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The numbers don’t lie: The housing crisis is not caused by a supply shortage
(www.policyalternatives.ca)
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
133 points (97.8% liked)
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I am going to need some explanations. First, they say there are 510 dwellings per 1000 adults, and then they say there are 1017 dwellings per 1000 households. In the first number, that requires more than two adults per dwelling. That deems like we haven't hit demand yet, let alone surplus. The second numbers are only possible if there are hundreds of thousands of extra adults beyond a couple in most households. Or hundreds of thousands of homeless adults. None of those imply to me any kind of surplus. So I don't see a source of downward pressure based on over supply. If those 17 dwellings per thousand households are sitting empty, and we have homeless people, then either those 17 are uninhabitable, or they are unaffordable relative to the mode or median incomes.
Why doesn't increasing affordable supply help solve that issue?
The solution suggestions do make sense, it is the argument that there isn't a supply shortage that has missing pieces.
Increasing affordable supply will always help. The argument is that increasing supply regardless of type, does not. It's how you get empty condos being held as investments.
Because the only viable way to increase supply is to have a public construction company that builds at cost.
And thanks to Alberta and US media, that will never fly.
You dont even need that. Just public policies that encourage affordable housing. Example
If you just have policies and leave it to private companies, you end up with Vancouver.
Where we have tons of policies and initiatives for affordable housing that only result in private developers stopping construction until the price has increased enough for them to profit, and then abusing loopholes to reduce/remove the amount of affordable housing in the actual building.
E.g. during the post-covid boom, Vancouver was a world leader in housing starts. Now that the price has cooled, starts have plummetted, so cons and US-Media are crying out about regulations. But no new regulations exist.