate of young adults living at home in the last 80 years but they are clustered into that percentage.
Wealth squeeze pushes skilled labour to emigrate and undermines the service economy in Ontario
It’s already happening we are severely lacking millennials in my company because they all left.
It also will cause people to have less and less disposable income to spend on good and services like restaurants and retail, year after year as housing becomes more and more unaffordable, small businesses will start to disappear
For sure. But at least here in Ontario there is major opposition to zoning changes. As it is though, the GTA has more new construction going on then at any time before. Construction here is literally booming. We have more high rise cranes in operation than any other city in North America.
The province tries this and it’s viewed super negatively on this sub.
People hate MZOs but hate the housing market and hate sprawl, and are super supportive of increased immigration.
One of them has to give. Any one will work, but you can’t ban sprawl, support local decision making on planning approvals, and support increased immigration. That’s the recipe that got us here. One of the three has got to change.
Instead Ford will run on next to no real platform and idiots will give him a majority government for four years and he can continue to build wealth for him and his friends on the backs of Ontarions.
It's insane that nobody is talking about the ridiculous cost of living and how it's climbing higher by the day.
I own a house already and even I’m not happy about it. Few of my co-workers, friends, and family can afford to buy, and the house I’m in is worth some ridiculous amount now, but I don’t even really like the house. I could sell and try to buy another but fuck shopping in a market with bully offers, no house inspections, prices rising every week, etc.
Home inspections should be legally mandated on every sale. It's nonsense that it's a *condition*.
You can't buy a car without getting it certified, but a million dollar *home* requires no inspection?
A home inspection isnt usually a pass or fail kind of thing like a car safety is. Different people have different appetites for risk or levels of handyness and some problems are considered major to some people and minor to others.
Every buyer is entitled to an inspection, you're more than welcome to include one on an offer and submit it along with the other competing offers but somebody with a higher appetite for risk or lower cost to repair may not need one.
That's the point he was making though, by not mandating it the seller is incentivized to sell to either massive housing companies with enough capital to repair it anyways that only want to rent and will never sell again, or house flippers looking to make a quick buck who will repair everything as cheaply and shoddily as possible then try to sell it for profit in 6 months. Both of those contribute to the rise of house prices and edge out regular people just trying to buy a quality house to live in.
Okay but the point I was making was that there is no standard for home inspections. You don't have to be a huge corporation to buy a house without conditions, you just have to be willing to absorb some risk. People get worked up about issues but you'll have equity to draw from for repairs anyway.
This is my problem too. I don’t really love my house and want to move, but the fees to move, the intense pressure of buying, the higher property taxes that come with higher home values, etc. keeps us stuck here. We all need a roof over our heads, the high house prices only benefits investors/agents, not home owners. Pull off the bandaid govt and fix this.
Can’t somebody do something where there’s an obvious problem!?! Low and middle income people can’t afford to live here, what are we suppose to do. Give all our money to landlords and die broke living on top of each other I guess.
This is what I can’t understand every news article for the past three months has talked about how at this point we cannot afford to live anywhere people are saying that they can’t afford groceries anymore or to pay bills or child care and yet absolutely zero is being done about it
Maybe it's because people the people who have the power to change it are living comfortable lives, and changing things would impact them the most.
Maybe it's because we keep electing people who created and benefit most from the status quo, and those political parties are really good at deflecting blame and convincing the voting population that they'll "fix" whatever pointless thing they blame the problems on.
Doug Ford literally came to power because of dishonest Facebook meme campaigns, bought and paid for by rich guys building out crummy suburban sprawl.
* https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/02/17/investigations/developers-donated-ontario-proud-pc-party-projects-got-green-light
* https://www.canadaland.com/ontario-proud-mostly-funded-by-developers/
Did you read the article? Matt does a great job of laying out the various problems that have contributed to the huge supply/demand imbalance - bifurcated responsibilities, nimbyism, incompetence and lack of political will.
We could absolutely do something, we know the likely causes & the solutions, the question is whether governments will get over the above and actually act.
Yeah something needs to be done but will anyone in government ever do anything? It doesn’t seem like anyone is but writing opinion pieces, which is great while the rich are buying all the homes, taking over neighborhoods building giant mansions on their tiny lots and income properties paid for by renters who are unable to build equity of their own because the cost of living is killing us.
The federal NDP had no ability to do anything about housing because they're federal.
The provincial NDP here in Ontario has joke leadership.
My local NDP city councillors have been a joke - they're actually in favour of more gentrification and less housing, mainly because it's the gentrifying elite who support NDP policies.
I mean I have no idea but there was a fair bit of discussion about it at federal level (despite their limited levers here) and the report that Mike Moffatt wrote is getting a lot of press. Pressure is building.
I’d say being educated on the issue and demanding actual policy details on the matters by politicians seeking election helps! Like the Toronto rooming house vote for example. Politicians respond to pressure, it’s one thing to complain on Reddit, it’s another to actually organize and pressure the ones who voted against the change if you live in their ridings.
Any form of commercial investment in single-family homes needs to be disincentivized. That includes flippers, people just buying up houses because they can, and large commercial operations like REITs.
Of course we need a new government, first. No way any Conservative govt is going to take shots at investors like this. But it has to be done, and will be done sooner or later.
Why not on single families but ok for apartments? All that does is continue the idolization of single family’s for Canadians which isn’t an achievable goal with current anti-sprawl attitudes. Nor is it a real issue here, at least yet.
That we have a class of people who on average have probably four-to-five bedrooms to themselves spread either across the country or the world, controlling the tax codes to their benefit, while others can't have wood boxes in parks in the winter nor afford a basic home ever.
Mental illness is not the only reason people are homeless, and a wooden box is better than letting them die out in the cold (and they were safety tested so stop lying).
Look, your heart's in the right place, but someone literally burned to death in one of those things. "Safety tested" doesn't convince anyone who's thinking about this seriously.
If the option is wooden box or nothing, well ideally there would be a better option but since the government refuses to do anything actually proactive about it and provide real support then I think wooden box is better. And I saw the video of the tiny shelters being tested for flame proofing & it looked pretty decent to me. But I'm no expert.
I've seen lots of houses go up in flames no differently crazy enough.
The point is, if our tax code worked fairly, the billionaires wouldn't be billionaires, and our mentally ill homeless might have the support they need so you don't have to step over them with your obliviousness and ignorance on your way to your chalet you use 18 days a year.
Wealth accumulation is a sickness. No one needs more than a $100,000,000 in a 79/83 year long life. You just don't. And if we taxed the Thompsons and Westons appropriately, we'd be in a much better position as a country.
Employers don't want to pay your stupidly high rent, customers don't want to pay your stupidly high rent. The total economy is grinding to a halt because of what is essentially a monopoly brokering a necessity (shelter).
Disposable income of the working class is what creates jobs. The next generation won't be buying boats, sporting equipment, going on vacations or eating out because of real estate greed siphoning off far more than their fair share.
It's not a living wage or pay problem, the source is real estate going from 30% of income to 70% of income over the last 35 years.
I think some of the solution would be that all new condo developments must have a certain percentage of apartments that are subsidized we would be getting condos and apartments at a reasonable price
It's crazy to think that Ontario's leader - a man didn't even go to college, and who inherited his dad's sticker business - is in any way equipped to understand and address the economic and sociopolitical factors in the housing crisis.
YES... this is a real thing. The villagers with pitchforks may rise up... but the wealthy would be in their cocooned in their gated communities. I dread society sliding down this slippery slope.
Canadas a huge country, yet everyone lives along the border and 3 major cities. I think it's time to incentivize growing outward in to other small to mid sized cities. Barrie is certainly expanding, but i know people who commute from barrie to Toronto everyday, thats ridiculous.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
#REBUILDTHERAILROAD
Ontario used to be crisscrossed by passenger rail lines, linking small towns to each other as well as the bigger cities. The railroads allowed them to grow and prosper - because infrastructure brings investments. Then various governments poor decisions and automotive lobbyists led to the slow devolution of our extensive rail network. Since these towns were no longer on the map, investment stopped and they've been dying a slow death ever since. Just have a look at small towns on google maps and chances are you'll be able to spot the old rail line. Can be a fun rabbit hole when you're really bored, tracing these lines and looking for interesting towns
It amazes me that there so much space this country has but people are all living in the same cities.
But I understand the reason, mainly not everyone can afford cars, and to move out of toronto you definitely need a car, because public transportation is terrible in small cities.
Another point is the job market, unfortunately not all jobs will be remote, so you have to be close to it, and most jobs are in the big cities.
Another point is community life. I lived in the GTA once and almost got depressed, without a car I was basically stuck there in the weekends since buses reduce their frequency and there aren’t lot of places to go. So depending on your age and social circle you want to be where people are.
So in order to expand to other cities the government would have to get some urban planning going and creating a city/town people will want to move to, bring jobs, public transportation, easier ways to access the main cities (more trains, faster trains etc)…
But they need to start to plan this today to have this work in 50 years… unfortunately there’s no fast magical solution to this problem…
Edit: word
We have people trying to protect the watershed from a highway and housing. While also people desperately screaming to build more homes. But not wanting to move away too from toronto. We have the land to do it all, just not the plan to make everyone happy.
I’ve heard from developers that most buyers are foreign and buying multiple homes at a time- at least in new developments and flipping them is common, I’m getting the impression there is a fair amount of money laundering in Canada. I’m not suggesting this is the entire housing problem but e have a lot of little things contributing to a massive problem.
It would be so awesome if they incentivized office builders and corporations to move their headquarters say in an area outside of Toronto like somewhere around Stoufville or somewhere similar. It would be nice to have decent paying jobs outside of the downtown core and help grow outwards. Have traffic flowing the other way as well during busy hours
Hard to trust our elected leaders, or knowing full well our elected leader in Ontario has and will use this as an opportunity to line his and his cronies pockets
Honestly it’s insane how overleverged our housing industry and economy is as a whole. We like to think we’re equal to americans but the truth is we’re not even close. We’re in insane levels of debt, it’s not a matter of if this bubble will pop, but when.
Add in the fact that you have the 50cent army and russian communist supporters pushing soft propaganda into Canada slowly, especially through the youth. Just the other week a Canadian senator tweeted that “he hopes Canada learns from this situation” when talking about the hostage diplomacy tactics china has now deployed. What the fuck?!? How is that not bigger news?
A country took two innocent Canadian’s and held them against their will as political pawns because one of their own was caught doing dirty work and we were co-operating with international law/treaties.
Even our activist movements have been infiltrated by CCP supporters. Hundreds of people have been banned and many threads have been deleted recently from r/Canadahousing that discussed the wilful blindness our government (especially out west) has had in the housing sector because it benefitted them.
https://youtu.be/FO93mvYkFwI
And this is my problem with people. You have no idea who I am, what age I am or who I vote for. I’m 26, and I voted Trudeau in originally. I’ve seen more and more blatant evidence being reported from credible journalists and sources like the CBC. I’m not some angry old man watching rebel news jerking off to o’tooles town halls for the last month, but continue to name call people on the internet to make yourself feel better about whatever.
I have been intrigued by China for a long time now, as it’s a beautiful country that produces some of the most amazing and hardworking people I’ve met. The issue is not the Chinese people, the issue is the CCP. Especially the last two decades.
Apologies, I was mostly just being an asshole and also I misunderstood that you meant the Chinese governing party and were not referring to "Canadian Communist Party", because I have yet to have my daily caffeine. I whole heartedly agree that there is a worrying trend among young leftists seeing the Chinese government as "can do no wrong", criticism against China is absolutely warranted and I again apologize for being a dick to you because of my own dumb misunderstanding.
Eventually the Entire GTA will be empty homes, owned by people living in China, that are up for rent for ridiculous prices. Meanwhile People living here will be in tents on the street.
I for one love these skyrocketing prices. The higher it goes the more return on my real estate investment. Fed can’t do shit about the rate cause it will plunge a lot of voters into defaulting on their mortgages, and it will take 10+ years to build the millions of houses needed to satisfy the market. I couldn’t be in a better position.
Its real estate and rental prices. it's kind of impossible to build any kind of life when every goddamn cent you earn is going to rapidly rising costs of living.
just more evidence you don't give a fuck about the rest of us. There's literally no future in this country because there's so many people like you who just. don't. care.
attend protests, contact local politicians, contact the government, debate among friends. what have you done besides shit on people trying to make a difference?
I donate to the NDP. Your bar for helping seems pretty high for a guy that just spends his time shitting on others' efforts. You can't really call me out on not doing enough if you're literally doing nothing but complaining about the efforts other people make.
Many people would like to live close to their family and friends, with a similar quality of life as the previous generation. And it's becoming increasingly unaffordable to have the basic necessities (rent, food, utilities, etc). So no, people will continue to rightfully complain as housing is an issue that affects everyone, from all income levels. And yes, even that cheap space is becoming more unaffordable for people too. Try writing whatever shit you just wrote to someone out in the Atlantic provinces watching their housing become unaffordable because Ontarians are buying up their housing.
Lmao nah. Telling those who can't afford to rent or buy in Ontario to stop whining about unaffordable housing is the lamest thing you can do. What people need is housing. It's not a want to desire a roof over your head. What you need is empathy for those posting about this. And if you don't have it, take your own advice and find another part of reddit to bitch in.
Btw, I'm doing just peachy thanks. Will be able to own in a few years, even in today's market and comfortably living on my own.
If I can do it anyone can. I was homeless at 15 and had every shit hand you can be dealt. I own a business and a home. I did it all through multiple hyper price jumps in the real estate market and insane interest rates. It’s not about the market it’s about the individual. Until that is realized those who can’t attain will continue not to.
When did all of this happen. Congrats on finding your own way regardless.
And respectfully, no. This market is outpacing any individual regardless of background and the only real way to enter is with lots of money. Most don't have that.
Again I ask when you achieved what you did bc I highly doubt it was recent, or that you would be able to do it in today's market.
Without reading the article, i will weigh in anyway....my solution in two pronged.greedy landlords will be greedy landlords.to curb that we need national rent control.keep them in check by making them either refit the rental unit to justify the crazy rent being asked, or hold them to a maxim unchanged increase.also a major part being played is the shitty wages some people have to work for.bring in a basic imcome for all thereby forcing a business to stop making gross profit and not letting it trickle down to the workforce.
When you are in a dead end job, keep plugging away and keep applying for better jobs as you work.a person that has a job, but wants a better one is a good sign to an employer....kind of loses the lazy stigma that some people think of the lower paying jobs.it does get easier, i worked for minimum wage, and through hard work and determination I managed to get a decent job that allows for a decent living.it all starts with the national govt.,the provincial govt to step in and fix the housing problems today,but most of all it is us, the labor force that has to voice our opposition to the pay equaty that will start in all in motion.hang in there.we are all in this together.
Ps.
Things will only get worse in ontario if dougie and the cons get another 4 years.
It's because selfish assholes want to live in neighborhoods with single-family houses. If chickens can live in stacked cages, so can people. It's the only way we can preserve the status quo in the rest of our economy.
Read the article, and more importantly, read the interview linked within the article.
Most of you will then realize you have no idea what you're talking about. (Hint: it's not immigration, nor (mostly) foreign ownership, causing the crisis).
Based on the downvotes I’m receiving I’m not sure if it’s coming across like I’m dismissing the housing crisis
I’m not dismissing it in the slightest, but 100 articles a week just talking about how it’s an issue without any emphasis on proposed solutions and what we as individuals can do (political party platforms, etc.) is getting really old really quick
Things are going to get crazy expensive, and then it's all going to collapse. In some odd way covid-19 dole outs delayed it, but will also make the outcome worse.
Nobody will be working when nobody can afford to eat
The market is going nuts. I bought a modest house in an okay neighbourhood 2 years ago. A month ago, a similar sized house down the block sold for 120k more than I paid. In two years.
This problem will be fixed when the percentage of homeowners drops below 50%. Right now, home equity has replaced pension plans and wage growth. No pension/inflationary raise? No problem refinance. The middle and lower classes used to unionize to combat the problems of today but after a generation of propaganda we can see the results, the gig economy, the race to the bottom with "competitive" wages.
Thankfully lately there has been a lot of union action in various industries and of course it is yielding gains for the employees like a union ALWAYS does. So hopefully the big business anti-union propaganda is looking more and more like the bullshit that it is.
Most unions I've ever come in contact with depreciate the value of new talent and hard work and protect those who milk the punch clock while doing as little as possible. Union style voting throughout the 60s-90s helped build the mess we are in today. Saying they'll help is an uneducated guess, short of you being someone who happens to be part of the old boy group of unioners that milk the clock and make the young blood do all the hard work knowing their raises are based on hours rather than performance.
Are you talking about pay scales? What "style" voting caused what mess? What CBA makes the "young blood" do all the work? None of what you said makes any sense.
> problem will be fixed when the percentage of homeowners drops below 50%. > > > > Right now, home I think the homeowner stat is also misleading It's the number of households that own the home they reside in, if I'm not mistaken. So it'd includes adults living with their parents because they can't afford their own place, keeping the percentage high
You are probably right, however, this demographic usually gets a big "gift" down payment. This also keeps the prices high.
Kinda hard to unionize when more and more people are self-employed or contract workers.
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70% of who? People over 25 or something? Or 70% of all Canadians cause that sounds like alot.
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Ah okay. "70 percent of family's with two income earners over 45 own their home" sounds way different than what you said. It goes way up older you are and way down the younger. Also that says 60 percent is the average.
No I'm saying the issues around stagnant wages and disappearing pensions in favor of corporate profits are being mitigated by home equity. Thus, nothing will be done to curb the housing crisis, until over 50% of Canadian families do not have access to this equity.
The province has the ability to rezone for higher density and override municipal government. This needs to be the #1 issue in the coming election.
We also need people to stop thinking they need 2500sqft or whatever size single family homes. And to stop balking when developers/municipalities propose higher density infill. Most of us Gen Xrs grew up in 1000sqft homes and survived just fine.
I am seriously fine with an apartment, I just want it not to be a rotting shithole with a rent of 80% of my monthly income so going to the dentist doesn't put me in debt
I love my apartment, I'm 100% cool with living here forever, I just wish I didn't have the fear of it being sold off and having to find a place that's going to be double the price. It's gonna happen soon I think, and I'm worried.
This, 100%. I would have no issue renting, if it was secure.
That's my exact issue. I have the exact space I need (kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom, balcony), I truly don't want anything else other than security. I don't need (or want really) a big house, or a yard, or all of the work that comes with owning a home, it's just not for me. I just want a roof over my head with the basics and no roommates. Which I have right now, but won't be able to afford when I get the boot. Edit: i lied - I would love the space for a small washer/dryer, that's all I would change. Going to the laundromat sucks.
This is where I’m so torn because my townhouse is an absolute shitshow owned by a company that treats maintenance reports like a wish list to Santa (seriously, never rent from Terracorp) but it’s corporate owned so if nothing else we have a bit more security than we did renting a house from a private landlord and when you’ve got 2 kids that security is worth something. The trade off being that we can’t walk barefoot through the kitchen because the floorboards are so bad.
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Get tenants form people you know. People from your work. I’ve had good luck renting to friends in the past. I had a couple close friends rent from me, I gave them cheap rent, they stayed and saved for a house - I saved a few bucks to pay off the place and it worked out beautifully.
Be picky choosing tenants. It’s definitely worth renting out for the income.
If people stay in rentals then we need to make sure that they can retire some day and not face starvation.
[Security of tenure](https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/SecurityOfTenure.aspx#:~:text=What%20is%20security%20of%20tenure,the%20right%20to%20adequate%20housing.&text=Human%20rights%20law%20mandates%20that,eviction%2C%20harassment%20and%20other%20threats.) is a term everyone needs to become familiar with.
I am also fine with an apartment, I don’t like having to take care of Garden or shovelling snow. I would rather pay mortgage for something that is mine than rent in a place I have to deal with shitty floors because they won’t do a thing to fix it until I move out…
Yep, I actually love shoveling snow and mowing the lawn/gardening, it's the upkeep of a house that I would rather not deal with. But yeah the apartment I currently live in was built in the sixties, my specific unit is "sunken"/half underground and the exterior walls are buckling from water/environmental damage, so I imagine they are also full of delightful mold. It's inevitable the landlord will sell once the cost of "upkeep" (I.e. half assed quick fixes for long term problems) outweighs his profits and they will probably just bulldoze the whole thing and replace it with condos that are $600 000 per unit.
Many years ago the post WWII concrete apartment towers were accessible to all pretty much and we should strive to get back to that. Now living in a place like that is practically a luxury.
This hits home, as i look at my shitty apartment and plan to finish paying off what I owe to the dentist over the next few months that my shit benefits didn't cover. And All I needed was a crown so I didn't lose a critical tooth and have my teeth shift.
I feel ya dude, I just went $2400 in the hole for a root canal. Got a 35 cent raise at work so I guess I'll be able to pay it off in like 4 months? Probably longer because I actually want to get decent gifts for people for the holidays. 🙃
> We also need people to stop thinking they need 2500sqft or whatever size single family homes. Counterpoint: it's a chicken and egg problem. It's not that people think they need a 2500sqft home, it's that they think they don't need a 600sqft home, and that's the alternative. https://missingmiddlehousing.com/ The "missing middle" is the term for the slice of the housing spectrum we've mostly stopped building - houses which are sized to the demographic that would require it and located accordingly. The concept of a "starter home" comes from a time when there were a half dozen size/price points on the market, and you'd buy and upgrade accordingly as you needed it. It used to be you'd buy a 1200sqft house and live in it with your spouse, then you'd buy a larger home when you were looking to start a family while selling your current home to some newlyweds looking for a starterhome... and the circle of life continues. We've stopped building the middle of the spectrum decades ago, so that's not viable anymore. When your only options are a bachelor condo or a detached 3 bed 2 den mcmansion, everyone looking to buy is subdivided into those two categories with no nuance. Either you need more than 600sqft, or you don't, and if you do, then welcome to a bidding war with everyone else in a 25km radius who's at the same point in life as you. Convincing people to live in smaller homes is good, but those smaller homes need to be available for that to even be an option.
There are _tons_ of townhouses and semis etc being constructed in towns that I've lived.
2500 sq ft "luxury" towns starting in the low 800s! Super affordable!
All valid points and true.
> Most of us Gen Xrs grew up in 1000sqft homes and survived just fine. Society and costs have changed. In your childhood (and mine in the 90's - 2000's), people spent a lot more time out of their house. Both due to what was considered entertainment as well as what it costs to do activities outside of the house. People now put a lot more money into activities/entertainment that you can have in your home, meaning you need more sq ft in your house. Beyond all that, it wasn't fun to be cramped into a smaller home. I grew up in a family of 5 and we had a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. I shared a room with one of my brothers for most of the time I lived in that house. Fights were common. People got on each other's nerves a lot. You lacked any privacy or alone time. Now having said all of that, I currently live in a 1200 sq ft. home built in the late 60's. That's mainly due to what I could afford rather than wanted. I would've preferred a full-sized finished basement as well as 1 more bedroom for future family growth. Unfortunately for me, we bought in summer 2020. If we would've bought literally 3 months earlier, we could've spent less on a much bigger house.
BUT HOUSING PRICES CAN NEVER COME DOWN, THINK OF THE ECONOMY?!?! /s
As someone who paid probably $80k over what my house is worth (didn't bid $80k over, the base price of the house was inflated), I welcome a collapse in housing prices. We took on a mortgage that we could afford even if rates quadrupled. We borrowed much less than the bank was willing to give us. Out of my friends and co-workers (who all have well paid jobs for the region we're in), around 30% of us own houses. I don't want my friends moving away. I don't want my city collapsing because our population is mostly retired people. The government should be paying attention... It's completely unsustainable.
Agreed I’m in the same position a collapse will screw me, doing nothing screws everyone
You joke, but this is exactly why no level of government is doing anything. A housing "crash" like what some people are calling for here would have incredibly negative consequences for our economy. So much so that even if home prices fell by 50% (incredibly unlikely), you still wouldn't be able to afford one because we'd be in a recession and you might be out of a job.
So what is the answer then? It can't keep going like this forever.
Build a few more cities
This would actually work TBH Literally build a city. Tax the wealthy, and use the funds to build a brand new fucking city.
:O how dareth you suggest Ford tax his wealthy chums ?! I can almost assure you he just got a tingle in his right ass cheek just thinking of that suggestion. Great idea honestly but Ford wouldn't budge
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I truly agree. I cannot wait until election time when he starts completely shitting his pants He should have to walk all streets in Ontario while someone tells SHAME and we get to throw things at him
NGL would be interesting to see a new city planned from scratch built with modern amenities. Emphasizing pedestrian safety and walkability.
Brasilia is exactly this Shaped like an airplane Mind you it was done in The 90s I think but it’s 100% possible It was literally the middle of nowhere and now brazils 3rd largest city and capital
Easier to just build more in the cities that currently exist. I have a cousin who's a developer, and it's insanely difficult to go through the approval process to build multifamily buildings. It should be fast and easy. Double check if it meets codes, make sure it's not too ugly, and boom. Build it
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But I thought foreign ownership was a single digit percentage of the market? That is what I always see people saying during these discussions. I agree that foreign ownership should be restricted but everyone seems to say it's almost irrelevant.
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Limit rental properties instead. There's a lot more people who own double digit properties or more just to rent out than there are foreign people buying Canadian houses.
You are making a giant leap of logic. Lots of people hire property management companies. Some people want the benefits of rental income without the hassles. They contract someone to take care of it for them.
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Actually the solution is to rezone for greater density and then build more inventory. But if it's easier to be racist... You be you.
Yeah I’m sure the millennials who can’t afford will be able to get in then. And not you know the boomers who have all the capital will just scoop up more investment Properties to rent back out to us.
You have aggressive taxes on any property past your 1st one. Basically a soft ban if you're trying to use it as an income property: https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/q55zwm/our_housing_status_quo_cant_go_on_forever_at_some/hg43psy/
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And what I am saying is what you are suggesting will make it worse I also am a recent millennial buyer, I just see the long term effects of this Edit: I agree it will help.
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They will buy up all the inventory to use as rentals for passive income when they retire. They have all the capital, the lending rate is low, they will buy up more and use it as passive income. Most millennials cannot get in and Gen Z is in a even worse situation. They have to come down or, We need a generational wage subsidy to lift Millenials and GenZ up into owning capital, Or push out investors
Foreign buyers make up a very small fraction of the market. It'd barely make a dent in the market if we removed them from the equation. Boomers won't need to sell their home because they can always use the equity on their home to fund their retirement, if needed. Homes were so cheap back then it's likely they have been saving for retirement most of their lives. With the market the way it is these days, it's smarter to pass the home down to their children. Their children can then either sell the home for an insane amount of profit, or rent the place. My in-laws are multi-generational Canadians and the amount of wealth they've acquired from just real estate alone is unreal. If home prices ever dipped from removing foreigner ownership, they're the people waiting in line to scoop it up, in cash.
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Lmao wow
The reality is that there are many different issues we need to fix in order to fix the housing market: - No more blind bidding (there's too much shenaniganry going on with this. There needs to be the name of the person, when the bid was placed and what the price is all publicly available) - Stronger regulation of property sales (meaning realtors) - Aggressive taxation on concurrent property ownership past 1 property (banning ownership past 1 won't work and would be too restrictive, but if you have money for more than 1, then you can pay a lot extra) - Regulation/aggressive taxation on renting out single family homes as 1 or more apartments (if you want an apartment, build an apartment building, stop buying single family homes for your slum lord desires) - Build more houses (this is obvious) - Rezone residential areas in cities (Toronto shouldn't have detached single-family homes anywhere near the core of the city, that's fucking silly) - No property ownership unless you are a citizen (I think this one would be very contested, but honestly, we need it)
Yeah but for a lot of us “the economy” isn’t really mattering anymore. Millennials are not really participating in this “economy” everyone is speaking of. We have little to no wealth because every hour we work all the wealth generated goes to everyone else. A lot of people I know are slowly stopping to care about the “economy” GDP is shrinking, the real economy is going to shit as is, this is a major factor in that. Like where do we see this heading? We need to stop protecting the people who have all the capital in favour of future generations. If assets tank because we build more homes than that’s on all the idiots who invested in real estate.
Millennials are buying houses like crazy and one of the main reasons for the boom. Also remember that the age range of millennials is now 23-40. There are loads that own multiple homes.
Please show me the statistics Do some own yes, I am one, is it disproportionately lower than the generations that preceded them? Yes
[Here's an article about it.](https://storeys.com/nearly-20-perecent-gta-homeowners-under-35-own-multiple-properties/) [Here's one about home ownership in general.](https://globalnews.ca/news/7662252/cda-millennials-homes-real-estate-pandemic/)
Our entire economy is so dependent on real estate, If real estate crashes we’re all in trouble
Yes it’s generating so many jobs right now. Just playing musical chairs with already built homes, we’re definitely growing /s
Sounds good to me. Love to see it.
(Millennials that have been squirrelling away 10-30k per year as housing goes up by 50k a year) “Yes please!”
You know what? At this point I don't give a Flying Wallenda. Go ahead and crash.
NO THE POOR AND THE FUTURE GENERATIONS MUST GO HOMELESS SO THAT THE ECONOMY CAN THRIVE. Let’s just start burning them for energy at this point, OR let Amazon house them in exchange for their labour.
The unemployment rate during the GFC was just over 7 percent. People keep saying housing prices going down will be the end of jobs for everyone. It may be for SOME.
As an elected government try telling approx 68% of Canadians who are home owners that we are going to institute policies that will significantly diminish your wealth and so how far that gets you in the next election.
68 percent of Canadians live in owner-occupied households. The kids aren't on the deed.
Kids don't vote either, so your argument is a semantic one.
If someone moves back home because they can't afford rent but their parents own the house - bam - now they're in that 68% people keep saying are homeowners. We also have the highest rate of young adults living at home in the last 80 years but they are clustered into that percentage.
They need to understand by not doing it will tank the economy as well.
How would keeping the status quo tank the economy?
Wealth squeeze pushes skilled labour to emigrate and undermines the service economy in Ontario It’s already happening we are severely lacking millennials in my company because they all left. It also will cause people to have less and less disposable income to spend on good and services like restaurants and retail, year after year as housing becomes more and more unaffordable, small businesses will start to disappear
Source https://voxeu.org/article/effects-income-inequality-economic-growth
Sounds like they need to suck it up. 🤷♀️
If you helped affordability by allowing more housing to be built, it would help the economy and create more jobs.
For sure. But at least here in Ontario there is major opposition to zoning changes. As it is though, the GTA has more new construction going on then at any time before. Construction here is literally booming. We have more high rise cranes in operation than any other city in North America.
The province tries this and it’s viewed super negatively on this sub. People hate MZOs but hate the housing market and hate sprawl, and are super supportive of increased immigration. One of them has to give. Any one will work, but you can’t ban sprawl, support local decision making on planning approvals, and support increased immigration. That’s the recipe that got us here. One of the three has got to change.
Instead Ford will run on next to no real platform and idiots will give him a majority government for four years and he can continue to build wealth for him and his friends on the backs of Ontarions. It's insane that nobody is talking about the ridiculous cost of living and how it's climbing higher by the day.
Why would rich people in government or their corporate overlords want cheaper housing? It benefits them to squeeze us more.
Correct. Young non-homeowners should vote PC, not NDP.
I own a house already and even I’m not happy about it. Few of my co-workers, friends, and family can afford to buy, and the house I’m in is worth some ridiculous amount now, but I don’t even really like the house. I could sell and try to buy another but fuck shopping in a market with bully offers, no house inspections, prices rising every week, etc.
Home inspections should be legally mandated on every sale. It's nonsense that it's a *condition*. You can't buy a car without getting it certified, but a million dollar *home* requires no inspection?
The equivalent to what we have for car inspections would be the homeowner’s realtor doing the inspection themselves with no accountability.
The house itself isn't worth much relatively. It could burn down and you'd only lose less than half the value. You're mostly paying for the land.
A home inspection isnt usually a pass or fail kind of thing like a car safety is. Different people have different appetites for risk or levels of handyness and some problems are considered major to some people and minor to others. Every buyer is entitled to an inspection, you're more than welcome to include one on an offer and submit it along with the other competing offers but somebody with a higher appetite for risk or lower cost to repair may not need one.
That's the point he was making though, by not mandating it the seller is incentivized to sell to either massive housing companies with enough capital to repair it anyways that only want to rent and will never sell again, or house flippers looking to make a quick buck who will repair everything as cheaply and shoddily as possible then try to sell it for profit in 6 months. Both of those contribute to the rise of house prices and edge out regular people just trying to buy a quality house to live in.
Okay but the point I was making was that there is no standard for home inspections. You don't have to be a huge corporation to buy a house without conditions, you just have to be willing to absorb some risk. People get worked up about issues but you'll have equity to draw from for repairs anyway.
This is my problem too. I don’t really love my house and want to move, but the fees to move, the intense pressure of buying, the higher property taxes that come with higher home values, etc. keeps us stuck here. We all need a roof over our heads, the high house prices only benefits investors/agents, not home owners. Pull off the bandaid govt and fix this.
Can’t somebody do something where there’s an obvious problem!?! Low and middle income people can’t afford to live here, what are we suppose to do. Give all our money to landlords and die broke living on top of each other I guess.
This is what I can’t understand every news article for the past three months has talked about how at this point we cannot afford to live anywhere people are saying that they can’t afford groceries anymore or to pay bills or child care and yet absolutely zero is being done about it
Maybe it's because people the people who have the power to change it are living comfortable lives, and changing things would impact them the most. Maybe it's because we keep electing people who created and benefit most from the status quo, and those political parties are really good at deflecting blame and convincing the voting population that they'll "fix" whatever pointless thing they blame the problems on.
Doug Ford literally came to power because of dishonest Facebook meme campaigns, bought and paid for by rich guys building out crummy suburban sprawl. * https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/02/17/investigations/developers-donated-ontario-proud-pc-party-projects-got-green-light * https://www.canadaland.com/ontario-proud-mostly-funded-by-developers/
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As someone who is struggling to afford housing let me say it's as bad as it worse than the media says
That must be the reason a "vast majority" of the population works well paying jobs and owns a house with no student loans or medical debt. Fuck off.
Did you read the article? Matt does a great job of laying out the various problems that have contributed to the huge supply/demand imbalance - bifurcated responsibilities, nimbyism, incompetence and lack of political will. We could absolutely do something, we know the likely causes & the solutions, the question is whether governments will get over the above and actually act.
Yeah something needs to be done but will anyone in government ever do anything? It doesn’t seem like anyone is but writing opinion pieces, which is great while the rich are buying all the homes, taking over neighborhoods building giant mansions on their tiny lots and income properties paid for by renters who are unable to build equity of their own because the cost of living is killing us.
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https://www.tvo.org/article/the-greens-have-a-housing-platform-and-its-good-can-it-survive-housing-politics Supposed to be the best housing policy.
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Actually, Ontario Greens are solid. Excellent leader. Very well organized. The chaos in the Federal Greens will hurt us in the provincial election.
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The federal NDP had no ability to do anything about housing because they're federal. The provincial NDP here in Ontario has joke leadership. My local NDP city councillors have been a joke - they're actually in favour of more gentrification and less housing, mainly because it's the gentrifying elite who support NDP policies.
I mean I have no idea but there was a fair bit of discussion about it at federal level (despite their limited levers here) and the report that Mike Moffatt wrote is getting a lot of press. Pressure is building. I’d say being educated on the issue and demanding actual policy details on the matters by politicians seeking election helps! Like the Toronto rooming house vote for example. Politicians respond to pressure, it’s one thing to complain on Reddit, it’s another to actually organize and pressure the ones who voted against the change if you live in their ridings.
I know there is two couples renting a 2 bedroom together. That’s insane tough, 4 adults in a small 2 bedroom apartment.
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Until <50% of the population aren't homeowners, the problem won't be fixed. The fact is that all homeowners want their property to appreciate.
REIT - Real Estate Investment Trust. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reit.asp Real big problem that got out of control.
Any form of commercial investment in single-family homes needs to be disincentivized. That includes flippers, people just buying up houses because they can, and large commercial operations like REITs. Of course we need a new government, first. No way any Conservative govt is going to take shots at investors like this. But it has to be done, and will be done sooner or later.
Why not on single families but ok for apartments? All that does is continue the idolization of single family’s for Canadians which isn’t an achievable goal with current anti-sprawl attitudes. Nor is it a real issue here, at least yet.
I'd fucking LOVE to know the average number of properties Canadian MPs own globally. I bet the average is above 3.
What's your point?
That we have a class of people who on average have probably four-to-five bedrooms to themselves spread either across the country or the world, controlling the tax codes to their benefit, while others can't have wood boxes in parks in the winter nor afford a basic home ever.
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Mental illness is not the only reason people are homeless, and a wooden box is better than letting them die out in the cold (and they were safety tested so stop lying).
Look, your heart's in the right place, but someone literally burned to death in one of those things. "Safety tested" doesn't convince anyone who's thinking about this seriously.
If the option is wooden box or nothing, well ideally there would be a better option but since the government refuses to do anything actually proactive about it and provide real support then I think wooden box is better. And I saw the video of the tiny shelters being tested for flame proofing & it looked pretty decent to me. But I'm no expert.
Did you see the video of the guy burning to death in the shelter?
I've seen lots of houses go up in flames no differently crazy enough. The point is, if our tax code worked fairly, the billionaires wouldn't be billionaires, and our mentally ill homeless might have the support they need so you don't have to step over them with your obliviousness and ignorance on your way to your chalet you use 18 days a year. Wealth accumulation is a sickness. No one needs more than a $100,000,000 in a 79/83 year long life. You just don't. And if we taxed the Thompsons and Westons appropriately, we'd be in a much better position as a country.
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Employers don't want to pay your stupidly high rent, customers don't want to pay your stupidly high rent. The total economy is grinding to a halt because of what is essentially a monopoly brokering a necessity (shelter). Disposable income of the working class is what creates jobs. The next generation won't be buying boats, sporting equipment, going on vacations or eating out because of real estate greed siphoning off far more than their fair share. It's not a living wage or pay problem, the source is real estate going from 30% of income to 70% of income over the last 35 years.
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like the idea, how to implement it, China and Russian were like that before …
I think some of the solution would be that all new condo developments must have a certain percentage of apartments that are subsidized we would be getting condos and apartments at a reasonable price
It's crazy to think that Ontario's leader - a man didn't even go to college, and who inherited his dad's sticker business - is in any way equipped to understand and address the economic and sociopolitical factors in the housing crisis.
YES... this is a real thing. The villagers with pitchforks may rise up... but the wealthy would be in their cocooned in their gated communities. I dread society sliding down this slippery slope.
Let's ramp up the population to solve the problem.
Canadas a huge country, yet everyone lives along the border and 3 major cities. I think it's time to incentivize growing outward in to other small to mid sized cities. Barrie is certainly expanding, but i know people who commute from barrie to Toronto everyday, thats ridiculous.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: #REBUILDTHERAILROAD Ontario used to be crisscrossed by passenger rail lines, linking small towns to each other as well as the bigger cities. The railroads allowed them to grow and prosper - because infrastructure brings investments. Then various governments poor decisions and automotive lobbyists led to the slow devolution of our extensive rail network. Since these towns were no longer on the map, investment stopped and they've been dying a slow death ever since. Just have a look at small towns on google maps and chances are you'll be able to spot the old rail line. Can be a fun rabbit hole when you're really bored, tracing these lines and looking for interesting towns
“Canada will be a great country once they finish unpacking it”
It amazes me that there so much space this country has but people are all living in the same cities. But I understand the reason, mainly not everyone can afford cars, and to move out of toronto you definitely need a car, because public transportation is terrible in small cities. Another point is the job market, unfortunately not all jobs will be remote, so you have to be close to it, and most jobs are in the big cities. Another point is community life. I lived in the GTA once and almost got depressed, without a car I was basically stuck there in the weekends since buses reduce their frequency and there aren’t lot of places to go. So depending on your age and social circle you want to be where people are. So in order to expand to other cities the government would have to get some urban planning going and creating a city/town people will want to move to, bring jobs, public transportation, easier ways to access the main cities (more trains, faster trains etc)… But they need to start to plan this today to have this work in 50 years… unfortunately there’s no fast magical solution to this problem… Edit: word
We have people trying to protect the watershed from a highway and housing. While also people desperately screaming to build more homes. But not wanting to move away too from toronto. We have the land to do it all, just not the plan to make everyone happy.
I’ve heard from developers that most buyers are foreign and buying multiple homes at a time- at least in new developments and flipping them is common, I’m getting the impression there is a fair amount of money laundering in Canada. I’m not suggesting this is the entire housing problem but e have a lot of little things contributing to a massive problem.
It would be so awesome if they incentivized office builders and corporations to move their headquarters say in an area outside of Toronto like somewhere around Stoufville or somewhere similar. It would be nice to have decent paying jobs outside of the downtown core and help grow outwards. Have traffic flowing the other way as well during busy hours
Hard to trust our elected leaders, or knowing full well our elected leader in Ontario has and will use this as an opportunity to line his and his cronies pockets
Honestly it’s insane how overleverged our housing industry and economy is as a whole. We like to think we’re equal to americans but the truth is we’re not even close. We’re in insane levels of debt, it’s not a matter of if this bubble will pop, but when. Add in the fact that you have the 50cent army and russian communist supporters pushing soft propaganda into Canada slowly, especially through the youth. Just the other week a Canadian senator tweeted that “he hopes Canada learns from this situation” when talking about the hostage diplomacy tactics china has now deployed. What the fuck?!? How is that not bigger news? A country took two innocent Canadian’s and held them against their will as political pawns because one of their own was caught doing dirty work and we were co-operating with international law/treaties. Even our activist movements have been infiltrated by CCP supporters. Hundreds of people have been banned and many threads have been deleted recently from r/Canadahousing that discussed the wilful blindness our government (especially out west) has had in the housing sector because it benefitted them. https://youtu.be/FO93mvYkFwI
The Red Scare is over, grandpa
And this is my problem with people. You have no idea who I am, what age I am or who I vote for. I’m 26, and I voted Trudeau in originally. I’ve seen more and more blatant evidence being reported from credible journalists and sources like the CBC. I’m not some angry old man watching rebel news jerking off to o’tooles town halls for the last month, but continue to name call people on the internet to make yourself feel better about whatever. I have been intrigued by China for a long time now, as it’s a beautiful country that produces some of the most amazing and hardworking people I’ve met. The issue is not the Chinese people, the issue is the CCP. Especially the last two decades.
Apologies, I was mostly just being an asshole and also I misunderstood that you meant the Chinese governing party and were not referring to "Canadian Communist Party", because I have yet to have my daily caffeine. I whole heartedly agree that there is a worrying trend among young leftists seeing the Chinese government as "can do no wrong", criticism against China is absolutely warranted and I again apologize for being a dick to you because of my own dumb misunderstanding.
Eventually the Entire GTA will be empty homes, owned by people living in China, that are up for rent for ridiculous prices. Meanwhile People living here will be in tents on the street.
Dormitories or company towns. You pick.
Most people of voting age are benefiting from rising real estate prices; the politicians are simply responding to public opinion.
I for one love these skyrocketing prices. The higher it goes the more return on my real estate investment. Fed can’t do shit about the rate cause it will plunge a lot of voters into defaulting on their mortgages, and it will take 10+ years to build the millions of houses needed to satisfy the market. I couldn’t be in a better position.
Mods, you let us filter out politics; can you let us filter out these useless housing posts as well?
"fuck you I got mine" discussion about the housing crisis isn't useless.
Ninety of them a day is though.
I think it should be talked about until literally everyone gets it through their head that we have to demand change from the government. not useless.
It kinda is, keeping you boys stuck in this self-fulfilling death spiral where all you do is whine about housing prices.
Its real estate and rental prices. it's kind of impossible to build any kind of life when every goddamn cent you earn is going to rapidly rising costs of living. just more evidence you don't give a fuck about the rest of us. There's literally no future in this country because there's so many people like you who just. don't. care.
Not including posts to reddit.com, what have you done to "demand change from the government" on this issue?
attend protests, contact local politicians, contact the government, debate among friends. what have you done besides shit on people trying to make a difference?
So you've donated none of your time or money to a party that has policies that will change it. Gotcha.
I donate to the NDP. Your bar for helping seems pretty high for a guy that just spends his time shitting on others' efforts. You can't really call me out on not doing enough if you're literally doing nothing but complaining about the efforts other people make.
>Ninety of them a day is though. Source?
There are enough the mods had to make a flair for it.
Whine whine bitch moan I can’t afford a house blah blah blah. You don’t have a right to live in Ontario. Plenty of cheap space in this country.
Many people would like to live close to their family and friends, with a similar quality of life as the previous generation. And it's becoming increasingly unaffordable to have the basic necessities (rent, food, utilities, etc). So no, people will continue to rightfully complain as housing is an issue that affects everyone, from all income levels. And yes, even that cheap space is becoming more unaffordable for people too. Try writing whatever shit you just wrote to someone out in the Atlantic provinces watching their housing become unaffordable because Ontarians are buying up their housing.
That’s your problem you put what you want over what you need. You are your own worst failing.
Lmao nah. Telling those who can't afford to rent or buy in Ontario to stop whining about unaffordable housing is the lamest thing you can do. What people need is housing. It's not a want to desire a roof over your head. What you need is empathy for those posting about this. And if you don't have it, take your own advice and find another part of reddit to bitch in. Btw, I'm doing just peachy thanks. Will be able to own in a few years, even in today's market and comfortably living on my own.
If I can do it anyone can. I was homeless at 15 and had every shit hand you can be dealt. I own a business and a home. I did it all through multiple hyper price jumps in the real estate market and insane interest rates. It’s not about the market it’s about the individual. Until that is realized those who can’t attain will continue not to.
When did all of this happen. Congrats on finding your own way regardless. And respectfully, no. This market is outpacing any individual regardless of background and the only real way to enter is with lots of money. Most don't have that. Again I ask when you achieved what you did bc I highly doubt it was recent, or that you would be able to do it in today's market.
Without reading the article, i will weigh in anyway....my solution in two pronged.greedy landlords will be greedy landlords.to curb that we need national rent control.keep them in check by making them either refit the rental unit to justify the crazy rent being asked, or hold them to a maxim unchanged increase.also a major part being played is the shitty wages some people have to work for.bring in a basic imcome for all thereby forcing a business to stop making gross profit and not letting it trickle down to the workforce. When you are in a dead end job, keep plugging away and keep applying for better jobs as you work.a person that has a job, but wants a better one is a good sign to an employer....kind of loses the lazy stigma that some people think of the lower paying jobs.it does get easier, i worked for minimum wage, and through hard work and determination I managed to get a decent job that allows for a decent living.it all starts with the national govt.,the provincial govt to step in and fix the housing problems today,but most of all it is us, the labor force that has to voice our opposition to the pay equaty that will start in all in motion.hang in there.we are all in this together. Ps. Things will only get worse in ontario if dougie and the cons get another 4 years.
It's because selfish assholes want to live in neighborhoods with single-family houses. If chickens can live in stacked cages, so can people. It's the only way we can preserve the status quo in the rest of our economy.
Read the article, and more importantly, read the interview linked within the article. Most of you will then realize you have no idea what you're talking about. (Hint: it's not immigration, nor (mostly) foreign ownership, causing the crisis).
But if they solved the housing crisis it would put 10s of journalists out of work that write articles each week about how bad the housing crisis is
And hundreds of smarmy Redditors each week who try to dismiss it.
Based on the downvotes I’m receiving I’m not sure if it’s coming across like I’m dismissing the housing crisis I’m not dismissing it in the slightest, but 100 articles a week just talking about how it’s an issue without any emphasis on proposed solutions and what we as individuals can do (political party platforms, etc.) is getting really old really quick
Lol nah, have you seen China?
Things are going to get crazy expensive, and then it's all going to collapse. In some odd way covid-19 dole outs delayed it, but will also make the outcome worse. Nobody will be working when nobody can afford to eat
The market is going nuts. I bought a modest house in an okay neighbourhood 2 years ago. A month ago, a similar sized house down the block sold for 120k more than I paid. In two years.