Ah okay I'm asking because people seem to always point to empty homes as the problem and support that thesis with anecdotal evidence.
The reality is new vacancy taxes in Ontario and BC captured a lot of those empty homes and there's simply nowhere near the scale of empty homes to make any reasonable dent in the housing crisis, even if we converted every single one to occupied.
In a city with 1.25 million homes, why are we so focused on "taxing empty investment homes" (something that already exists) for a few thousand units instead of building new homes?
How much empty housing do you think exists in canada’s largest cities?
This thing rips. Jeff is criminally underrated, he’s put out so much quality work for such a long time.
I'm confused by your assumption that "private investment in housing has been too low and it will continue to be too low." Do you think private companies, the very greedy developers, are choosing to limit their investment in such a lucrative industry? Their business has been artificially restricted by something you hinted at, zoning requirements. It's reductive to say "market based solutions have been attempted" when municipal governments have had a stranglehold on new supply since the 60s, there is nothing natural about this market because it's incapable of responding to demand.
pre-empting zoning, parking and density requirements such that new housing can be built with less materials and space
Why are we only removing restrictions for the federal government? Why not also allow non-profit and for-profit pipelines that already exist contribute to this shortage of housing in the meantime? Even if you could raise the hundreds of billions (if not trillions) from the feds, they can't administer this program anytime soon.
I'll reiterate my original point: I wish we entrusted the government with building housing and cut out for-profit developers for such an essential human need, but I know there's no way the feds are able to raise that money, political capital, and administrative power in the next decade at least. I feel the same way about food, but I'm not saying we need to end food production until it's a public entity.
Building all affordable housing with tax dollars is a noble goal, but that’s not happening anytime soon and our housing crisis demands action now. Our current regime has nowhere near the money and administrative power to facilitate this alone.
Why not just make it easier for for-profit AND non-profit developers to build housing in the meantime? Fixing the broken process is free and we can start today.
That isn’t their only answer, remember that they were the only party that was pressing grocery store CEOs
I would agree that saying something is better than saying nothing, but I measure their success by action, not rhetoric. Our cost of living crisis has been raging for years now, and I haven't even seen a serious proposal to deal with any of it, let alone actual policy changes.
If dental care is their only answer to affordability we’re in trouble.
Wait, how is this a hot take?
Yeah two comments and both are refreshingly agreeable. I've shared this previously on reddit or twitter and responses are all "wow you hate the working class" or "there isn't a train from my apartment to my place of work so I need gas"
Subsidizing homeowners with a taxpayer-funded cheque for $500 is regressive policy for a leftist party. Even if we're means-testing it, there's so many better ways that money could be spent.
Once again, as a renter dealing with year over year increases of hundreds of dollars per month, I get nothing.