Pretty sure it’s companies like Blackrock
The root cause is the supply not keeping up with demand. Any proposed solution that does not include building like mad is ultimately going to fall short.
The problem really is twofold: yes, it is supply, but there’s also an extreme amount of reticence to do anything about both supply and speculation.
This is largely because the profits of the current system accrue to people who bear experience none of the pain of it (which is also why healthcare is broken, and why transit is broken, and why nothing gets done about climate change). Taxes are kept low, assets keep going up and it takes very little effort to stay rich. And money talks.
“Building like mad” isn’t going to happen because “building just enough to stop people from rioting” is more profitable. No builder is going to build public housing when they can make more on McMansions and condos, and no homeowner or speculator wants to see policies that would increase their tax burden or decrease the value of their asset.
Building like mad would help, but you’d achieve similar effects by smacking down the investment side of the problem, without requiring the government to, eg, directly buy equipment, supplies and employ tradespeople to build homes, which they’d have to do as bribing developers to do it doesn’t seem to work. Plus, if you tax speculation hard, maybe you can use that tax revenue to build?
The real, core issue, though, is housing in Canada at the moment is the perfect neoliberal failure, and our policymakers are so wedded to neoliberal orthodoxy that the solution (massive, direct public investment) isn’t just heretical, it’s inconcievable. Most of our MPs/MPPs/MLAs and civil servants don’t even remember a pre-Reagan/Thatcher era of massive public investment. They don’t seem to understand it’s even an option.
Robert Kavcic, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, told Global News “as much as a quarter to maybe a third or slightly more of certain markets are being bought up by multiple property purchasers or investors. So (that is) adding another layer of competition to first time buyers that are actually looking to get into the housing market for a place to live.”
If true that’s fucking nuts. That sort of thing needs to be taxed so hard to no longer make it profitable. We all understand that you don’t go for seconds until everyone has eaten, but when it comes to a basic human need like shelter, people say FYGM.
There’s a lot of people saying it’s the corporations fault which isn’t exactly untrue and they do have significant sway politically with lobbying.
But it’s the people who keep bringing back politicians that clearly don’t want to lower housing prices because a segment of a population is to heavily invested into it. If anything the current tax system clearly incentivize people to invest into housing, imagine if we treated water like housing and people would buy up then vote for anyone that’ll make the prices go up.
I don’t know how I feel about the “mom-and-pop” characterization, but yes.
It always rubbed me the wrong way when the previous housing minister made a point of saying we needed to protect the Mom and Pop investors. Like - no, we absolutely should not.
Right? We need to protect mom and pop renters
I feel like I’m missing something. Don’t we have a housing shortage, not merely an “owner-occupied” home shortage or a “rental” home shortage? Somebody please tell me what I’m missing.
If too many homes were owned by investors and rented out, why aren’t rented homes more affordable? If you say, “greedy landlords,” are you suggesting that the roughly 1.4 million landlords in Canada (source) are all effectively colluding? I find that highly implausible.
If we had sufficient housing supply for the demand in general, wouldn’t that result in lower prices to both rent and own, depending on what’s right for each individual?
When investors buy properties and set higher rent prices, non-investor landlords raise their rent prices to whatever the artificially-inflated market rate is for the area. Not all 1.4 million landlords have to be actively working on fucking the populace, but they all end up participating in it because no one is going to charge lower rent out of the goodness of their heart.
Did you know that the original version of Monopoly was called “The Landlord’s Game”, and was used as a teaching aid to teach the poor about the inherent immorality and inevitable loss of freedom and equality land ownership entails? Then a capitalist came along, stole the whole thing, rebranded it Monopoly, and made a shitload of money.
And when the “non-investor” landlords raise their prices high enough, they quickly find they have enough money to consider investing in a second rental property, out bidding people who have trouble saving after paying artificially inflated rent.
AirBnB’s a significant part of the issue. Short term rentals don’t provide a place for people to actually live, while often providing a higher return over the short term than a long term rental unit.
Real estate speculators, too, add extra pressure to the housing market. Speculators often don’t rent the property out at all, and attempt to treat housing as a raw commodity, buying up homes and just waiting for real estate prices to increase as the bubble continues to grow.
There may be real housing constraints in the country, but they’re severely exacerbated by the view of housing as capital, rather than as homes.
are you suggesting that the roughly 1.4 million landlords in Canada (source) are all effectively colluding?
I don’t know about Canada, but in the U.S., yes, that’s happening
I’ll repost a comment I made before again here:
If you have half the population each have 1 investment property. You must have the other half renters. You literally want to create two classes. Those with investment properties and those with no property. One class above another. You’re just using billionaires as a shield. You want to put yourself in a class above other people.
We should all work so that each person has one home.
And the “I don’t want to work until I die” should be covered by social insurance/social security instead of making someone else a renter.
context: https://lemmy.ca/comment/4927203
Not everyone wants to own and not everyone that doesn’t want to own wants to rent an apartment and it’s not the government’s place to own single family houses for rent (all provincial governments should have a non profit crown corporation owning all rental properties over a certain number of doors though).
Edit: Downvote all you want, I know tons of people that don’t want to have to deal with the maintenance responsibilities that come with a house, they still have a family and don’t want to live in an apartment, would you rather force them to own the place they live in?
it’s not the government’s place to own single family houses for rent
all provincial governments should have a non profit crown corporation owning all rental properties over a certain number of doors though
Why the arbitrary distinction? What’s so special about the number 1 here?
The level of maintenance per unit and the density issues caused by single family housing means they’re a luxury item and not a necessity, the government should be there to make sure everyone has acceptable living conditions (a private bedroom for everyone, a kitchen, bathroom and livingroom per household…) not to provide them enough space to have a home theater room or a bedroom used as a walk-in.
Capitalism is literally moving us back into feudalism. Everything is for sale. Even democracy, it seems. Perhaps fascism would be more profitable? Market is bullish on fascism!
