Citation on the empty homes? Why would they let a home sit empty and lose thousands in rental income. We also have vacant home taxes of 1% Canada wide called the Underused Housing Tax.

Canada is mainly zoned for single family homes, hence the massive number of 1 bedroom condo. Blaming "greedy developer" is a cop out, especially as developer taxes increased thousands of percent, so clearly municipals are also suckling at the teet of the shortage and further fueling prices.

As far as why its not 4% annual population growth thats causing the massive shortages and spike in rents, you've not convinced me. What's the actual rationale as to why tripling immigration wouldn't lead to this obvious conclusion? Why was Eby screaming at the Feds to slow it down as infrastructure can't keep up?

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Here’s an article about vacant land, and another about vacant homes. Do you know why diamonds are expensive? It’s an artificially inflated market, where the diamonds are held in warehouses and hoarded there, forcing a lower supply. It doesn’t actually cost that much to just hold onto these places, especially since they’re assets which only only ever really go up in value, and 1% is a pathetically low tax compared to the money they get by jacking up the prices of their other properties.

Infrastructure definitely can keep up, but it involves building sensibly, and doing the things we already know work instead of barrelling forward with the same old bad decisions because we’re all scared of change. It means we have to start seeing more cities in Canada being built like Montréal and finally just admit that cities built like Ottawa are inefficient. You yourself just said that that Canada has a lot of single-family homes and yea, especially when it’s just single-use zoning that fucking blows!

We need the immigration, and like I’ve already said it’s god-awful planning and a complete unwillingness to actually take control of the situation that brings any difficulties. You’re asking a lot of questions but you seem to really not want to think about the fact that there are a bunch of people who don’t really have your best interests at heart, and those people are the wealthy and their mouth-breathing sycophants.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

Thank you for the link, I do agree we could keep up with growth if zoning wasnt so regressive in Canada. The problem is definitely municipals and perverse incentives to block density.

Of course with a limited amount of new supply, due to density, high developer fees, and slow bureaucracy I do stand by that it was a fact immigration exacerbated the shortage. The government should have dealt with the vacant homes first, or tied it to housing starts in some way.

As far as the wealthy, they benefit from mass immigration, it decreases wages and increases demand. They are begging for it, as Carney literally says all the time.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I’m not going to say that the wealthy don’t benefit from immigration but we can see that the bigger issue is how laissez-faire these centrist and conservative governments(functionally the same for all it really matters) are when it comes to protecting our rights. The minimum wage comstantly dragging behind, shipping our money out of the country(foreign aid and stuff is fine, though), and refusing to tax the wealthy so that the tax burden is on the working class are far bigger issues that can all be address without a need to physically build up stock of things like housing, which we could have a lot more of very quickly if we built more sensibly.

I work in the architectural field and obviously have a fire for good urban planning and can comfortably say that this isn’t an improvement that needs to be measured in decades if we actually tried at all. It would also be a huge boon for jobs, and with better workers’ rights we could see a lot more people willing to do said jobs, too. I’m having a hard time at the moment and one thing keeping me out of looking towards a trade is how poorly those fields are often treated(the pay isn’t as good as it looks, either, fyi).

And going off that point, the wage pressure thing is tricky because it doesn’t matter if their are a trillion people in the country if only ten of them can operate a crane or do surgery. Those ten people would still have the ability to apply immense pressure, right? The immigrants we bring come with a huge variety of skills and often need to take equivalency courses so much of the pressure they apply in their first few years is on manual labour jobs and the like, even if they come with a bunch of other skills.

Everything is highly nuanced, but the one certain thing is that our Liberal/Conservative government see-saw has not been serving us on the simple things like a wealth tax and a real minimum wage increase. Our local governments are also screwing renters and commuters(zoning and transport, namely). We moan about not being able to afford things and then shoot ourselves in both feet when presented with opportunities to actually address those issues directly and man, honestly, I’m getting so tired of it.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Ah you're the type that wants a government run grocery store. Things are too expensive so we need more government is your view summarized.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yea, I am the type that wants evidence based solutions to our problems and who doesn’t want to keep doing the same tired bullshit that has never worked.

Look, I was trying to have a conversation, and you were doing so well there, but if you just want to be racist about it while on your knees for the people who are robbing you in broad daylight with smiles on their faces then say it with your whole fucking chest or shut your cowardly mouth.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Ya fair enough, that is just a pretty extreme view, and I dont have enough conviction in my own knowledge to debate such an overhaul.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s not that extreme, that’s the thing. This stuff isn’t that complicated, we as Canadians are just overwhelmingly terrified of doing anything of substance. An extreme views are those which lack nuance, but that’s it. Asking for us to have a few more very basic protections for the working class and to not have a government which serves only the rich is not extreme. In many instances we already had these things and we weakened them.

I’m really not asking for a lot, here, and the alternative is continuing down this path of “just let the corporations and owner class do whatever they want” which is far more extreme than what I’m suggesting.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think it could work however I blame a lot of the problems on zoning laws. For instance Loblaws doesn't make much from grocery sales, they make a lot from real estate.

We use real estate to fake economic growth as productivity languishes. The government would do what, join the cartel, or overhaul the fundamental problems?

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I mean, a bit of a strange question to ask because yes, a non-conservative government would be seeking to do foundational overhauls because our foundation is fully just rotted away at this point and we desperately need to stop pretending anything is ok.

Things like the local grocery stores you brought up aren’t connected to real estate like that. Real-estate speculation requires a lot of buying and selling, and doing so with the express purpuse of trying to make money without actually doing anything of value. These grocery stores are smaller options to put pressure on the larger chains to lower the prices, similar to how Vienna’s 40% “market rate housing”(social housing but with a different name so people who can’t think so well aren’t afraid of it) keeps rent prices low because there’s sizeable competition. It’s a good way to push policies aimed at helping society at large while existing in a capitalist system. I imagine they would also exist like Canada Post, where they would serve places that large chains don’t deem profitable enough. Canada Post and Radio Canada make sure that remote communities stay connected in ways that FedEx and other radio stations completely fail at because they’re seeking to serve communities, not take money from them.

Zoning laws are big, sure, and absolutely need an overhaul, but they’re not the reason why Loblaws does shit like price-fixing. That’s just pure greed with no consequences because the centrists and the conservatives have very little interest in truly punishing them.

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