Most Canadians basically have their net worth in their homes and many treat their homes as their retirement plan. An economy with a solved housing crisis is an economy with a much lower competitive demand for housing, which naturally means lower housing prices, which means most voters in the country seeing their net worth go down and their retirement expectations negatively affected. So, there's a petty strong incentive to pay lip service to solving the crisis, but a very strong disincentive for actually solving it.

[–] naught101@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (4 children)

What does it mean that you're home is your retirement plan? You'll sell it when you retire? And what, move somewhere cheaper? Doesn't that do weird things to demographics?

[–] Grabthar@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can borrow against its value or reverse mortgage it for money to fund your retirement. Or as you said, many choose to sell their expensive city homes and retire to a small town with lower cost of living. That usually drives up prices in the nearby, more desirable small towns.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

Yes, we've already seen that with people moving to the Maritimes to retire. As such Nfld, NS, NB have the highest average age in Canada.

[–] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

The traditional path is that you have a bigger house when you have children and downsize when the kids leave the family home. By the time this happens, the house has appreciated in value and you can have the extra value as cash for retirement.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 week ago

Tom Sellek takes your home.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

These people also don’t understand that, even if their houses end up selling for less, they still get a shit load of money for them.

Like, isn’t wild that for landlords the tenants are expected to pay for the mortgage and the maintenance and then, after the landlord has profitted once by getting their building paid for, they get to sell it and get all that momey a second time, essentially for free?

I really, truly, do not give a shit about the people that demand they get more than they paid for for their house. They can rot in hell.

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

That can just mean adding lots of affordable apartments dropping cost of housing but houses remain high.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Many houses are turned into investment opportunities and become rentals/apartments so building apartments would still ease demand on houses and lower prices.