For all the flack the Liberals got for this, is this a political win? $100 million in yearly payments seems pretty good

You live in hell?

Knowing justin trudeau, some stern words with no action are the best we can hope for

Ignoring these hypothetical numbers, an abundance of housing means more options for renters. In this case the developers have to compete for our rental money. This means lower rents.

That is a 100% indisputably correct assumption. Vacancy taxes worked where they've been implemented to incentivize the occupancy of empty homes and the overwhelming majority of homes have people living in them.

I need you in every housing thread I post here.

a) this is before Toronto instituted the empty homes tax - less incentive for homeowners to rent out their empty unit

b) this is before the explosion of rental price increases post-covid - even less incentive for homeowners to rent out their unit

c) measuring lights on or off a couple of times a year isn't a great proxy for assessing empty units

I'm confused by your assumption that "private investment in housing has been too low and it will continue to be too low." Do you think private companies, the very greedy developers, are choosing to limit their investment in such a lucrative industry? Their business has been artificially restricted by something you hinted at, zoning requirements. It's reductive to say "market based solutions have been attempted" when municipal governments have had a stranglehold on new supply since the 60s, there is nothing natural about this market because it's incapable of responding to demand.

pre-empting zoning, parking and density requirements such that new housing can be built with less materials and space

Why are we only removing restrictions for the federal government? Why not also allow non-profit and for-profit pipelines that already exist contribute to this shortage of housing in the meantime? Even if you could raise the hundreds of billions (if not trillions) from the feds, they can't administer this program anytime soon.

I'll reiterate my original point: I wish we entrusted the government with building housing and cut out for-profit developers for such an essential human need, but I know there's no way the feds are able to raise that money, political capital, and administrative power in the next decade at least. I feel the same way about food, but I'm not saying we need to end food production until it's a public entity.

Building all affordable housing with tax dollars is a noble goal, but that’s not happening anytime soon and our housing crisis demands action now. Our current regime has nowhere near the money and administrative power to facilitate this alone.

Why not just make it easier for for-profit AND non-profit developers to build housing in the meantime? Fixing the broken process is free and we can start today.

That isn’t their only answer, remember that they were the only party that was pressing grocery store CEOs

I would agree that saying something is better than saying nothing, but I measure their success by action, not rhetoric. Our cost of living crisis has been raging for years now, and I haven't even seen a serious proposal to deal with any of it, let alone actual policy changes.

If dental care is their only answer to affordability we’re in trouble.

This is why voting matters folks