I’m an ADULT and my hobby is DOOM SCROLLING which I do to relax. It makes me very UNHAPPY.

“everyone gets a free house”

Now you’re putting words in my mouth.

Or, like any other commodity where there’s a market imbalance, you address supply issues and prices come down.

Our largest recent spike in home starts was during the pandemic, when housing prices skyrocketed, so there’s clearly more to the price than just supply. A comprehensive plan to improve housing affordability would take that into account, and address the demand and financing parts of the equation.

There’s nothing in the LPC plan to guarantee costs fall, so it seems we’ll be left to the whims of the market. Again.

Eh. When I was living in Ottawa, developers were buying up $600k houses (that I could afford), knocking them down, and replacing them with two or three $900k houses (that I couldn’t afford).

I’m all for densification, but if the purpose of this is to lower housing costs, it’s too early to declare victory. We need to see house prices meaningfully decline before that.

Or at least I do. You do you.

the promised third “f”

the liberals … are actually producing results

Housing starts haven’t really improved since 2021, and the LPC plan started late 2023, didn’t it?

I’m not (generally) seeing a significant increase in housing starts or improvements in affordability (although rent in a few centers has dropped). Maybe once the existing LPC proposals make it a bit further (like the housing catalog you mentioned). But it isn’t looking great so far.

It’s a question of how likely a proposed solution is to reduce housing costs.

Just some back of the envelope math, a fee years ago the value of Canadian residential real estate was some 7.5 trillion, just call it 7. Even a 10% drop in value means a roughly 700 billion loss. For the 40ish percent of Canadian households which own their home, the plan evaporates a large chunk of their retirement wealth.

You’ve hit the nail on the head: it’s hard to make housing more affordable without reducing the amount of money people charge for housing. If the goal is to build a few more houses, but keep the cost of housing the same, then the LPC plan will succeed - it’s provides money to builders without a guarantee of price reductions.

But low income and young Canadians will continue to be priced out of housing with that approach. Unless CMHC the new government body builds houses, and rent/sells them to the next generation of Canadians below market rates. That’s possible, but that Singaporean approach it isn’t described in the LPC plan. And it will probably require more money than it promises for affordable housing.

We’ve been in a housing crisis for something like five years now, and it’s helped fuel a push to the right. If the LPC plan is as you describe it, and the intent is to keep inflated housing prices for the next decade (perhaps until real wages catch up), then we’re going to see a continued right-ward push.

That’s shitty. I haven’t looked too closely at the CPC platform, but it doesn’t seem great. Their promise to build 2.3 million houses in five years seems unachievable, but I can understand people wanting it to be true.

I’m pretty far from 25 or 30, but I’d really like to see more coverage of what’s happening with that demographic.

That’s a lot of downvotes for a fairly non-controversial comment.

It’s consistent with my experiences crossing the border in the past month.

I’m on the wrong continent, but it looks like a blast. Have fun!

I hope Liberal and NDP voters are paying attention.

Like I’m sorry but these kids were in elementary school when Trudeau got elected and every day since their parents have been paying for less and less of their stuff.

The article interviews people in their 30s, and the poll is of Canadians under 35. I’m not sure about our demographics, but I’d expect many of the respondents have been in the workforce for a few years. They’re generally priced out of home ownership and their rent has skyrocketed. Those are the same people who are reporting lower levels of happiness (as per the article), and probably having a harder time with the inflation we’ve seen since the start of COVID.

Blaming their concerns on “scrolling social media endlessly” doesn’t address the problem that they are legitimately having a shit time. I don’t think the Conservatives have the answers to these problems, but dismissing them out of hand sucks.

The article isn’t really about support for the Conservatives, it’s more about affordability issues (outside of housing) not really registering in the campaigns.

most anti-immigration arguments completely forget that they help with the supply by bringing manpower to build the homes.

To a degree. Canada’s point system for immigration selects white collar workers, while most students coming in on education visas are aiming for office or healthcare jobs. The last time I looked, the trades had the same proportion of new Canadians as the rest of the population - so yeah, some immigrants are in the trades, but they aren’t overrepresented.

The federal government should be selecting for more construction workers. IIRC there are a couple of programs that encourage tradespeople to immigrate, but they don’t bring in a significant number of people.

Bringing more manpower doesn’t help since it’s not the bottleneck.

Lack of construction workers is a bottleneck. It’s just one of many, including: increased construction costs, developer incentives, zoning, lack of government construction, etc. Like you say, we need to solve all of those at once.

The anti-immigration arguments are mainly from the racist right that looks for a boogyman while ignoring the real causes of our issues.

I don’t think that’s fair to say. Immigration exacerbates the housing/healthcare crises, even if it isn’t the sole cause. Lining it up on political lines turns immigration into a wedge issue, which doesn’t help anyone.

It’s much faster for the federal government to reduce the number of newcomers than it is to build houses, train healthcare/construction workers, etc. A reduction would reduce strain on our society while we fix the many problems we’re facing. Once housing is again affordable, and every Canadian has access to appropriate healthcare, then we can see about increasing admission if appropriate. In the meantime, we really need to increase the number of tradespeople (and healthcare workers) we’re bringing in (and certifying) even as overall numbers fall.

A more realistic plan would involve the definancialization of Canadian housing. As long as homes are a lucrative investment vehicle for middle class Canadians, we’re going to keep laddering up the price.

I’d take another look at the Liberal’s housing platform in detail.

The plan has the issues I listed above: no near term construction targets, no affordability guarantees for new units, and no price goal for the total housing stock. It promises money for builders, but includes no mechanism to ensure prices fall.

I struggle to think of a more ambitious but realistic plan released by any comparable party among any of our developed nation peers.

I hear good stuff about Singapore’s model. Denmark and Vienna apparently do social housing well.

Hey fellow Canadian. I pay about the same. Looking at these other responses, I think we’re getting screwed.

And then those changes in the rules are meant to spur developers

That’s the root of the problem. Both the LPC and CPC plans rely on “reducing red tape” so private developers will charge homebuyers less for their product.

There’s nothing in either plan to ensure home prices will fall - just the hope that the invisible hand will whisk our problems away.

I’m not saying that’s impossible, but it would require a concerted effort to build a huge number of units in a short period of time. No Canadian party has released a plan to do so.

I’m not sure on the timelines but it seems a much more comprehensive plan with an appropriate amount of funding to get us in a good place not for now but for long term

Thanks to the cost of living crisis, we’re losing a generation of young people to conservatism. Throwing a bunch of money at developers in the hope that they charge less for their product in ten years time is a recipe for stagnation and alienation.

I love that idea. I’d happily pay a reasonable amount for good services.

They don’t usually enforce speed restrictions, so I guess they’re being fair about it.

tbf he is complaining

raised home starts by 2 percent within a year or so

We’ve only got something like 240k starts per year. 2% growth won’t get us there - that’s like 5k extra houses/year?

CMHC says we need 3.5 million homes by 2030 to restore affordability, so we need something like 700k starts per year. That’s an extra 460k?

IIRC, the LPC plan is 35 billion over ten years, with 500k starts/year reached in 2035. It isn’t clear how that will restore affordability.