this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
156 points (95.9% liked)

Canada

11530 readers
411 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Related Communities

🍁 Meta

🗺️ Provinces / Territories

🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.

🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer

💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.

💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales

🗣️ Politics

🍁 Social / Culture

Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
otter@lemmy.ca
mp3@lemmy.ca
otter@piefed.ca
mp3@piefed.ca
156
The numbers don’t lie: The housing crisis is not caused by a supply shortage (www.policyalternatives.ca)
submitted 1 week ago by sbv@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca
70 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

the housing crisis has been created by banking practices that have directed excessive amounts of credit into the property market, and especially residential mortgages. As a result, buyers can bid prices up to ever-higher levels, resulting in a market where people must pay more for the same type of housing. Hence financialization can be defined as an inflationary tendency in the housing market that is induced jointly by banks’ desire to expand mortgage lending and buyers’ confidence that the value of their properties will rise.

...

However, the image of a bubble bursting and prices returning to a more rational “equilibrium” level does not seem to apply to the housing market. Because housing is a necessity, people are willing to pay high prices for it. Bidding wars can therefore persist even when relative supply grows, so long as credit markets enable them.

(page 2) 20 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] fourish@lemmy.world -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

In other news water is wet. When you live where everyone wants to live prices will be higher. If you want less expensive housing live in a small town somewhere.

It’s not ever going to go down.

I don’t get articles like this. Are they having a wish that the government will come in and just wave a magic wand and make property affordable for all?

Any government that tries messing up the real estate equity that people have will be voted out before nightfall.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 30 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Housing is seen as a huge part of Canadians' retirement planning. Politicians are afraid to do anything to lower the price of housing (remember Carney's housing minister saying they didn't want to reduce house prices?) because they think they'll be punished by voters. Because of that, house prices keep increasing.

It'd be great if there was a bi-partisan consensus to gently let the air out of the balloon by carefully lowering the amount of money available in mortgages, or the amount of money exempt from taxes on the sale of a primary residence. By all means, increase supply at the same time, but we also need to make homes less of an asset.

[–] sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I agree with letting air out of the balloon slowly. That's what rezoning and densification shoots to do. It is slow because development is slow. But limiting available capital (ie: competing for mortgages)? In what world does that make sense? And if primary residence cap gains aren't exempt, then anybody that had to move for work would get screwed. That's a corporate friendly policy, not a people friendly policy. The goal here is for people to own houses, and for there to be penalties for owning more than one. But that's exactly where policy is right now.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

Because housing is a necessity, people are willing to pay high prices for it. Bidding wars can therefore persist even when relative supply grows, so long as credit markets enable them.

Right, that's why I see rural houses literally falling over because nobody wants to live in them. /s

Supply and demand applies to food. It definitely applies to housing.

The central argument of this is that because the number of houses per adult is the same as 1989, the housing supply is fine. And then they have the audacity to claim other people are cherry-picking. No mention of average household size being different now, even just considering adults (nor mention of urbanisation). There's little effort to support their own theory with numbers, either.

Not to mention, that very same graph has a noticeable dip right in the recent years where it's become an issue. They've just scaled the graph so it's not emphasised. 1989 was the last time it was so low.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] grue@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Housing is not fungible. It doesn't matter how much supply there is in the middle of nowhere; lack of supply in the places people actually want to live is a shortage.

Also, it has fuck-all to do with financialization and everything to do with restrictive zoning laws that enshrine single-family. Y'all are literally prohibiting building more density; WTF did you think was gonna happen?!

[–] juslemmybee@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 days ago

THANK YOU!!!

[–] twopi@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It def is both financialization and zoning. Restrictive zoning increases the value of housing hence line goes up.

Rezoning is framed as increasing supply and affordablity, instead of decreasing values of existing homes. When both will happen.

[–] sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

The irony is that decreasing the value of homes really is the inevitability. Because rezoning encourages redevelopment, that redevelopment generally includes more dense and theoretically more affordable housing types. But developers still want to make money, so they are built to maximize profit, not affordability. So it suggests that if they sell, other houses have less demand, and demand will fall. But that hasn't been borne out.

[–] grue@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It def is both financialization and zoning. Restrictive zoning increases the value of housing hence line goes up.

The difference is that financialization is a symptom of the problem, not the cause of it. It is enabled by the imbalance between supply and demand caused by the zoning laws restricting the supply.

Rezoning is framed as increasing supply and affordability, instead of decreasing values of existing homes. When both will happen.

"Increasing affordability" and "decreasing value" are mathematically equivalent statements, so yeah. Obviously.

(In fact, that's why the problem is so hard to solve: NIMBY homeowners will claim to be all for "housing affordability" in theory, but in reality they absolutely hate it because they benefit from prices being high. Zoning that restricts density is a symptom of society being held hostage by the already-privileged, demanding ever more subsidies for themselves)

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A bank owned condo is going up for the market in my complex. they want 395000 and the thing mentions 25% down. So like 100k down. I could not afford to live here if I did not already even if my financial siuation was rosey. This is some of the cheapest real estate in the area. Its insane.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

But also a supply shortage, out in Vancouver anyway. People dividing living rooms in half to act as bedrooms

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's not a housing shortage, it's a pricing issue.

If you do the math based on statscan data, there are FAR more bedrooms in Canada than people, even if you assumed couples never slept together and kids never shared a room.

People are splitting rooms to make it more affordable, not because rooms don't exist.

There are retired couples, or families with a single kid, living in 4-5 bedroom houses in Vancouver, because they either don't want to downsize, or they can afford the space so they buy more than they need.

The problem ais the distribution of housing, some people have too much, and some people don't have what we would reasonably consider enough.

There is also some distribution issues around where those houses are located compared to the desires of where people want to live. If someone has a house in Edmonton, but wants to live in Vancouver in a similar house and can't afford it, is that a housing shortage in Vancouver? I would argue it is not.

Where we define that "reasonable" line is where an ACTUAL shortage would come in. How much housing is reasonable for each person, and how reasonable is the location they want that much housing in?

However, I don't believe we have crossed that line. In my opinion we need to regulate the market better in order to have the distribution more aligned with overall social benefit. Of course we need to continue building more units with the population and to replace buildings over time, but policy could re-distribute the existing housing more fairly without needing a single one of those today.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There is also some distribution issues around where those houses are located compared to the desires of where people want to live. If someone has a house in Edmonton, but wants to live in Vancouver in a similar house and can't afford it, is that a housing shortage in Vancouver? I would argue it is not.

It absolutely is. Houses aren't fungible; they don't fucking move! A house in Edmonton is not a substitute for a house in Vancouver!

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I argue it is not, because unreasonable desire shouldn't be part of "housing" conversations.

If every single person wanted a detached house on Robson Street, that's clearly just stupid and should be ignored. It's not a supply shortage. If everyone wanted a 3-bedroom condo unit overlooking Kits beach, that's also clearly unrealistic. It's not a supply shortage.

Think about it this way, if you earned the same amount you currently do, and condos and houses were $1000 per bedroom each to buy outright anywhere you wanted. What would you end up with? I suspect it wouldn't be a 1 bedroom condo in a bland area of town. You'd probably have a house somewhere near your work, a condo downtown, maybe a cabin up at a lake.

You may not want 10 different places, so the demand for housing is not infinite, but it's orders of magnitude greater than anything that's realistic to supply.

If we use that logic, we will always be in a supply shortage no matter how much we build, because there will never be enough inventory available to push prices down to $1000 per bedroom.

Which is why I don't consider that original situation a supply shortage in Vancouver. Once you bring "reasonable" into the conversation, there's already enough supply to meet the reasonable needs of the population. As I said before, the problem is the price and current distribution.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I argue it is not, because unreasonable desire shouldn't be part of "housing" conversations.

If every single person wanted a detached house on Robson Street, that's clearly just stupid and should be ignored.

You're right that it's stupid, but that's what the laws attempt to do! It Is literally illegal to replace single-family houses with denser housing in the vast majority of Toronto, Vancouver, etc. That means everybody who doesn't fit in those houses is physically displaced to the exurbs, never mind that the increasing demand with no accompanying increase in supply makes prices skyrocket.

I don't care about your nonsensical attempt to redefine what words mean; that's objectively a shortage!

Shortages are what restrictive zoning laws are designed to do, and they are working exactly as intended. If you don't like that outcome, the only sane thing to do is abolish them.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You haven't been keeping up with the changes in the law. There is no such thing as single family zoning inside cities in BC anymore.

The provincial government made it so that essentially any property in a municipality over 5000 people is allowed to have 3 units if it's under 280 square meters, or 4 units if it's over 280 square meters.

If it's greater than 280 meters near frequent bus service(15 minutes or better during daytime hours), it goes up to a minimum allowance of 6 units.

Any property within 800 meters of a rapid transit exchange or 400 meters of a regular transit exchange also gets automatic zoning allowing a massive upgrade to number of stories for condo/apartment buildings.

Again, there's no shortage, there's plenty of housing available, it's just that there's a lot of over-housed people who are hogging properties they don't reasonably need.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You haven't been keeping up with the changes in the law. There is no such thing as single family zoning inside cities in BC anymore.

The provincial government made it so that essentially any property in a municipality over 5000 people is allowed to have 3 units if it's under 280 square meters, or 4 units if it's over 280 square meters.

In other words, they capped supply at a slightly higher level than it was before. Whoop-de-fuckin'-do, it's still a cap!

(Also, BC policy does fuck-all for Ontario.)

Again, there's no shortage, there's plenty of housing available, it's just that there's a lot of over-housed people who are hogging properties they don't reasonably need.

Again, that is factually untrue. You're so Hell-bent on finding scapegoats you can't even think rationally.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 days ago (2 children)

"slightly higher level"

They quite literally multiplied it by no less than 3, everywhere.

How much supply are you looking for here?

Again, that is factually untrue.

No, it isn't, and it's very easy to double check.

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&SearchText=ontario&DGUIDlist=2021A000011124%2C2021A000259%2C2021A000235&GENDERlist=1&STATISTIClist=1%2C4&HEADERlist=20

Go look at the section of that statscan data that shows number of total units by bedroom count. Even if you assume that 4+ bedrooms is only 4, the total bedrooms in Canada is about 40.5 Million and that data was as of 2021, when the population from Statscan was a little under 37 million.

Like I said before, even assuming nobody ever sleeps in the same room, and using the worst case for counting bedrooms where no house has more than 4, there are still 4 million excess bedrooms in this country.

Once you account for couples, it's probably close to 10-15 million excess bedrooms with nobody sleeping in them.

Even if you look at just BC data, it's the same thing. If you switch BC out for Ontario, guess what.... At least 15.1 million bedrooms, and 14.2 million people in 2021.

You need to stop spouting off about "factually untrue" when the facts don't support your argument. There is more than enough housing available for everyone at the moment if it were distributed equitably. Homeowners and politicians are lying to you to keep profiting off your stupidity.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Across Canada maybe, but Vancouver is not like that. When a place comes up for rent landlords have mentioned they have 50 applicants the first few hours that day and have to take the ad down.

This metro area is building high density housing on previous forest and farm land, and they are always snapped up quickly. I forget that stats, but something like 1000 new people move to metro area every month from other countries and provinces.

The rent is high here because of a lack of units available. Among the financial BS with banks.

In Vancouver people build a minimum 200 sq foot outbuilding in the back yard and as long as it has bicycle storage it is considered a rentable housing unit.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

I can't speak for Vancouver, but in Ottawa, I'm in a suburb that has a tonne of empty nesters living in 4 bedroom houses. There are young families that could use that space, but the current residents have no incentive to move. Housing is so expensive that selling off and moving to a smaller place would be hard. It's bizarre.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›