VAUGHAN, Ont. - Liberal Leader Mark Carney says his government would double Canada’s rate of residential housing construction over the next decade to nearly 500,000 new homes per year.
Not good enough. We need at least 1 million new homes a year. We need to force municipalities to allow for mixed-use zoning so that we don’t only create single-family homes in suburbs that are largely disconnected from transit and amenities. We need to discourage urban sprawl and incentivize mass transit.
The Liberals know this because they talk to developers and municipalities and want their centrist “compromise” to be the solution. It won’t be, it’ll just be another half-measure that the Conservatives can point to when they want to highlight the poor spending choices of the opposition.
The problem is building an insufficient number of homes, below the rate of population growth, at government expense, costs taxpayers money without solving the problem. Worse, it takes the place of effective solutions.
When we learn more about this proposal, we can understand if it would lower the cost of housing. Until then, skepticism is warranted.
I think it doesn’t matter whether new construction is funded by taxpayers or not. We all end up paying either way through various channels. I think what matters is how much money is collected as profit due to what we build, how we build it and how much we build.
The government isn’t really exploring other options.
Trudeau (to his credit) talked about limiting capital gains exemptions over 250k (which could take some money out of housing), but the Liberals, CPC, and NDP allowed that to die.
There hasn’t been talk of a tax on home sales over a certain value.
There hasn’t been serious talk of cracking down on money laundering or mortgage fraud.
The Liberal and CPC have both talked about limiting municipal regulations as a way for developers to (somehow) build cheaper buildings.
Part of the problem is traditional suburban zoning tends to be too expensive in the long run for cities to maintain due to lots of infrastructure and low density for taxation. Moving away from prioritizing suburbia and focusing government efforts more on density could spur the changes we need and build more homes from the government investment. It could add more housing while minimizing the additional infrastructure costs the city has to take on to accommodate the housing.
The Canada Housing Accelerator Credit is already the federal level incentive for density-favoured zoning. Zoning is handled by the provinces who can override municipalities, but the feds can’t override provinces re: housing. Poilievre’s platform is to revoke payments to provinces as punishment for not meeting housing quotas, but this is only going to get provinces more in debt and the budget crunch will only make building housing more difficult.
We need at least 1 million new homes a year
So a crown corporation building homes to get construction to half that level is good. And provinces can bolster that with appropriate zoning changes to spur provincial, municipal public and private development to get to that million target. Sitting back and complaining about the whole plan because it’s not the silver bullet isn’t helpful here.
I don’t really see how I can be helpful here since I’m not a municipal official or an elected representative, complaining is really all I am able to do as an average person.
I’m tired of being promised change only to be met with half-measures that get scrapped by the next party in power. Aren’t you sick of every policy being a version of “we’ll commit to making things slightly better over the next 10 years, when we’re no longer accountable for our failures”?
I’m tired of mediocrity being celebrated because the alternative is societal regression. So yes, I’m complaining. Oh no, how terrible.
Hold that thought in your heart, then organize after the election with other people that have that same thought. Go to your MP and have them introduce private member’s bills to get the change you want to see. Send petitions to the new government. Volunteer in your community or work in areas you want to see change.
If that doesn’t work, bring forward change in our political system ahead of the next election, not when we have to pull away from the brink of fascism.
Volunteering is great (done some non-political volunteer work in the past) but in the re-zoning space local efforts are often de-legitimized by municipal politicians, MPPs, and MPs themselves. They don’t want change; I’ve written to them and they’ve said as much, once they get through the obligatory “I understand your concerns” spiel. A lot of municipal council members are obsessed with single-family homes and are more than happy to give corporate builders exactly what they want.
Petitions are responded to all the time with empty platitudes, so I have no faith there; they’re seemingly only for press attention. They learned from the UK petitions that responding with a nice sentence or two about maybe doing something later on gets the media off their back.
Until we have proportional representation at every level of government and a majority of representatives that are not also landlords, this will probably never change in my lifetime. An actual solution here won’t be forthcoming, so all I have (other than complaining about how they always pull this do-nothing crap) is a tiny modicum of hope that the federal Liberals can commit to this small, incremental change and not fuck it up or water it down to the point where it doesn’t help anyone and the Conservatives cut it in 5 years.
Not good enough. We need at least 1 million new homes a year. We need to force municipalities to allow for mixed-use zoning so that we don’t only create single-family homes in suburbs that are largely disconnected from transit and amenities. We need to discourage urban sprawl and incentivize mass transit.
The Liberals know this because they talk to developers and municipalities and want their centrist “compromise” to be the solution. It won’t be, it’ll just be another half-measure that the Conservatives can point to when they want to highlight the poor spending choices of the opposition.
Not good enough is a stepping stone to good enough and a great starting point for done.
Reward what works, disengage what doesn’t, and promote ideas that can grow.
Sceptism is important, dissent is healthy, but recognizing what will progress society and putting effort into that is what’s needed now.
The problem is building an insufficient number of homes, below the rate of population growth, at government expense, costs taxpayers money without solving the problem. Worse, it takes the place of effective solutions.
When we learn more about this proposal, we can understand if it would lower the cost of housing. Until then, skepticism is warranted.
I think it doesn’t matter whether new construction is funded by taxpayers or not. We all end up paying either way through various channels. I think what matters is how much money is collected as profit due to what we build, how we build it and how much we build.
The problem I’m trying to highlight is that this plan may give developers sweetheart deals, but leave housing prices at unaffordable levels.
It may not, but the strategy of flooding the market will fail if we don’t manage to build enough houses.
What other effective solutions are being explored by the government? Let’s platform those.
The government isn’t really exploring other options.
Trudeau (to his credit) talked about limiting capital gains exemptions over 250k (which could take some money out of housing), but the Liberals, CPC, and NDP allowed that to die.
There hasn’t been talk of a tax on home sales over a certain value.
There hasn’t been serious talk of cracking down on money laundering or mortgage fraud.
The Liberal and CPC have both talked about limiting municipal regulations as a way for developers to (somehow) build cheaper buildings.
Part of the problem is traditional suburban zoning tends to be too expensive in the long run for cities to maintain due to lots of infrastructure and low density for taxation. Moving away from prioritizing suburbia and focusing government efforts more on density could spur the changes we need and build more homes from the government investment. It could add more housing while minimizing the additional infrastructure costs the city has to take on to accommodate the housing.
The Canada Housing Accelerator Credit is already the federal level incentive for density-favoured zoning. Zoning is handled by the provinces who can override municipalities, but the feds can’t override provinces re: housing. Poilievre’s platform is to revoke payments to provinces as punishment for not meeting housing quotas, but this is only going to get provinces more in debt and the budget crunch will only make building housing more difficult.
So a crown corporation building homes to get construction to half that level is good. And provinces can bolster that with appropriate zoning changes to spur provincial, municipal public and private development to get to that million target. Sitting back and complaining about the whole plan because it’s not the silver bullet isn’t helpful here.
I don’t really see how I can be helpful here since I’m not a municipal official or an elected representative, complaining is really all I am able to do as an average person.
I’m tired of being promised change only to be met with half-measures that get scrapped by the next party in power. Aren’t you sick of every policy being a version of “we’ll commit to making things slightly better over the next 10 years, when we’re no longer accountable for our failures”?
I’m tired of mediocrity being celebrated because the alternative is societal regression. So yes, I’m complaining. Oh no, how terrible.
Hold that thought in your heart, then organize after the election with other people that have that same thought. Go to your MP and have them introduce private member’s bills to get the change you want to see. Send petitions to the new government. Volunteer in your community or work in areas you want to see change.
If that doesn’t work, bring forward change in our political system ahead of the next election, not when we have to pull away from the brink of fascism.
Volunteering is great (done some non-political volunteer work in the past) but in the re-zoning space local efforts are often de-legitimized by municipal politicians, MPPs, and MPs themselves. They don’t want change; I’ve written to them and they’ve said as much, once they get through the obligatory “I understand your concerns” spiel. A lot of municipal council members are obsessed with single-family homes and are more than happy to give corporate builders exactly what they want.
Petitions are responded to all the time with empty platitudes, so I have no faith there; they’re seemingly only for press attention. They learned from the UK petitions that responding with a nice sentence or two about maybe doing something later on gets the media off their back.
Until we have proportional representation at every level of government and a majority of representatives that are not also landlords, this will probably never change in my lifetime. An actual solution here won’t be forthcoming, so all I have (other than complaining about how they always pull this do-nothing crap) is a tiny modicum of hope that the federal Liberals can commit to this small, incremental change and not fuck it up or water it down to the point where it doesn’t help anyone and the Conservatives cut it in 5 years.