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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
128 points (94.4% liked)
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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.
"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)
Financialization occurs irrespective of supply and demand by making more credit available. It's literally injecting money into that specific market. Once people see prices rising, the rising prices become part of the product - people buy as much housing as they can as an investment vehicle. It's like the effect of people buying a stock because it goes up. Everyone I know has either bought additional property as investment or wanted to but couldn't afford it.
What is the reason, besides finacialization, that restricting supply makes sense?
Zoning laws are made by people elected by those who financially benefit from stricter zoning laws.
You literally say this in your parentheses statement.
Stricter zoning preferences come after one has a financial stake in housing.
Financialization is the root cause.
It sounds good to voters. Zoning is basically a promise to keep the neighborhood free of things you don't personally care about under the guise of thoughtfulness. Current owners like that, and it's too abstract for most of the people who lose from it to care about.
Same reason they scream bloody murder when it goes away. Calgary's zoning just got forced back in.