this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Canada’s progressive parties have lost the plot on the housing crisis (www.theglobeandmail.com)
submitted 1 year ago by sbv to c/[email protected]
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Liberals and NDP need to up their housing game before the next election. They're more worried about protecting paper gains for existing homeowners than than getting prices back to affordable levels.

Why is the Liberal Party still droning on about protecting high home values while promising to make new home ownership easy? The Liberals should drop this obvious lie – voters can see the impact of housing speculation on increasing generational wealth inequalities for themselves – and heed their own legislation by focusing on the federal role in ensuring renters’ equal rights.

And why is NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh prioritizing owners’ returns over renter rights? British Columbia, which is the only NDP government in power in Canada, is the most pro-housing supply province. Build on that. Income-based housing targets, leasing public land to scale up non-market housing, and tax change to lessen wealth inequalities should be talking points for the “workers party” right now.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I would like it if they at least talked about the real solutions, or perhaps provided incentives for municipalities to institute the necessary changes. Instead, we get them talking about things like rent control (well-meaning but horrible policy) and banning boogeymen like foreign investors (as if native-born slumlords are any less predatory).

If absolutely nothing else, they oughta be using their bully pulpit to get a national conversation going about these things, rather than solution theater that maintains the status quo.

Of course, the biggest thing they could do would be a federal land value tax to replace some amount of income taxes and other federal taxes. Land value taxes are more economically efficient, progressive, basically impossible to evade, can't be passed on to tenants, incentivize more and denser housing (and less sprawl), and reduce upward speculative pressure on housing prices. In theory, there is no limit to how many taxes can be replaced by land value taxes; it has been shown that land value taxes are capable of replacing all taxes at all levels of government.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I would at least like it if they talked about the real solutions

It is not likely that they have all the information to talk about it intelligently. It is not their jurisdiction. This would be like asking municipalities to comment on military operations.

or perhaps provided incentives for municipalities to institute the necessary changes

They tried that with childcare. Remember how that went? Not well, in case you forgot. It was treated like the world was going to end if the incentive was accepted. And that was a complete nothingburger in comparison to this.

If absolutely nothing else, they oughta be using their bully pulpit to get a national conversation going about these things

Have they not? In my mind they have made it abundantly clear that if people end up underwater in their homes, we're in serious, serious trouble. It would be like what happened in the US in 2008, except way, way worse as we're in much, much deeper.

How much clearer can they be without actually scaring people away from housing, which will then become a self-fulfilling prophesy?

I get that you, an individual, may actually want that to happen, but it is pretty obvious why the representation of the entire country does not.

[–] sbv 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They tried that with childcare. Remember how that went?

Doesn't every province now has policy requiring affordable childcare? That was as a direct result of federal intervention.