fresh

No, market failures exist. It’s not all supply and demand. The cartoon economic world of libertarians is not reality.

That said, we do have a supply problem. Vacancy is essentially zero in Canadian cities, and that’s not true in more affordable housing markets like the US or Japan.

Zoning plays an enormous role. The Lower Mainland is one of the densest regions in Canada, and it has a fraction of the density of virtually all European countries, even mountainous and rural Switzerland. Our urban planning is sprawly and terrible.

Even ignoring housing supply, if you want walkable livable cities, low transportation costs, low environmental impact, and high quality of life, then we should seriously rethink our zoning and urban planning. The consensus on here against more supply, which is also against better zoning and more density, is seriously mind boggling.

How about non-market housing supply, like the spacious comfortable middle class condos that Scandinavian countries provide? Vienna is also a model for government owned housing.

How about co-op housing supply, for people who want to live in communities and not live in an investment?

How about we free up zoning like they do in Japan, where you can buy a spacious new detached SFH in the middle of Tokyo for a fraction of the price of Toronto?

Do you know why the last housing bubble popped in Canada? Because we had a massive oversupply of condos and homes relative to demand. Being against supply is absolutely delusional.

Yes. By having an official policy of propping up prices, the government is effectively giving a subsidy to homeowner profits at the cost of renters.

Please no, don’t stop building supply until we get the demand side just right. We also massively lack supply, with the lowest housing per capita in the G7. It takes years to build supply. It’s insane that people want to slow that down!

When are people going to understand it’s both? What makes housing such a “good investment” is that we don’t build enough of it for the people we have. Investors aren’t snatching up affordable housing in rural Arkansas because they have way more supply. We should absolutely deal with investors, make their lives miserable, but we ALSO need supply.

Legit extremely infuriating

Yes we all know how famously strong labor rights are around the world.

I will not complain about a house with actual personality in the suburbs. This isn’t my personal preference, but it’s delightful.

“Instead of seeking happiness, save money with misery”

Americans support a lot of things they don’t vote for. Most Americans want universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, more government services, etc. But many famously “vote against their interests”. Abortion is turning out to be the surprising exception.

It's a "shortage" in the normal colloquial use of the term because the quantity of housing demanded exceeds the quantity supplied relative to some spectrum of desired prices. "There's no shortage if you have $2 million!" is hardly reassuring. I think you're misapplying the jargon found in economics textbooks. On that definition, the recent spike in rice prices which will lead to millions of people starving is not a "shortage" because prices were allowed to rise. Sure, but that's silly. What people normally mean by "rice shortage" is "there's not enough rice". It's not enough precisely because prices are too high.

If you like, call it a "supply-demand imbalance" or an "affordability crisis", but it doesn't change anything. The point is, supply is so low that it's causing a lot of human misery. In normal English, that's called a "shortage", because there's not enough of it.

At this point, I only keep Chrome around for the odd website that only works on Chrome. It's astonishing how quickly Google is burning through good will lately.