this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
52 points (96.4% liked)
CanadaPolitics
1866 readers
1 users here now
Placeholder for any r/CanadaPolitics refugees
Rules:
All of Lemmy.ca's rules apply
- No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
- Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
- No porn.
- No Ads / Spamming.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I tried to point this out on Reddit and Lemmy so many times and usually got downvoted. People want to believe there's some nefarious boogeyman buying up houses and keeping them vacant, but the reality is that virtually all homes in Canada have occupants. We just don't have nearly enough housing for the population.
Edit: it's still happening. In the other thread on this board about this article, people are saying "it's not the foreign buyers we should tax, it's the corporate buyers". People will do all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid considering the possibility that we need to densify our housing.
Vancouver and Toronto are currently sitting about 7% and 7.4% homes that are empty or not for usual residents. That's a fucking massive number, imo.
Source: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/astonishing-drop-in-number-of-empty-homes-in-metro-vancouver-census
"empty or not for usual residents." is a useless metric. Student houses are considered "empty" if the the students have a family home to return to and haven't updated their mailing address.
Wrong. It states directly in the article that students and foreign workers are not included in that metric.
From Stats Canada.
Students are usual residents of Canada, they're not usual residents of the place they stay in while studying in school.
Directly quoted from the source I posted.
That's why I clarified how you misinterpreted that sentence, and gave you a source from Stats Canada. I also worked the last census in KW, where there's a large student population, so it was drilled into our heads students only count if they live in that house year round (and preferable changed the address on their ID).