Prime Minister Mark Carney signed a symbolic order signalling his government will prioritize passing his promised middle-class tax cut, following the first in-person meeting of his cabinet on Parliament Hill Wednesday.
A) It prevents renting at all except for basement suites. So no more rental buildings, which make up the majority of rentals available. Renting is an important housing option, as not everyone wants to own, nor should they have to. Move to a city to go to university, and you have to buy a house just to live in for 2-4 years before you have to sell it to move elsewhere for a job? Have a job that requires you go somewhere else for a few months while you <build a bridge> <implement a new computer system> <train some people>, too bad hotel for 6 months instead of being able to rent an apartment.
B) If you do the math and even take out dedicated rental buildings, there really aren’t that many homes that are owned as a second place. It’s about 15% of the total market, and a large chunk of that are cottages and lake houses away from the cities where people actually want to live.
The big place/small place issue is actually more of a problem than the the double ownership you’re talking about. There are more total bedrooms in Canada than there are people, and once you account for couples usually sharing a bedroom, there’s actually a ton of extra bedrooms across the country. The problem is that they’re not distributed properly across the population, 4+ bedroom family homes that were bought to raise children are being kept for decades by empty-nest couples who don’t want to downsize.
That’s true, rentals are important. So how about instead mom and pop landlords can rent a couple/small number of units, but anything above that you must register as a corporation and the tenants union gets to be on the board, and there are strong incentives to turn you into a housing cooperative. Let’s throw in some more tenant protection legislation for good measure.
Basically, treat housing as a right, not as a financial asset, an investment, or a profit-driven enterprise.
I agree with you on the second part, but even allowing a single home still keeps housing as an investment/profit generator.
You have to actually do something to force every owner to lose(or at least never make) money. Hence my original suggestion to heavily tax homes and return that to citizens equally.
But zero rentals is a feature, not a bug. Its the point. :)
Everyone gets a grace period, say 18 months, to sell their excess properties, and after that the state expropriates. Or landlord can opt in to expropriation during the grace period. The reimbursement they will get for the properties decreases during the grace period to incentivize people to do it earlier. Maybe almost nothing by the end. Then the state can run them directly or parcel to some structure to administer and fund for maintenance. Existing tenants get to stay where they are if they want.(
Presto chango we have massive public housing.
Idk about making old people move. Its really hard to do. Usually a terrible drama in their lives when forced. Where do you think they should all go?
I think if you were going to do it by bedroom, each person should get 1 room even in a couple because it isn’t just about sleeping. A lot of people will appreciate an office or hobby room or something. It isn’t healthy to be stuck in a room with another person all the time. I don’t believe in penalizing people for being partnered. Welfare programs do it a lot and it really fucks with peoples lives. They have to chose between being “officially” partnered and getting full benefits as individuals, in which case their romantic relationship constitutes fraud. It also really enforces abusive situations because it enables control in bad situations. Imagine if your job could just cut your pay by 70% because they find out your in a LTR.
Canada is fucking huge we have enough space for each person to have 1 room.
My suggestion to add significant property taxes essentially does the same thing, since you’re “renting” from the government when you pay those. Then it applies properly to everyone, and it’s not some half cooked system that people can exploit.
"You think? I mean I’d rather high taxes compared to the status quo. But in my version there is the “let us take it off your hands” option, where it ends up in public ownership. Yours just has the properties swirling around some private market.
you’re “renting” from the government
In most jurisdictions, the landlord tenant relationship includes duties on the landlord with regard to services, standards etc. In Ontario they have to keep the unit a minimum temperature, fix the roof if it leaks, provide safe electricity etc. It also offers the landlord the remedy of eviction should the tenant fail to pay rent for a while.
There is nothing at all like that with paying taxes. The government hardly even enforces the regulations on the landlord. And I’ve never heard of anybody getting evicted for non-payment of property taxes. So I dunno what you are on about.
some half cooked system that people can exploit
I’ll admit my idea is half cooked, I’m no policy wonk.
Rent is inherently exploitative: the landlord is forcing people, usually with less wealth/power, to pay them a fee to avoid being evicted. The fee is greater than the costs incurred = profit. My proposal doesn’t completely eliminate that but would substantial reduce that. If provides no new avenue of exploitation that I can see.
People should be allowed to purchase the rights to control land and buildings, it allows them to make more serious changes (construction, renos, landscaping) that they care about. It also allows for long term stability in terms of not getting evicted.
In my system for renters, the duties of a landlord are still taken care of by landlords, since it would still be perfectly legal to own a property and rent it out. It’s the same as now, except instead of the landlord making a profit off the month rent AND the property inflating in value over time, they can only make a reasonable profit off the monthly rent and even then only if they’re using the land efficiently. It’s not the concept of renting that’s broken the market, it’s the fact that instead of just being a value added service (taking care of the repairs, utilities, etc.) the current market has made it a long term investment. Force it back to just a value added service (like renting cars) and it will be fine.
And I’ve never heard of anybody getting evicted for non-payment of property taxes.
Governments force the sales of properties all the time over unpaid taxes.
Renting is inherently exploitative:
No it isn’t, that’s only the case when the market fails like a situation with a finite amount of land in a specific area. There’s nothing inherently exploitative about renting cars to people, or renting a garden tool you only use once a year, or renting a paddle board for a trip to the lake, or renting a hotel room while travelling.
Once you push the land efficiency aspect via taxes, the land limitation drops off significantly and we can go back to having apartment/home rentals just be something landlords do to earn a little bit of money for providing a service, rather than it doubling their investment every 5 years.
A lot of landlords perform zero or only the most minimal maintenance to their properties. I don’t know where this “value added” idea of yours coue come from. Unlike my wage, the rent goes up every year by a fixed percent. They spend as little as possible and over time the neglect builds up. So sad the way things fall apart for want of a little TLC. They will get paid more every year regardless. Then when it’s bad enough maybe apply for an AGI and make the tenants bear the cost of repairs aimed at fancying the place up without fixing any underlying issues, and/or renovict them to raise the rent even further. They are value suckers, not value adders. Both from the tenants, but also by allowing the condition of the building to deteriorate much faster than is required.
No it isn’t, that’s only the case when the market fails like a situation with a finite amount of land in a specific area. There’s nothing inherently exploitative about renting cars to people, or renting a garden tool you only use once a year, or renting a paddle board for a trip to the lake, or renting a hotel room while travelling.
Sorry I meant rental housing because that’s what we are talking about. How does your argument about property taxes apply to a paddle board?
Interesting how your examples emphasize transience and have the feeling of recreational. Housing isn’t something you need once in a while for funsies. You need it every day of your life, ideally without interruption. It’s hard to think of a comparable example to residential rental, because it’s such a key component to life itself. A better example for you would be access to running water or power. Maybe pharmaceuticals to treat chronic disease. You pay a fee to get access to a resource which is beyond your means to obtain as an individual. They shouldn’t be managed according to the whims of random rich people, they are social infrastructure.
go back to having apartment/home rentals just be something landlords do to earn a little bit of money for providing a service
When was that?
Am I understanding you properly that you think housing should be exclusively or primary provided by people who are doing it as a side hustle? Do you think having small artisanal landlords is somehow better than organizations run by professionals? I find it odd that you’ve clearly put a lot of thought into one aspect of the issue about taxes and such, but still sound kind of dismissive about the importance of housing to people, and also the skill involved in properly managing housing, to say nothing of the human beings residing inside. Which is not in high supply among the rinky dink small time landlords I’ve mostly lived under during my life.
But I don’t think big business is the solution; there has to be some sort of accountable body that manages housing. I still don’t see how your various tax schemes do anything to defer the profit motive, which is the driver of rent increases. It has always been that way.
At the end of the day, rent prices are driven by house prices. If rents become too high compared to owning, people just buy.
The current barrier is the upfront cost, but…
The property taxes I propose will drop the current value of homes through the floor. Some highly inefficient homes may actually have a zero or negative value, because they would cost too much in tax each month for anyone to want to buy. They would be scooped up by developers who can make them affordable by building enough units on that property in order to bring the tax per unit down to something people would pay.
Given that the house prices would drop so significantly, so would rent prices across the board.
There isn’t actually a lack of land anywhere in Canada, even our most populated city cores haven’t hit the densities that would prevent further growth.
There also isn’t actually a lack of housing, as I said elsewhere there are more bedrooms in Canada than there are people. We just need policies which incentive people to use them efficiently.
And the government controlling all rentals is an option, but do you really think they’re going to keep everything 100% repaired and up to date for everyone? This is going to be a pain point under both options, and I’d rather be able to take private landlord to court to get something fixed than try to take the government itself to court.
I have a much more clear cut policy:
Occasionally someone has a big place and someone has a small place, but this would solve way more issues.
It really wouldn’t.
A) It prevents renting at all except for basement suites. So no more rental buildings, which make up the majority of rentals available. Renting is an important housing option, as not everyone wants to own, nor should they have to. Move to a city to go to university, and you have to buy a house just to live in for 2-4 years before you have to sell it to move elsewhere for a job? Have a job that requires you go somewhere else for a few months while you <build a bridge> <implement a new computer system> <train some people>, too bad hotel for 6 months instead of being able to rent an apartment.
B) If you do the math and even take out dedicated rental buildings, there really aren’t that many homes that are owned as a second place. It’s about 15% of the total market, and a large chunk of that are cottages and lake houses away from the cities where people actually want to live.
The big place/small place issue is actually more of a problem than the the double ownership you’re talking about. There are more total bedrooms in Canada than there are people, and once you account for couples usually sharing a bedroom, there’s actually a ton of extra bedrooms across the country. The problem is that they’re not distributed properly across the population, 4+ bedroom family homes that were bought to raise children are being kept for decades by empty-nest couples who don’t want to downsize.
That’s true, rentals are important. So how about instead mom and pop landlords can rent a couple/small number of units, but anything above that you must register as a corporation and the tenants union gets to be on the board, and there are strong incentives to turn you into a housing cooperative. Let’s throw in some more tenant protection legislation for good measure.
Basically, treat housing as a right, not as a financial asset, an investment, or a profit-driven enterprise.
I agree with you on the second part, but even allowing a single home still keeps housing as an investment/profit generator.
You have to actually do something to force every owner to lose(or at least never make) money. Hence my original suggestion to heavily tax homes and return that to citizens equally.
But zero rentals is a feature, not a bug. Its the point. :)
Everyone gets a grace period, say 18 months, to sell their excess properties, and after that the state expropriates. Or landlord can opt in to expropriation during the grace period. The reimbursement they will get for the properties decreases during the grace period to incentivize people to do it earlier. Maybe almost nothing by the end. Then the state can run them directly or parcel to some structure to administer and fund for maintenance. Existing tenants get to stay where they are if they want.(
Presto chango we have massive public housing.
Idk about making old people move. Its really hard to do. Usually a terrible drama in their lives when forced. Where do you think they should all go?
I think if you were going to do it by bedroom, each person should get 1 room even in a couple because it isn’t just about sleeping. A lot of people will appreciate an office or hobby room or something. It isn’t healthy to be stuck in a room with another person all the time. I don’t believe in penalizing people for being partnered. Welfare programs do it a lot and it really fucks with peoples lives. They have to chose between being “officially” partnered and getting full benefits as individuals, in which case their romantic relationship constitutes fraud. It also really enforces abusive situations because it enables control in bad situations. Imagine if your job could just cut your pay by 70% because they find out your in a LTR.
Canada is fucking huge we have enough space for each person to have 1 room.
My suggestion to add significant property taxes essentially does the same thing, since you’re “renting” from the government when you pay those. Then it applies properly to everyone, and it’s not some half cooked system that people can exploit.
"You think? I mean I’d rather high taxes compared to the status quo. But in my version there is the “let us take it off your hands” option, where it ends up in public ownership. Yours just has the properties swirling around some private market.
In most jurisdictions, the landlord tenant relationship includes duties on the landlord with regard to services, standards etc. In Ontario they have to keep the unit a minimum temperature, fix the roof if it leaks, provide safe electricity etc. It also offers the landlord the remedy of eviction should the tenant fail to pay rent for a while.
There is nothing at all like that with paying taxes. The government hardly even enforces the regulations on the landlord. And I’ve never heard of anybody getting evicted for non-payment of property taxes. So I dunno what you are on about.
I’ll admit my idea is half cooked, I’m no policy wonk.
Rent is inherently exploitative: the landlord is forcing people, usually with less wealth/power, to pay them a fee to avoid being evicted. The fee is greater than the costs incurred = profit. My proposal doesn’t completely eliminate that but would substantial reduce that. If provides no new avenue of exploitation that I can see.
People should be allowed to purchase the rights to control land and buildings, it allows them to make more serious changes (construction, renos, landscaping) that they care about. It also allows for long term stability in terms of not getting evicted.
In my system for renters, the duties of a landlord are still taken care of by landlords, since it would still be perfectly legal to own a property and rent it out. It’s the same as now, except instead of the landlord making a profit off the month rent AND the property inflating in value over time, they can only make a reasonable profit off the monthly rent and even then only if they’re using the land efficiently. It’s not the concept of renting that’s broken the market, it’s the fact that instead of just being a value added service (taking care of the repairs, utilities, etc.) the current market has made it a long term investment. Force it back to just a value added service (like renting cars) and it will be fine.
Governments force the sales of properties all the time over unpaid taxes.
No it isn’t, that’s only the case when the market fails like a situation with a finite amount of land in a specific area. There’s nothing inherently exploitative about renting cars to people, or renting a garden tool you only use once a year, or renting a paddle board for a trip to the lake, or renting a hotel room while travelling.
Once you push the land efficiency aspect via taxes, the land limitation drops off significantly and we can go back to having apartment/home rentals just be something landlords do to earn a little bit of money for providing a service, rather than it doubling their investment every 5 years.
A lot of landlords perform zero or only the most minimal maintenance to their properties. I don’t know where this “value added” idea of yours coue come from. Unlike my wage, the rent goes up every year by a fixed percent. They spend as little as possible and over time the neglect builds up. So sad the way things fall apart for want of a little TLC. They will get paid more every year regardless. Then when it’s bad enough maybe apply for an AGI and make the tenants bear the cost of repairs aimed at fancying the place up without fixing any underlying issues, and/or renovict them to raise the rent even further. They are value suckers, not value adders. Both from the tenants, but also by allowing the condition of the building to deteriorate much faster than is required.
Sorry I meant rental housing because that’s what we are talking about. How does your argument about property taxes apply to a paddle board?
Interesting how your examples emphasize transience and have the feeling of recreational. Housing isn’t something you need once in a while for funsies. You need it every day of your life, ideally without interruption. It’s hard to think of a comparable example to residential rental, because it’s such a key component to life itself. A better example for you would be access to running water or power. Maybe pharmaceuticals to treat chronic disease. You pay a fee to get access to a resource which is beyond your means to obtain as an individual. They shouldn’t be managed according to the whims of random rich people, they are social infrastructure.
When was that?
Am I understanding you properly that you think housing should be exclusively or primary provided by people who are doing it as a side hustle? Do you think having small artisanal landlords is somehow better than organizations run by professionals? I find it odd that you’ve clearly put a lot of thought into one aspect of the issue about taxes and such, but still sound kind of dismissive about the importance of housing to people, and also the skill involved in properly managing housing, to say nothing of the human beings residing inside. Which is not in high supply among the rinky dink small time landlords I’ve mostly lived under during my life.
But I don’t think big business is the solution; there has to be some sort of accountable body that manages housing. I still don’t see how your various tax schemes do anything to defer the profit motive, which is the driver of rent increases. It has always been that way.
At the end of the day, rent prices are driven by house prices. If rents become too high compared to owning, people just buy.
The current barrier is the upfront cost, but…
The property taxes I propose will drop the current value of homes through the floor. Some highly inefficient homes may actually have a zero or negative value, because they would cost too much in tax each month for anyone to want to buy. They would be scooped up by developers who can make them affordable by building enough units on that property in order to bring the tax per unit down to something people would pay.
Given that the house prices would drop so significantly, so would rent prices across the board.
There isn’t actually a lack of land anywhere in Canada, even our most populated city cores haven’t hit the densities that would prevent further growth.
There also isn’t actually a lack of housing, as I said elsewhere there are more bedrooms in Canada than there are people. We just need policies which incentive people to use them efficiently.
And the government controlling all rentals is an option, but do you really think they’re going to keep everything 100% repaired and up to date for everyone? This is going to be a pain point under both options, and I’d rather be able to take private landlord to court to get something fixed than try to take the government itself to court.