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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 07 Feb 2026
111 points (93.7% liked)
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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.
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.
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.
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, that is factually untrue. You're so Hell-bent on finding scapegoats you can't even think rationally.
"slightly higher level"
They quite literally multiplied it by no less than 3, everywhere.
How much supply are you looking for here?
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.
Nobody gives a shit about housing in bumfuck nowhere exurbs. It simply does not count because pretending people can be warehoused there when they can't does not solve the problem.
Quit citing irrelevant bullshit and talk only about housing within commuting distance of downtown Vancouver or Toronto (or in general, urban centers where people actually want to be), because that's what actually matters.
You can look up the data even for cities specifically, it's not significantly different. You aren't doing that because you don't want to be proven wrong.
Continue tilting at windmills my friend. I'm going to go after the actual monsters.