this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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Carney lays out his plan to build a lot more affordable housing in Canada (www.sootoday.com)
submitted 3 days ago by Sunshine@piefed.social to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Excellent, so here's what we'll do. Ping me in 2035 and we'll see if I've made a whole bunch more money or if my property has gone down in value.

I know I'm right here, which is hard for me, I don't want to be correct. I would rather my children to be able to afford homes.

Unfortunately, people like you keep getting their hopes up on policies that have no historical record of working. Building more homes has never dropped prices anywhere in the world. Prices have always dropped because of other factors, and specifically those factors related to investment (like interest rates going up, the defaults from sub-prime mortgages, or the stagnation of the entire economy like in Japan)

[–] MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Unfortunately, people like you keep getting their hopes up on policies that have no historical record of working.

Feel free to share an example of a country with a similarly ambitious housing plan in the last 20 years.

Canada certainly hasn't had one.

I fins the notion of "well, we tried something about a third as comprehensive and it didn't work" to be pretty silly. It's like folks who go to the gym a few times over a month, don't see results and decide they'll never be in shape. Some things require a significant effort.

I'm not saying there's a guarantee housing prices will drop but to declare they can't because "a government said they'd try, they didn't do much and nothing happened so nothing will ever happen" is nonsense.

that have no historical record of working. Building more homes has never dropped prices anywhere in the world.

Edit:

that have no historical record of working. Building more homes has never dropped prices anywhere in the world.

Like an ignorant goof, I forgot to mention, that it has worked, in Canada! In fact, parts of the current government's approach (pre approved design, emphasis on modular fabrication etc) are taken straight of the playbook from the last time we did this, after the second world war. For you to believe the statement above means that you probably don't know about this neat period of history, you can learn about it here!

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh I know what happened post-war, but that type of development isn't possible anymore.

There simply isn't the available land, the only costs associated with that situation were for the buildings themselves which they made very small and cheap.

Today, there's no land just sitting there for free. Not to mention building condos cost a lot more per square foot than detached houses.

However, believe what you will. This push by Carney isn't enough, it's not even close. I wish it the best of luck, but I'm so certain it's going to fail that I bought a house big enough for my children to continue living here as adults.

[–] MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

but that type of development isn’t possible anymore.

There simply isn’t the available land

You should read about that history again. Land costs weren't the prohibitive factor, it was that there just wasn't enough housing being built.

Not to mention building condos cost a lot more per square foot than detached houses.

This one is A) doubtful but B) more than a little misleading, condos are much smaller than detached homes, so the people per square foot works out cheaper.

But yeah, this won't get everyone detached homes in the middle of a big city like Vancouver, like I already said. What it does do is allow us to do is build more multi unit places (hardly a factor in the post war efforts) as well as more detached homes in less populated areas (in BC, my goodness, we have some dirt cheap land a few hours away from Vancouver.)

I dunno, you've just made a lot of assertions about what will happen but none of it seemed particularly based on facts. I'm not going to say I'm confident in the government but I certainly like our odds more than I did a year ago.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's not doubtful that condos are more expensive per square foot than detached houses. Google it, those numbers are widely available.

Condos do not house more people per square foot at this point, In Canada right now, most people in condos have 0 or 1 child. Total fertility per woman is like 1.2 at the moment, and lower than that average for people living in Condos. 800 square feet divided by 2 is 400 square feet each. Even if they had 1 child, it's still 266 square feet per person.

Those houses they built after the war were small, less than 1500 square feet, and houses after the World War had LOTS of children. That was literally how the baby boomer generation came into being. The total fertility per woman was something like 3.6-4 for the decade after the war ended. 1500 square feet divided by 6 is 250 square feet.

I did the math on a condo project in Vancouver (not even in downtown, just in the City across the bridge) the land cost for each unit they were building was $300,000. That number alone makes them unaffordable, before even talking about the construction costs. That doesn't include any interest cost on holding the property while under development.

Land costs are currently a prohibitive factor in literally everything at this point.

[–] MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Think this through with your own numbers but without time swapping the fertility rates across generations. (Suddenly having a house means we're going to pump out 4 kids? Holy bold assumptions Batman!)

Say a condo at 800 feet, 800 / 3 = 266.

Even a small house, 1500 / 3 = 500.

Heck, even if we double the fertility rate for folks in a small detached home, you're still ahead:

1500 / 4 = 350.

I did the math on a condo project in Vancouver (not even in downtown, just in the City across the bridge) the land cost for each unit they were building was $300,000. That number alone makes them unaffordable, before even talking about the construction costs.

Yeah, so essentially some of the most expensive real estate in the country, no doubt it's going to be more expensive. That's why you have to build condos there not detached homes. Try putting a detached home there. Do that and the house is suddenly what, tens of millions?

In this case, you're effectively saying that because we build condos where it is too expensive to put detached homes, condos are more expensive? That's some pretty silly logic there.