this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Carney wants big government to get into housing – a major risk to taxpayers (archive.is)
submitted 3 weeks ago by sbv to c/[email protected]
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

As always, the Fraser Institute is shitting on ideas that could help the 99%, and saying government should rEmOvE ReD tApE.

I really want this to work. But the announcements I've seen for the building plan only address the supply side and ignore the problems on the demand side: people who own houses are able to pump up the cost of new houses; tax law encourages Canadians to treat their primary residence as an investment; real estate is used for money laundering (at least in some jurisdictions); mortgage fraud is a thing (at least in some jurisdictions); renovictions are used to pump the cost of rentals; and rent caps aren't available in many jurisdictions.

Anyhow, here's hoping the investing in modular housing succeeds, rezoning somehow lowers prices, and the feds are able to push housing starts to the moon.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, the liberal plan is already including a chunk of red tape removal -- the criticism is more about having a large public institution overtly shifting market trends, especially as the intention appears to have it be both lender, and builder. They're right to note that there's potential conflicts, and that govt programs typically aren't about 'efficiency' in terms of service delivery.

My napkin math is terrible, and the different amounts noted for different programs is a bit unclear to me in terms of what amounts the govt intends to invest directly by building housing vs how much its just going to try and subsidize builders.

[–] sbv 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

From what I've seen, it mostly seems to be subsidies - either providing low(er) interest loans or investing in prefab housing.

They also talk about paying private builders to create affordable housing, but I'm not clear who would own those buildings, who would get to live in them, or how much they would cost.

There are a lot of unknowns, and (as far as I've seen) the only timeline is building 500k houses a year by 2035. If that's really the timeline, I doubt it will change the minds of young Canadians who are getting gouged on housing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, it all seems really wobbly. Like one of their notes related to using public lands for building initiatives, though it wasn't clear if that just means .... like selling off the parks in Vancouver to developers, or government-subsidized planned neighbourhoods around smaller towns to try and spread our population out (praying that jobs would somehow follow), or what.

I admit, if I could find a way to move to a more remote location, that still had necessities like medical services, and I'd get a functional, easy to maintain, eco friendly / eco resilient type of detached property, I'd be interested.... the costs on that sort of thing are really quite high though. And shaving like $50k off the top of that cost isn't really gonna do much to help with affordability, when you're talking about housing costing millions.

[–] sbv 1 points 3 weeks ago

I've been living in a small town since the pandemic, and it's pretty good. I'd recommend it, if you're into a small town lifestyle (I'm not).

I'm assuming the federal properties are lands inside city limits. Building housing a few hours from a population centre seems like a terrible idea. But I guess we'll find out more soon.