Think this through with your own numbers but without time swapping the fertility rates across generations. (Suddenly having a house means we’re going to pump out 4 kids? Holy bold assumptions Batman!)

Say a condo at 800 feet, 800 / 3 = 266.

Even a small house, 1500 / 3 = 500.

Heck, even if we double the fertility rate for folks in a small detached home, you’re still ahead:

1500 / 4 = 350.

I did the math on a condo project in Vancouver (not even in downtown, just in the City across the bridge) the land cost for each unit they were building was $300,000. That number alone makes them unaffordable, before even talking about the construction costs.

Yeah, so essentially some of the most expensive real estate in the country, no doubt it’s going to be more expensive. That’s why you have to build condos there not detached homes. Try putting a detached home there. Do that and the house is suddenly what, tens of millions?

In this case, you’re effectively saying that because we build condos where it is too expensive to put detached homes, condos are more expensive? That’s some pretty silly logic there.

but that type of development isn’t possible anymore.

There simply isn’t the available land

You should read about that history again. Land costs weren’t the prohibitive factor, it was that there just wasn’t enough housing being built.

Not to mention building condos cost a lot more per square foot than detached houses.

This one is A) doubtful but B) more than a little misleading, condos are much smaller than detached homes, so the people per square foot works out cheaper.

But yeah, this won’t get everyone detached homes in the middle of a big city like Vancouver, like I already said. What it does do is allow us to do is build more multi unit places (hardly a factor in the post war efforts) as well as more detached homes in less populated areas (in BC, my goodness, we have some dirt cheap land a few hours away from Vancouver.)

I dunno, you’ve just made a lot of assertions about what will happen but none of it seemed particularly based on facts. I’m not going to say I’m confident in the government but I certainly like our odds more than I did a year ago.

Why else would they also seek a blanket revocation of our right to bear arms?

Is this an actual serious proposal by the administration, or more “well, a couple of the lunatic fringe in Congress have put it forward” or “well, I could seeeee this happening.”

who are currently pushing for the FBI to define all transgender people as terrorists and lock us all up.

So, when you wrote this, did you actually mean “okay, they aren’t doing it now but they might in future!” or did you not know what was actually being proposed?

Because this is the key. There is a huge difference between the worst case scenario I can imagine and what is happening.

Consider the flip side. When the Right says that the Democrats are just one step away from communism because folks like AOC say there shouldn’t be billionaires or Mamdami wants to run government grocery stores, I would imagine you see those as pretty nonsensical claims. But, they’re doing the exact thing you are, where they’re taking a handful of proposals, grossly misrepresenting the content and saying it’s a path to ruin. So, we tend to tune them out.

Or, you could look at trump 2016. There were some worrying parallels between him and fascist beginnings but at the end of the day, an election was held and, despite his best efforts he left. And now, the mainstream is pretty suspicious of us when we scream fascist at the actual scary stuff.

By the way, by admitting that what I see happening looks a lot like historical examples of the steps towards genocide, it is possible to paint me as a terrorist under the proposed TIVE categorization.

Read the section I quoted again and you’ll see this isn’t the case unless you ignore a large swathe of it. Again, being able to imagine something is not the same as it being true.

When you hear a wild claim like that, it’s worth double checking a primary source or, failing that, a reputable second hand source.

From page 3 of the full memo:

Note that this designation does not apply to all persons that are transgender, or their allies. It applies to those who: (1) believes that any opposition to transgender ideology is a violent and existential threat to the right of transgender people to exist and amounts to an imminent threat to physical safety; (2) believes that this fear justifies violence against those who refuse to affirm transgender ideology; and (3) takes, incites, or promotes violent action based on that ideology. All three criteria must be met. Individuals cannot and will not be investigated solely based on 1st Amendment protected activity alone.

While I don’t particularly agree with their take, what’s actually being proposed is adding transgender based violence to existing categories. The current categories are: race based, anti government/authority, animal rights/environmental, abortion and other.

Now, as far as I understand, vegans are not being locked up for being vegan, racists are still allowed to be racist, environmental activists are still okay to protest etc.

Could this be abused? Absolutely! And that is why it is stupidly important to be accurate. When we claim hysterical untrue shit, it makes everyone less likely to listen when things are actually dangerous. (We spent 4 years screaming fascist starting in 2016 and now when shit’s actually getting scary, it is much harder to get people to listen because they’ve tuned us out. Boy who cried wolf etc.)

Edit: And like a goof, I forgot to link the primary source!

https://itsyourgov.org/investigation/oversight-project-unveils-case-for-new-fbi-domestic-terrorism-designation/

Unfortunately, people like you keep getting their hopes up on policies that have no historical record of working.

Feel free to share an example of a country with a similarly ambitious housing plan in the last 20 years.

Canada certainly hasn’t had one.

I fins the notion of “well, we tried something about a third as comprehensive and it didn’t work” to be pretty silly. It’s like folks who go to the gym a few times over a month, don’t see results and decide they’ll never be in shape. Some things require a significant effort.

I’m not saying there’s a guarantee housing prices will drop but to declare they can’t because “a government said they’d try, they didn’t do much and nothing happened so nothing will ever happen” is nonsense.

that have no historical record of working. Building more homes has never dropped prices anywhere in the world.

Edit:

that have no historical record of working. Building more homes has never dropped prices anywhere in the world.

Like an ignorant goof, I forgot to mention, that it has worked, in Canada! In fact, parts of the current government’s approach (pre approved design, emphasis on modular fabrication etc) are taken straight of the playbook from the last time we did this, after the second world war. For you to believe the statement above means that you probably don’t know about this neat period of history, you can learn about it here!

Like I said earlier, if you mean something like social media, then I agree. When I say social media, I also mean our new ways of ingesting media, eg short form text, memes, podcasts etc (though should probably use a different term.) I think there are a bunch of pernicious effects and incentives which have made seeing the humanity in those with whom we disagree difficult and compromise impossible. We don’t need propaganda, people in general are just not able to handle the information landscape that’s been created.

But, if you’re really talking about even the spread of more independent written media etc, then I just don’t see their limited readership being the fundamental game changer that we’ve seen.

As much as we rightly villify ICE, this just doesn’t make much sense.

Even operationally, you’d have to assume they have guys just sitting around waiting. And then, for some reason someone alerts them to an international flight landing so they bust through the apart to detain people who had never intended to visit?

What I could see happening is sure, you have to use a motel or something while they figure out alternate arrangements, the hospitality industry being legendary for a not entirely legal workforce means there’s a chance you get raided there? But this is stretching the bounds of credulity pretty gosh darned far.

Need? Probably! Willing to pay for? Sadly, probably less so…

Hey fellow oldie!

I feel, the song is similar but much louder and more coherent this time. Harper really had nothing besides some mucking about at the margins, Trudeau tried a bit but like a lot of things he tried, didn’t get all that much done. This one at least feels like a fairly coherent, federal through to municipal approach on the government side, with a bunch of private sector ideas.

That being said, I think the key is what you mean by affordable. I am hopeful they can lay the foundations to get housing back to something like just pre-pandemic (and hopefully just keep going!), which still wasn’t great for many people. I’m lucky enough that I think I’d be okay to buy something I want in that scenario.

But overall, yeah I think housing standards are just going to be different for us than our parents and similarly, between us and the youngings coming up now. I live in Vancouver, it’s almost doubled in size since 1990! The single detached houses a 10 minute bike ride from downtown that a middle class couple could easily afford? Probably not happening again.

Nope. Why do you ask?

Housing productivity hasn’t improved at all over the last 50 years, in fact it’s gone down

Yeah, that’s why it takes something bold like putting together a new agency tasked with fostering innovative new companies. Those are the folks currently contracted to build the 4,000 affordable homes in the first wave.

Voters would actually be quite unhappy with a 20% drop in prices that occurs too quickly and doesn’t have an external event to blame.

Remember, the time scale is 2035, which should have two elections beforehand.

A chunk of voters would be happy, another would be unhappy.

The Conservatives would eat his breakfast in the next election if he dropped the value of homes by 10% before then.

That’s a fight almost any politician would love to have. “We’re here making things affordable for the middle class and our children and you’re complaining that they can finally buy homes?”

the liberals launched a “National Housing Strategy in 2015”… it’s 10 years later and things are just significantly worse.

I don’t find this argument particularly persuasive. Many governments have tried many things, that doesn’t mean nothing can work. This is a significantly larger. more concerted push at the problem than anything that came before. (And y’know, presumably won’t get interrupted by a pandemic.)

Most rural houses are effectively worthless and practically ghost towns

This happens everywhere, not unique to Japan or even demographic decline.

To each their own. I agree with Chomsky that yeah, media blinkers people and frames the terms of the debate. But, this has been true for decades. Something has fundamentally changed in the last 10 - 15 years and we’re watching those changes ripple across almost every society.

Again, you’re free to share any relevant research. But, I think blaming the Rightward swing that we’re seeing across the world on just “the media” is, at best, over simplistic.

Except the CMHC said you would need to double the housing starts between when they released that report and 2035 for that to happen. The report came out last year. Did we double housing starts in 2025? Nope. Will we double it in 2026? Also no.

They released an updated version this year, here’s the CBC write up on it. Essentially, 4.8 million homes are needed by 2035 to get housing costs back to 2019.

I assume Carney can do basic math. If you watch the interview in the post, he notes that we’re only going to have a small number initially as we start scaling up new processes, companies and the like.

10 years to double the number of workers, and that assumes not a single existing one retires in that period.

Sure but again, part of the push is to move into new ways that require fewer workers etc. That’s the push with modular/prefabs.

it wasn’t affordable in 2019 either

Like I said, totally fair. For me, 2019 levels are workable. I know that’s a very lucky position etc.

That being said, all the factors and processes that get the country to 4.8 million by 2035 don’t suddenly stop. Coupled with population decline or maybe staying roughly steady, that means prices should continue to fall slightly.

aka, “okay, I know they didn’t say this but I feel it!”

Which is eerily similar to how republicans paint the Left on various issues.

You are free to share some of that scholarship.

Unless you mean something like social media, then I’d probably agree. But any research blaming traditional media would have to answer three large issues that seem to stand in direct contradiction:

1. Germany has a wildly different media ecosystem than America, which has a wildly different media landscape than the UK, which has a wildly different media ecosystem than Italy, which has a wildly different media landscape than Austria, which has a very different one than France, which is very different from Poland etc. But the same phenomenon is happening across the board.

2. Traditional media is no longer where most people get their news. So either it’s really radicalizing a smaller group or?

3. Traditional media consumption among age groups seems to indicate quite the opposite happening, ie, in America at least (I can’t recall the age related shifts across Europe) younger voters are, relative to historical norms, lurching Right, whereas older voters are moving a bit to the Left. Yet, the younger groups are much less likely to get their news from traditional media than older voters, so if media were the culprit, you’d expect the shift to have happened the other way.

The short answer is media. Or as the kids like to say, “propaganda”.

Ehhhh, I think blaming a problem happening simultaneously in almost every democracy on “the media” feels a bit like putting our heads in the sand and avoiding the issues. But to each their own.

Thanks!

Admittedly, the Lemkin institute is being pursued in court for misusing the Lemkin name and fragrant misuse of the word genocide. (They are also claiming there’s now a genocide red alert in the UK for trans people.)

You could cite multiple groups like the heritage foundation etc that would strenuously deny anything of the sort is taking place.

How many houses would you need to build in order to have prices drop by 20%?

According to the CMCH, double the housing starts. Which is what the government is aiming to do.

Current housing prices aren’t reflective of their availability, they’re mostly reflective of their value as investments (including for single home owners). Until that part is removed from their pricing, they will never become affordable again.

This would always have been true, housing didn’t suddenly become investments in 2020.

And yet, houses were at 2019 prices in 2019, regardless of their ability to act as investments. And that happened without any of the radical proposals outlined. Why would these proposals not have been necessary in 2019 to hit 2019 prices but suddenly are required regardless of how much we build?

I’m curious, what makes you so confident in that prediction?

I’m not saying I’m confident it will happen, but it seems like a reasonably coherent and significant push at the problem. They’re investing in more tradespeople, being a guarantor for new technologies and approaches and attacking it from every possible regulatory angle, I don’t really have much to fault with it.

(Admittedly, I could live with 2019 “affordability” which isn’t true of everyone maybe even most.)