this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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'Cuts and be angry, that's not Canada': Trudeau goes hard at Poilievre at Ontario housing event (www.ctvnews.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Less than a week after naming his new cabinet vowing a renewed focus on the concerns of Canadians, the one name Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn't keep out of his mouth on Monday was Pierre Poilievre. At a housing announcement Trudeau brought the Conservative leader up multiple times, from panning his policy proposals, to his leadership style.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Disagree. The main problem is lack of housing. We need to build more, a lot more, and the Feds control CMHC. They've been content to let housing be the biggest GDP item because it serves the NIMBYs who see their overpriced house as an investment (and I say this as a homeowner whose house has appreciated 250% since I bought it)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Again, which level of government controls zoning and housing permits? What about utilities, roads, firefighters, water rights, etc?

Right, provinces. So without provinces doing enough, the CMHC cannot have any direct effect on the national housing shortages.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Maybe things are different in your neck of the woods but I have some experience in the industry (apartments, not single-family) and neither permits, utilities, roads nor firefighters has been a significant issue. Zoning, sometimes - but municipal governments are well aware of the housing shortage and have been willing to play ball (again, IME). BTW most of the issues you raise are under municipal purview, not provincial.

I'd say cost of construction is the main problem. In NB it's impossible to build anything under 200k per door, and even that target requires some vigilance to hit. That's why there's an inverted bell curve going on with a bunch of slums at the low end and a bunch of luxury apartments at the top, but hardly anything in the middle.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Absolutely right on the provincial / municipal differences for a number of those points I raised.

Also correct that most of the shortages are due to NIMBYism and a lot of refusal / blockages on city central neighbourhoods being densified in the name of "property values". They really need to stop asking the public and start telling instead. Maybe we could get something done that way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So of I understand this correctly, that means there is very little the federal government can do besides use indirect levers to decrease cost, like:

  1. Further increase immigration to ensure there are enough workers to avoid labour cost from increasing.
  2. Keep driving inflation down so general costs don't get worse.
  3. Resist calls for short term relief schemes which will increase prices by letting people spend more.

What else can be done at the federal level?

The big cost savings items all seem like they are Municipal and Provincial, like: getting rid of minimum parking requirements, deceasing per unit land costs, and allowing more units to be built in the communities people want to live in.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Sort of. One thing Feds/CMHC could do is funnel serious money into affordable housing programs to build more housing (not subsidized demand, as the NB government is doing, which only enriches landlords). There are already non-profits and community orgs who could manage these buildings once complete.