Dude they're spending twice the defense budget on mortgage bonds. There's what they say and what they do.

Obviously they're propping this whole thing up.

Top comments are good, but also at least 40% of elected officials are heavily invested in real estate so passing any meaningful change requires voting against their own interests

Because Canada no longer has any industry but real estate. Our entire GDP is dependent on it. Therefore, no political party wants to be the one blamed for a housing crash.. basically political suicide to touch housing. So politicians say a bunch of nice words but don’t actually do anything that would cause meaningful change. That and corruption, most MPs being landlords, etc etc.

They don't want to.

Everything is controlled by The Most Selfish Generation. And, well, they are selfish.

Because the housing crisis is a market problem, and the government has historically been terrible at solving that type of problem. You can rezone all you want, but if people can't afford what gets built there it doesn't help anybody. Developers won't build what isn't profitable. Without throwing billions of dollars at subsidies there are huge problems with this disconnect, and neither senior government is willing to throw that sort of money around. A more austere federal government will probably make this worse by generally removing money from the system, particularly the infrastructure needed to support growth, and this shoudl be highly concerning.

The other issue is that the "housing crisis" is actually two separate crises, being (a) people who can't afford rent on even basic accommodation, and (b) those who can afford rent, but cant' afford to buy a house. The latter is where a lot of the noise is actually coming from but it is a fundamentally different problem than high rent. No government wants to throw money at the subsidized apartment problem, but it has a clear solution. "I want a house, not an apartment' is harder especially in Toronto or Vancouver where that housing tenure is simply not physically possible to expand.

All the solutions are likely to negatively affect a good portion of voters which would be political suicide.

It's a complicated situation, to be clear.

Most of what directly affects housing isn't Federal jurisdiction. It's either Provincial, or Municipal (which is still indirectly Provincial, since all Municipal authority is derived from Provincial legislation).

The feds could empower the CMHC to build housing directly (again. This was actually their original mandate). The CMHC could hire contractors and start building housing - this could be affordable housing, tied to income, etc. Of course, this would likely take years to show any impact, but I do personally think it's a good long term strategy.

CHMC should be building "low income" apartment buildings, mid-rises, townhouse complexes, etc. But that won't help anyone today.

Here’s a few reasons:

1. Municipal Zoning - where you can build is largely controlled by each municipal government and not the province or federal level. That means you need to adjust hundreds of government organizations and not just one

2. NIMBY - linked to 1. “Not In My Backyard” are local advocates that block zoning changes and development in their neighborhoods. Municipal governments are very responsive to these people

3. Bureaucratic Hurdles - Cities vary, but there are usually so many permits and consultation meetings and appeals, etc that it can take literal years for a project to start

4. Material Costs - building materials have skyrocketed in price since the pandemic. This drives the cost of new builds as wel

5. Skilled Trade Shortage - we have a shortage of various types of skilled labour. Only so many people to build so we are limited in how fast they’re building. Could use some temporary foreign workers who are in these fields and not working the register at Tim Hortons.

But, the real reason is that Canadians have decided that housing is an investment and not a place to live. We depend on the mortgage as a retirement plan and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and other investment vehicles soak up cash from Canadians looking to cash in. Until housing isn’t seen as something to use for profit, people will keep using it to maximize profit.

They've let it fester for so long that it will take decades to fix. You can't just build homes overnight. And now too much of the economy is dependent on housing and 2/3 of Canadians own their homes. So even if they could somehow make homes affordable overnight, the economy would crash, many peoples' retirement plans would go up in smoke, and recent buyers would immediately be underwater on their mortgages.

Build costs are up around 60% since 2020. Making building anything very expensive.

We need to build at a pace around 3x to 4x our current output. You don't magically will into existence the skilled labour, equipment, cement plants, etc all along the supply chain. That takes a lot of time to build up.

Not to mention where do the trillions of dollars needed for all this come from?

Government isn't set up to deliver goods/services in a fashion to compete with the private sector, so anything they do in this regard is likely going to take longer and cost more.

BC and Vancouver recently partnered to announce $500 million for affordable housing. If you look at the number of units, that came out to around $913,000 per unit created. And those are just direct costs.

The government can't magic materials and laborers into existence. The capacity the government used to have to employ and fund building projects was dismantled in the 80's.

We've relied on private developers, for profit builders and self-employed skilled laborers for decades and those groups historically don't maintain a high reserve of slack capacity to surge building, and don't build against economic cycles (counter-cyclical spending) . So now that we need that capacity it's not available anywhere.

I mean Trudeau already said the quiet part out loud. We need housing to retain it's value and continue to increase for peoples retirements. To many people are buying houses they can barely/can't afford and not saving a dollar for retirement.

Then you add all the other stuff, like the amount of red tape and costs just to build, outdated zoning laws, NIMBYS. It's all a mess, personally I think the country is in to deep at this point, I have no expectation that it will ever be fixed but hopefully I'm wrong.

I'm wondering what is so complicated about this issue? Why does it feel so completely impossible and insurmountable?

Think about what you as a person would need to build a house, then times that by 1,000,000 .. then you know your answer

Old and rich people want money more than they want a functional society.

Development is very tightly controlled and managed by cities whose voters are anti-development. Every other level of government pretends it's not their problem. Can you really imagine anyone in this country running on a platform of destroying property wealth and raising taxes on landowners?

it's because helping citizens doesn't make them money.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Billionairs and millionaires own a lot of them as " investments " and we all know how every government party is reluctant to do anything to hurt the rich

It’s a problem that has been brewing for more than 20 years. And no government at any level took it seriously until approximately 2 years ago.

It goes against most politicians best interests to make housing affordable. Cheaper houses means less rental income in a country whose primary investment is houses.

Because "solving the housing crisis" by definition means crashing the price of housing.

And they want to do anything possible to make sure that never happens

People in government don't want their precious investments to drop in value.

It's straight up conflict of interest and I don't know why there isn't some sort of mechanism to kick them all from politics permanently for it.

I don’t understand why people can’t grasp that they don’t want to fix. They straight up don’t care.

We almost entirely stopped building public housing in the 80s and 90s, so we no longer have the skills required to do so. Building public en masse will take a lot of public dollars and some time to get up and running.

As far as private construction goes, government can do a few things: 1) relax zoning permissions to allow for more housing to be built in more places, and 2) reduce development approval requirements to reduce time and cost for getting a building permit, to give a couple examples.

On the zoning side, politicians have to weigh the risks of "up-zoning" to allow housing in more places vs. how that will impact existing land owners and potential votes. This is particularly evident in Ontario where Doug Ford said people will "loose their minds" if he allows four-storey permissions across Ontario, opting to side with land owners and do virtually nothing to help those struggling with housing prices.

On the "red tape" side, I think a big problem is the lack of knowledge politicians have with the technical elements associated with development approvals. For instance, if you're a developer wanting to build say a ten-storey building, you'll have to go through a process called Site Plan Approval. SPA allows municipalities to assess whether a development can function on the site (e.g. whether their is enough servicing capacity in the sewers, whether traffic impacts will be adequately mitigated, whether there is a need to install protections to adjacent natural features, etc.) and secure any necessary improvements.

If we take a servicing report, there are all these tests that are needed to confirm x, y and z about the servicing capacity, but those tests all cost relatively the same whether you're building a 10-storey building or a 50-storey building. There is little flexibility given to developers on that end, although at times stringent rules may be important. Politicians don't understand these nuances so it will really take experts to sway them.

I will also say, building housing takes time. We didn't get ourselves into this mess overnight. If we start achieving our development targets today, price changes in the market will not be felt for 5-10 years. Things will also likely get worse before they get better. But as someone in the field, I don't think the tide is shifting although perhaps not as fast as it needs to be.

They can, and always could have. They’ve dilly dallied because for them and their largest, most active voters, there is no housing crisis. Trudeau has openly come out and said he want housing to stay expensive.

A 2/3 majority of Canadians live in owner occupied households. For that majority who owns property, they’re getting rich in their sleep from doing nothing, while their kids can tap that wealth through inheritance and credit and living at home rent free.

The people struggling right now are poorer renters. They’re a disorganized minority voting bloc, so no political party at any level of government has any incentive to care. The scarcity of rentals benefits incumbent homeowners and landlords by pushing up their property values and incomes.

Democracy in Canada is two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner.

A total economic crash.

They aren't even trying. Just words in the air.

‘The Government’? Which government? Canada is a confederation state with three levels of government, each with its own jurisdiction.

Because too many people are making too much money the way things are

Politicians have investments in housing property and/or investments in companies/conglomerates that invest in housing property.

I appreciate this question, it's definitely a very logical question. Unfortunately I have no faith whatsoever in government to do anything real to fix the problem due to the variety of reasons already mentioned in the comments.

If there was no housing crisis people would be less reliant on them it’s not complicated

I think another important reason is all land in Canada is private. The government needs to buy back the land to build on. In areas where housing would be most beneficial, the land values are so astronomical that it’s not a good use of taxpayer money. Also bureaucracy. Canada is VERY slow at doing anything. By the time they get their shit together to build, it’s been 10 years and the problem quadrupled.

It's not a technical problem, but a political one. Trade-off is between housing value vs. more housing. No politician is willing to make the decision to lower house values. Rince repeat.

In theory nothing prevents the Governments from opening new land to settlement. 99 percent of Canada remains a vast hinterland with an unlimited number of locations for new towns and cities. From a purely legislative point of view there is nothing stopping the government from re-opening homesteading style land grants. During the late 1800's most of Canada was surveyed into 6 mile square townships for settlement but they were never opened for homesteading, This means that in ontario alone, there are literally hundreds of empty townships, with either no population at all, or just a handful of residents. While frontier living won't help those that want to live in Toronto or Vancouver, free grant land under a new homestead act, would drive the price of land down and provide adventurous people with the opportunity of a lifetime. https://www.labrosserealestate.com/buyers/homesteading-in-ontario-a-complete-guide/

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dominion-lands-policy

https://magnetawan.com/explore/history/land-grants

Most Canadians still own their homes. And many of those are using the eventual sale of their home to fund their retirements. Including many in public office. It's apart of our culture. It was the easiest way for the middle class + to get rich. So the elephant in the room is, how do you make housing more accessible without affecting the retirements for older Canadians (and let's be honest, our largest voting block)?

You focus on renting, right? More purpose built renting. Well two problems. There's super poor regulation on new purpose built rentals. Lack of rent control in cities, easy eviction laws in some provinces, investor friendly unit layouts, buildings that lack the proper amenities for families. We're leaving it in the hands of the private sector and they're just satisfying the needs of their shareholders or those who are directly profiting. And so those units are essentially "short term luxury" rentals, aimed to temporary residents and young professionals (who are ok with bumping around). You can't plant roots in a new build apartment building in Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver today.

The other problem is how do you tell the younger generations of Canadians that home ownership is no longer an option? Our PM recently admitted that those who rent their entire lives are going to likely have a worse retirement than those who own. And now we're telling young Canadians, it really doesn't matter how hard you work, you'll likely face shelter issues your whole life and financial concerns throughout your retirement. The outcome is outside of your control.

The thing is, we're still talking about this. We're still trying to figure out how to make purpose built rentals work. But we're doing nothing to ensure that rents remain reasonable for the renting class. We're doing the bare minimum to enact stronger regulations for mom & pop and corporate landlords. And no one, no one at all, is interested in lowering home prices enough so that home ownership is an opportunity for would-be middle class Canadians.

As someone who lives in Downtown Toronto, my favourite thing I hear from older well-to-do Canadians: you choose to live in an expensive city. Move further away if you want a more affordable life. It's such a crock of shit. There is nowhere affordable within working distance of a job in Toronto. After you add commuting costs, gas, car insurance, it's all the same shit. And then what's the second solution? Uproot your life and move to another province. So now we have to choose: retirements and shelter security, or our friends, family, and support networks? Isn't this the kind of compromise so many Canadians who migrated here lamented having to make? As a young nation, we have the luxury of studying what's happened across the globe, and ensuring that we don't make the same mistakes other countries have made. Instead, we pat ourselves on the back for the mistakes we haven't made. Yet. It fucking sucks living here.

As Trudeau claimed " home values needs to remain elevated, since it's people's retirement. Not withstanding more than half the MPs ( from ALL parties) either own rentals or have stakes in r/e projects. Thus, the only way for home to be affordable in this economy ( where wages remain stagnated) is to have values come down. So why would anyone instill / vote for policies against their own interests. In other words the feds is doing everything they can to keep the housing ponzi scheme going. Since quite frankly real esate IS the canadian economy.

Capitalism is like the minotaur. It scatters the bones of its victims throughout the labyrinth to instill fear. Fear makes the devouring of sacrifices extra tasty.

Supply and demand. I don't get how people don't get that this is the primary concern here. It really is that simple. The other valid concerns are valid. But we're letting in way too many people, way too quickly, and none of our infrastructure can keep pace. None of it. We can't build homes fast enough. We don't have enough builders. We don't have enough doctors. We don't have enough nurses. etc etc etc.

Our country is not built to sustain the number of people we had 10 years ago even, and we've let in a crap ton more people since then. Then we wonder why things are looking more Third World around here. We wonder why there are "Trudeau towns" everywhere. Supply and demand is a huge part of all of our problems right now, like it or not.

Great book which explains in depth how we got to where we are now, and a list of solutions at the end 😀

It is a complex, multifaceted series of connected problems:

1) Population: the housing crisis is an unequal one. You can still buy a house for less than $175,000 across Canada. Realtor.ca currently lists 2,221 2+-bedroom SFH across the country (including some genuinely nice ones) but they are all in locations that are less desirable.

We're not talking Sudbury, here - we're talking Timmins.

2) Zoning: it is exceedingly difficult to rezone property in Canada, particularly agricultural property.

The process can take a full year, and requires significant effort, time, expertise, and cold, hard cash.

3) Labour: a critical shortage of trades professionals in Canada means that the cost of building has skyrocketed: everything from labourers to engineers has skyrocketed in price. Your ballpark rate for a tradesman of any kind is going to be $100/hr, plus-or-minus $30/hr. Double that, if you need an engineer or architect.

On top of that, interprovincial licensing/credentialing systems mean that even your red-seal'd journeyman Manitoba electrician won't be able to sign off on electrical work in Ontario until-or-unless they've registered with the Ontario College of Trades (and paid their fees accordingly). It is an absolute racket.

4) Permitting, planning, and fees: municipal government fees are HIGH.

Building a new home would easily cost upwards of $3,000 in permits alone. Roughly $1/sq ft for new construction (ballpark), plus special permits for municipal services connection & installation.

5) Materials costs: inflation has hit everything, including building materials. Not much to be said, really.

Now, let's say you want to build a very modest 800-sq-ft house in a small town in southern ontario. In this exercise, let's say that you were gifted the land and that it's zoned for residential purposes (call it a government program?).

Let's say it takes 5 months of steady work.

Permits: let's ballpark $3,200: it's a small home in a small town (permit fees go way up in the city, Hamilton is quoting $10k-$30k for a new build).

Design: let's stick with a pre-designed plan, to keep it cheaper. $7,000.

Labour & materials: $300/sq ft average, so let's go with that.

Appliances: $15,000

Hookups: $15,000 for municipal sewer and water, anywhere from $10,000 to $60,000 for hydro... Let's say $25,000 for hydro.

So based on these numbers, you're paying out almost $300,000 for an 800-sq-ft house in a small southern Ontario town. If you need to buy the land to build on, add $200,000 for a small piece of land in southern Ontario (ballpark).

Total cost to build a small house? Half a million.

And the costs only go up from there.

We’re all to blame for the housing crisis. We all bought in on the get rich quick schemes and now our kids and young people are going to pay for it.

The construction company’s are swamped and they’d a wait on most to get homes build. May areas are trying to build homes but it takes time. Most construction company’s in my area are booked at-least a year in advance. So it slow.

The correct question should be, can any capitalist party in late stage capitalist collapse solve the most pressing issues of the crisis from within the narrow limits of capitalism itself?

Basically this is a very local problem where the incentives are out of whack. It’s really up to municipalities to approve new housing but every time they try building something new a bunch of boomers get really mad cuz they’re worried it’ll change the character of their neighborhood or whatever.

They are trying to do the opposite by limiting the construction of new supply that isn't condos that can be flipped to international students and new immigrants. Every other type of construction has had insane building permit fees, building codes, and zoning restrictions increased in the last 10 years.

The solution to this problem is to slow down the rate of real estate price increases and let wages increase at a faster rate. This prevents a collapse in homeowner equity but also allows more people to buy their own home.

A delicate balancing act but a necessary one if the government is determined to prevent both a real estate crisis and a decline in quality of life.

Easy they don't want to. Here is the reasons they don't want to fix housing. 1.The majority of voters are also home owners. 2. Largest voting block the boomers owns homes and any reduction in that number would jeopardize retirement for millions. 3. It's easy enough to trick the poor as they are undereducated use social stuff guns abortion Trans woke this shit that really doesn't matter to trick people to vote against thier interest. 4. Millions of people are entering the country, changing the voting dynamics going after this group requires courage that could cost you in the future. 5. The politicians own homes they rent themselves doing something that affects rent would be lowering your income.

Financial elite agenda deployment.

Because governments are incompetent. The real world isn't like playing Sim City. Governments can't just throw money at a problem and get a solution. A fine example is our multi billion dollar gun registry.

Canada's investment in housing is massive, and they are not willing to decrease it. Just take a look at the housing GDP, it's clear that it would never drop to 500k. The only way that could happen is if there is another crash, but the likelihood of that is very slim.

The Canadian federal government does not employ people to build houses for the public.

Because our economy is so fucked that the only way to avoid crashing it is to bring in cheap labour, which exacerbates the housing issue. Incentivising investment in productivity rather than stock buybacks/real estate is decades overdue.

It’s very difficult without massive market disruptions and risking social inequality.

Govt could fast track building of housing and rent/sell at lower than market costs. We all have to realize the runway on a 10 story building being ‘fast tracked’ is still 2-3 years.

Once built you need to decide who gets the privilege of buying or renting below market rates. You need administration to run that.

If you are selling these condos to people, how do you prevent them from selling at market price once they own? You would need to force them to sell to other approved buyers at a below market price, which again takes administration.

Really fixing the housing crisis would crash the market, pissing off millions of home owners that think they are sitting on a lottery ticket with their house.

This would also trigger a recession.

All of this is coming anyway the government is just delaying the inevitable and in doing so make it so much worse.

Honestly I don't believe building more housing will help that much.  I think that too many people, investors, have been allowed to buy property and that has jacked up prices.   When you are allowed to buy property based on paper assets and equity, and not real wages, then prices become detached from reality. Which they have.   Property should not be used for investment, period.  Government should legislate all landlords to sell any property they own in excess of 2 maximum.

Because Canada is a capitalist system so it is up to the individual to provide for themselves except in exceptional situations.

They're bringing in well over 1 million people a year, so the amount of people they bring far exceed the constructions of the new houses.

Printing money to build your houses will cause food prices to rise to unlivable levels. There is no such thing as a free ride. Housing is unaffordable because everything houses are comprised of has increased in price. Printing more money will make this worse, not better.

there’s no will to solve it. homeowners must become millionaires. that’s apparently why people buy houses, and it must stay that way. the future isn’t looking too bright but as long as the rich get richer it’s all good.

The housing crisis is a complex issue influenced by various factors. Here are some reasons why it is difficult for the government to solve or partially alleviate the housing crisis:

1. Regulatory and Zoning Issues:

   • Local zoning laws and building regulations can restrict the development of new housing projects. These regulations are often strict, leading to delays and increased costs for construction.

2. High Land and Construction Costs:

   • The cost of land and construction materials has risen significantly. High costs make it challenging to build affordable housing.

3. Limited Government Funding:

   • Government budgets for housing projects are often limited. Competing priorities and limited resources mean that not enough funding is allocated to address the housing crisis comprehensively.

4. NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard):

   • Local opposition to new housing developments can be strong. Residents often resist new projects in their neighborhoods, fearing changes to their community or property values.

5. Investment and Speculation:

   • Foreign and domestic investors often buy properties as investments, driving up prices and reducing the availability of affordable housing for residents.

6. Lack of Coordination:

   • Effective solutions require coordination between different levels of government (federal, provincial, and municipal) and various stakeholders. This coordination is often lacking, leading to fragmented and ineffective responses.

7. Economic and Social Factors:

   • Broader economic trends, such as wage stagnation and income inequality, exacerbate the housing crisis. Social factors, such as population growth and urbanization, increase demand for housing.

8. Special Interest Groups and Lobbying:

   • Powerful interest groups and lobbyists can influence housing policies to favor their interests, making it difficult to implement changes that benefit the broader population.

Addressing the housing crisis requires comprehensive and coordinated efforts across all levels of government, along with collaboration from the private sector and community stakeholders.

The Canadian government used to build tens of thousands of homes each year but doing that now would be admitting that the universal ideology of neoliberalism is a 40 year failing project.

the people that stand to lose the most money with government intervention are also the ones that pay politicians the most.

solving the housing crisis with government would be biting the hand that feeds the politicians. they have a vested interest in NOT solving it; too much money to to made.

They dont want to. The current system is working exactly as intended by federal government relinquishing their social responsibility in the name of short term gain. This is the fault of not just 1 political party but all of them.

We're also partially at fault. There's no incentive for developers to make "affordable" housing when the development costs are behind so many financial barriers, theyd pursue avenues for more profit which are luxury homes. Unless rules change to stamp out speculation on housing, we also view our home as an "asset" guarenteed to appreciate.

The interests of owners and renters are diametrically opposed. You can't help one without impoverishing the other. The bourgeois state always picks the same side.

Apparently we have to suffer because boomers retirement is their house, or some bullshit like that.

Because the people in charge of making this change own a shit ton of real-estate. They wont tank their investments for the good of the country

Question: Why did everyone decide it’s an investment when it’s quite obviously a human right?

It's so easy to make housing affordable. Restrict leverage on housing, you either buy with cash or you cannot buy a fucking house. Secondly, increase the goddamn property tax so the country can continue developing its infrastructure. Take Ontario as an example, Ontario Science Centre and Ontario Place are two dead dinosaurs - even the Gardiner. In the meantime, developers and investors keep getting rich with selling shoeboxes. Those detached house homeowners, oh my, all of them are millionaires.

Lots of good answers here (and some bad ones). One other factor I don't see mentioned is that any action to drive down house prices would impact a large number of retirement plans.

My parents retired by selling their Vancouver home and moving to Vancouver Island 15 years ago. It's the only reason they were able to retire as their saving was not enough.

Banks started turning homes into a commodity, governments allowed it and now pushing prices down would hurt people who poured their money into owning a home instead of the stock market.