this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Forget the opinions of foreign economists... especially when they're in countries who may have even more thorough tenant laws than we have. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
Even still, rent control is important. Renters need to have stability in their month-to-month payments, and there doesn't need to be an easy way to force people out of their homes (e.g., jacking up rent 200%).
Contracts should be long enough to offer stability. Fix the laws then.
Toronto issue is the public transport is terrible. Needs more rail to high density hubs around the city. But the real issue is the ridiculous immigration levels 20 percent of Canada is Immigrants. Of course all that's going to happen is it will keep houses increasing in prices and keep wages down.
Good for businesses and land owners bad for the everyday Canadian.
To be long enough to offer stability, contract length should be up to the tenant, extendable by the tenant as many times and for as long as they should want.
Stability should be for the tenant, not for the landlord.
That's completely ridiculous.
Rules like that would negatively impact the renter because no one would lease.
I've never met an online community as economically illiterate as lemmy. This is not how the real world works, you can't just will things to work a certain way. Rules like that would be a disaster.
Actually, if no one is leasing, maybe that could be the ticket we need to give us the "housing bubble burst" people have been hoping for for decades. Everyone sells their extra homes simultaneously... sounds great! Lol
Not going to happen. Its not a bubble if demand increases more than supply. Even if the bubble bursts don't expect much.
Go look at the bursting bubble in 2008 and look at how longnit took for prices to return then exceed 2008 prices.
Demand needs to decrease or supply needs to increase, or both.
Making it harder to lease will reduce the amount of housing available on the market and will futher reduce the supply.
If people aren't going to lease, won't they sell anything they're not living in?
They'd either rent it out, sell, or sit on an empty home.
If they'd be content sitting on an empty home, then we just need to tax empty homes. (Which would be great for those landlords who have 20 "homes" in their townhouse for international students...)
No.
Anyone with a spare room won't rent. Why would a 25 year old rent out a room in a 2 bed if they thinking of starting a family or upgrading in 5 years? Why would a old couple rent out a room if they want to leave it to their children.
Even family homes. Maybe it's in a good area and in 5-10 years the land can be turned into more profitable high density but seeing as you can't throw people out of they homes it will make more sense to leave it vacant or knock it down.
It would massively reduce the supply of housing.
Equally no one would bother building housing at all, it wouldn't financially make sense. It's not like they have to spend money in Toronto they would just spend it elsewhere.
People talk about the housing crisis, not the rooming crisis. As well, aren't shared homes under different laws already? So all of those room renting examples aren't in the same boat as homes.
I know that in Ontario, we count LTC beds as homes...but we can be a little bit more honest here.
If people are buying properties to hold them vacant for 5-10 years, then we have other problems. And like I said, we could tax that vacant home. And if it's a big enough problem, we could pull in all that tax money and use it to build more housing.
And I know that some people buy housing to rent it out, but some people buy housing to live in. And some of those people are buying brand new houses or condos...to live in. So there's still a market for buying new housing, and even if we can't build it with tax dollars, there would be someone who'd be interested in building units to sell to that market, even if it's not all investors.
This is your brain on neoliberal brainwashing. It's not your fault.
I'm not a neoliberal.
Just because you stupid idea is stupid doesn't mean I'm a neoliberal. It's just a terrible idea.