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this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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The reason why is because foreign home ownership has never been the core of the issue. This law was a distraction from the reality that Canadians are plenty willing, and more likely, to be the one exploiting you.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/46-28-0001/2023001/article/00001-eng.htm
[...]
As always, the core of the issue is that home ownership is treated as a commodity. Sort of a fundamental reality of putting a thing into a competitive market is that you're going to have winners and losers. And losers in the housing market leads to, you know, homelessness among many other social ills.
I tried to point this out on Reddit and Lemmy so many times and usually got downvoted. People want to believe there's some nefarious boogeyman buying up houses and keeping them vacant, but the reality is that virtually all homes in Canada have occupants. We just don't have nearly enough housing for the population.
Edit: it's still happening. In the other thread on this board about this article, people are saying "it's not the foreign buyers we should tax, it's the corporate buyers". People will do all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid considering the possibility that we need to densify our housing.
Vancouver and Toronto are currently sitting about 7% and 7.4% homes that are empty or not for usual residents. That's a fucking massive number, imo.
Source: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/astonishing-drop-in-number-of-empty-homes-in-metro-vancouver-census
Okay and you could have 50% more homes available if 20% of the SFH in a city was converted into apartments. 7% is nothing if we actually would densify what we build rather than just sprawling suburbs.
Sure, but let's not pretend it's not an issue.
"empty or not for usual residents." is a useless metric. Student houses are considered "empty" if the the students have a family home to return to and haven't updated their mailing address.
Wrong. It states directly in the article that students and foreign workers are not included in that metric.
From Stats Canada.
Students are usual residents of Canada, they're not usual residents of the place they stay in while studying in school.
Directly quoted from the source I posted.
That's why I clarified how you misinterpreted that sentence, and gave you a source from Stats Canada. I also worked the last census in KW, where there's a large student population, so it was drilled into our heads students only count if they live in that house year round (and preferable changed the address on their ID).