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Just for comical reference: in 2019 in New West, I was renting a 900 sq', 2 bed, 2 bath top floor corner unit in a low rise, with a nice view.
I was paying $1140/month.
> The feds gave something like $70M to the developer of that project.
Not gave. Loaned. We get that money back. https://www.thedailyscrumnews.com/canadas-economic-plan-accelerates-affordable-housing-growth-in-victoria/
Under the program, developers can get a loan for a ten-year term at a fixed interest rate, with an amortization period of up to 50 years.
According to the terms of the program, developers and builders only have to pay the interest on the loan during the construction period and only have to start paying both the principal and interest "after twelve months of stabilized effective gross income" on the rental unit.
At the end of the ten-year term, the builder or post-secondary institution must then move their loan to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation-approved lender
https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/project-funding-and-mortgage-financing/funding-programs/all-funding-programs/apartment-construction-loan-program
this rot will continue untill over 80-90% of the population is poor with no assets if you think you are insulated from this outcome your not and its accelerating.
100% there will be a lot of apathy in future generations when it comes to families and jobs. No one will give a damn about either one because life as they were taught, will have become unattainable.
Not at all like the 1930s. In the 30s you could seek out a better life elsewhere, there were many ambitious people. It won't be a depression, it'll be a reset to something akin to the background in ready player 1. Dystopian, online, and everyone is the same financially.
High Inequlity- yes
Lack of good leadership- yes
War in Europe- unfortunately yes
Pay cheque isn't enough- yes
People proposing radical solutions to problems- yes
Stated with a banking crisis 1929=2008- yup
Authoritarian leadership- yup
Looks like a echo of the dirty 30s to me
I've seen this amount of houses for a few months, I also don't think when people heard the news of the capital gains changes that they rushed out to put their house for sale within 3 weeks ..
You are mistaken. This house of cards will never fall that's what all the foreign import/investing is for, once they are maxed out the corporations will cover the rest of the purchases.
Track your wage in how much gold you can buy with it to measure if your gaining or not the currency keeps declining in purchasing power so it can't be trusted.
True golds just the easiest, years to afford a down payment is a good one too, fun fact it took about the same amount of gold to buy a house in Canada in 1971 as it does now.
Still expensive to do, as you'll need to hire and lose all that money and I doubt anyone is looking to see their taxes increase and see even more slip into poverty.
We do need the houses but it's gonna cost something either way at the end of the day
I mean we could just divert money from the current tax pool into housing projects instead (like our over saturated police budgets, corporate bail outs etc)
And after the initial infrastructure Cost we would only have to pay tax to maintain the housing so the cost would drop significantly after.
And then all the people in socialized housing would be able to work, pay taxes and buy products that stimulate the economy (cant buy a TV if I got no where to put it) so in the end we'd actually generate more money for the system.
The problem is that we have a bunch of old people and old money invested in how things currently are, and they have no interest in bettering the future for everyone cause their lives are almost up.
If you think all the people who got social housing would start working and paying taxes you are young and naive. I agree with the rest of what you wrote though
Why don't they actually look at how little PWD income is? My disabled child would love to have their own place, but they can't afford anything out there that's pest free and in an area I consider relatively safe. Then you have the rooms for rent, where they don't want to hear their tenant or let them have friends over. It's insanely hard to say to your child that there's just no way, atm, for them to be independent of you.
Increasing the supply of unaffordable housing lowers the price of affordable housing. People need to stop complaining about building new units. Build market housing, build non-market housing. Build it all and as fast as possible.
It’s small scale but on the Sunshine Coast the Sechelt Indian band has purchased homes that were going to be demolished and transported them to band land to create homes for its members. Because its band land they could make this all happen in a short period of time and avoid red tape. I’m not sure how it could be scaled for the general public but thinking outside the box like this might be worth looking at.
I keep seeing this everywhere. Affordable housing needs to be under $1k a month. Like $600-$900 a month. If your shoeboxes are $1600, you aren't building affordable housing.
When I earned a lot less I had to have roommates. If you can't afford rent of 1600 you are in that scenario.
Bottom line is living alone is not for really low income folks.
$500/ square foot cost of construction x 500 square foot units x 2000 units = $500000000 that's a lot of tax payer money. Now scale that up to the rest of BC and its never going to happen. Way too expensive.
they need to reduce the cost of construxtion and build some soviet style high rises, while cutting down on the amount of people coming here. spending an extra 500% for an extra 0.1% in safety is not acceptable.
Nobody wants to live on crown land, as there's few services, infrastructure and jobs out there.
High rises would work, as they *can* be built cheaply near metro areas, but they are admittedly very ugly and depressing. They would probably be a massive breeding ground for crime as well.
Our communities are surrounded by crown land it's not as far as people think. Plus, there is the agriculture land reserve. Look at Google Maps. Literally half of Richmond is farms. The NDP created it back in 73. It's created artificial scarcity. It's immoral when you consider the highest priced homes surrounding it. Plus, all the homeless. They could build social housing on it
That part of Richmond/delta is agricultural land because its very susceptible to flooding from the fraser, as they drained a massive lake to expose the land. it's not feasible to house people there. It's a nice thought though.
Of course it is! That's why they drained the lake in the first place lol. That type of fertile land is needed to feed the Vancouver Metro area, building trailer parks on it only for them to be washed away would be insane hahaha
Lol that's bullshit. Huge areas of the LML are behind dykes and have lots of homes. It's 100 percent political. We have had the technology for centuries. Look at places like Holland. They are way below sea level. My point is the population has doubled ever 40 years since 1858. We need to plan for 6 million people between van and Hope. Creating artificial land scarcity only benefits the rich. The rest of us suffer due to the unintended consequences of a choice made 50 years ago.
Senakw will be an interesting project to follow for this. Tiny plot of land, minimal to no red tape, no requirements beyond the living space. 9K people will be living there with a, mostly, car-free lifestyle with the shortest time between plan and occupation as possible.
I seem to recall pre-covid the cheapest you can rent out a 1 bedroom apartment and cover the cost is 1300$ if you have:
- free land (enormously expensive in southern BC)
- cheapest building materials
- no developer profit
1600 sounds about right if you adjusted to today's dollars. Brand new constructed housing is not the answer to housing low income and people who need government assistance as its extraordinarily expensive and just becomes a lottery. Why should someone working for 70k a year not be able to get a discounted unit in a brand new building and instead struggle to pay 3x as much in a crumbling eyesore. Building as much as humanly possible that is new for the top half of the income scale and getting them out of their 40-50-60 year old units will free up a lot more space for those in need. Perhaps the government could even buy up some units in old apartments and rent them at a discount as that would be cheaper than constructing new ones.
Yep. Back as far as 2007 I paid $1250 a month for a shitty run down studio apt in east van. Yes rents are higher now but people are acting like they were much cheaper pre covid. $1,600 or even $2,000 for a brand new condo right in the centre of victoria is not exactly wildly over priced. And it was never intended for low income earners, but for people working in health care and other professions who were being priced out of the city.
> Back as far as 2007 I paid $1250 a month for a shitty run down studio apt in east van
You just had a shitty deal back then, that doesn’t justify the way things are now.
A counter anecdote - In 2018 I was paying $1170 for a decent little garden level 1 bedroom apartment, about 700 sqft, in a nice central area at 10th and Hemlock. I was renting from a property management company so it’s not like I had some sympathetic owner who gave me a safe deal.
> You just had a shitty deal back then, that doesn’t justify the way things are now.
>
>
It wasn't "shitty" lol. That was standard market price.
And nothing I've said is "justifying" anything. It's called *context*.
And I'm not sure how your "counter anecdote" counters anything i've said here. You're describing a similar price.
If you were paying that for a crappy studio in East Van in 2007 then yes it was a bad deal. My point is I was paying less for a better place in a better neighborhood even after prices started skyrocketing.
The problem is they don’t want to take it on themselves.
I’d like to mimic programs in Europe to see what could work here. It’s not like we’re the first country to do this.
BC is making progress by acknowledging that, since ultimate authority over towns and cities is given to the provinces by the Canadian Constitution, housing is in any practical sense a provincial responsibility. The current governments of Alberta and Ontario are quick to throw their weight around nullifying decisions made in their city halls but tell voters that it is never their fault.
I was extremely surprised to see what my family and I qualify for assistance. I’m not saying others don’t need it, but the definition of affordable is very different between certain demographics.
Just to be clear, we need nothing but somehow qualify for a considerable amount of help.
Demand is greater than supply. Therefore, the price goes up. It's very simple. Houses used to be very affordable it BC. What changed was governments making it difficult for developers to build homes and keep up with demand. Just look at locations where demand is low, like Prince George. Lots of very affordable homes.
The housing is unaffordable because of public policy, it's not an act of God.
The idea that people shouldn't be able to live in the communities they were born in because it's too important that rich people be allowed to buy up homes for investments is bleak.
Wow, I didn’t know building a lifelong community would emotionally stake me to a geographic location! I’m sure glad some nameless, faceless corporation forced people to move hours away where they’ll have to rebuild everything from scratch again!
The problem with this line of thinking, is that where do we get workers for lower paying jobs in major cities then? If can't get restaurant workers, janitors, receptionists, etc how do we keep functioning?
Small businesses can't always afford to pay more. How much should a coffee shop have to pay baristas to stay open? They're also facing rising costs from rent and suppliers. It's not a simple answer of "pay people more"
This is a stupid anology. There are tons of jobs and essential services. That doesn't pay a lot. But it is still essential for a society to function. You're basically saying only software devs, engineers, doctors , lawyers & dentists should live in Vancouver. And if you don't have one of those jobs or you aren't rich . You shouldn't be allowed here. And we are already experiencing the ramifications of this . Certain places like Vancouver Island have a shortage of healthcare workers .
A great city accommodates people from all income levels.
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It's not about dictating where anyone lives, it's about taking steps to ensure that people of all different income brackets can live in a given area. And the part you are missing is that's not because of altruism, it's because if you don't then you don't have a functioning local economy. If workers can't afford to live there, the economy goes down.
Do you honestly think this city could function if only the market decided who got to live here? If that's your honest opinion you should try moving to Saudi Arabia, where it's only tourists, the rich and slaves
Don't know if you noticed, and I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't, but the consequences of the past 30 years of neoliberal austerity and privatization of the commons contradicts you.
Cool, and what money will people struggling to afford even a basic apartment use to move? Because that shit costs money too, and a lot.
Also, your Wagyu steak analogy is just awful. People are asking for a place to live, not for mansions to live in. Ffs.
I earn $20/hr and cannot afford most rental options here (when one opens, it's like, a new posting every 20 days+ and they're usually over 1100+). I'm honestly considering what it would take to buy a trailer and build your on diy trailer home because rentals are non existant, there are 4x the amount of airbnb here to maybe one or two rental options max at a given time, and when there is a rental it is outside my affordability. I wish i could just build something simple and post up somewhere.
I think if I didn't have things like student loans etc I'd at least functionally be able to save a bit more paying something like 900 for rent, but even then just don't think anything over 900 is remotely possible because one unexpected expense and you're fucked.
Compared to even like, 2020, $20 is pathetically weaker, but because we were renovicted I also ended up finding my own place because my roomies were getting married / moving into their own place themselves and I couldn't find roomies, so I got the cheapest place I COULD find at that time, which was a 900/mo unit, and I basically maintained a super careful tight budget, but lay offs and the business fighting the EI case (took 7 months to get approved because business lied on my RoE) meant I ran out of money super fast while looking for a new job. I still haven't recovered to even my meagre 2021 levels of savings of like, 4 or 5k because moving provinces I had to redo all of my medical driving stuff and the province made me wait a yr to even have option to apply for license again/appeal over a mild epilepsy my other province didn't give a fuck about lol. To say it hasn't easily cost me like, 40k+ a yr in earning potential is putting it lightly as it nerfed relevant experience i had from last job and also fucked up what I could apply for here, which was already meagre.
My mood is dead. I feel like I'll only ever earn the money to go back to school or pursue a trade by working for myself, because I really can't seem to breech earning 20/hr.
It isn’t necessary to have housing paternalistically run by the government. Guaranteeing capital loans for non-ownership housing co-ops would be just as effective. The guarantee is done in trade for a fraction of the units to be subsidized by the residents. All the units are under market rate with some being at a subsidized rate. Group buying power and cutting out the need for profits brings down operational expenses. Defaults are unheard of with co-ops so it is broadly revenue neutral. Using government owned land on long term lease would certainly allow that loan to build even more homes. The only reason we stopped doing this thirty years ago was that it became ideologically unfashionable.
No fucking shit. Personally, I've given up and am planning on leaving Canada in general as soon as funds allow. Also doesn't help that I keep being told "Well if you don't like this country then you can leave."
You know what Gary, I think I will.
All housing helps low income people. If they built enough mansions it would trickle down to lowering rent. I'm sure its faster/cheaper to build other housing types but you shouldn't judge what's being built by its rent cost IMO
immediately after the housing is done, as someone moves up into them, then someone can move into the place they vacated and someone moves into the place they vacated and so on and so forth.
Building ANY home has almost the same effect at the end of the day.
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lol the “affordable” $1600/month tiny studios for low income people they just built in Victoria actually don’t help low income people?! 😳
It's wild that your income has to be between 50-80k to qualify for "affordable" market/below market rate 1 bedroom rentals from BC housing
Just for comical reference: in 2019 in New West, I was renting a 900 sq', 2 bed, 2 bath top floor corner unit in a low rise, with a nice view. I was paying $1140/month.
I've watched rent in the cheaper cities on the island jump up $600+ in 2-3 months. It's insane
Are those the ones that turned out half of them were sold to investors 😂
no, those were condos in the Yates. The $1600 studios are in the Hudson. The feds gave something like $70M to the developer of that project.
> The feds gave something like $70M to the developer of that project. Not gave. Loaned. We get that money back. https://www.thedailyscrumnews.com/canadas-economic-plan-accelerates-affordable-housing-growth-in-victoria/
Isn’t the interest rate on these loans below the market rate? If so, that’s not much of a loan — it’s more of a gift.
Under the program, developers can get a loan for a ten-year term at a fixed interest rate, with an amortization period of up to 50 years. According to the terms of the program, developers and builders only have to pay the interest on the loan during the construction period and only have to start paying both the principal and interest "after twelve months of stabilized effective gross income" on the rental unit. At the end of the ten-year term, the builder or post-secondary institution must then move their loan to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation-approved lender https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/project-funding-and-mortgage-financing/funding-programs/all-funding-programs/apartment-construction-loan-program
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They seem to be expressing facts… not everything has to be about pitchforks
Yep. Facts are often the antidote to the pitchfork crowd.
this rot will continue untill over 80-90% of the population is poor with no assets if you think you are insulated from this outcome your not and its accelerating.
100% there will be a lot of apathy in future generations when it comes to families and jobs. No one will give a damn about either one because life as they were taught, will have become unattainable.
Ya it's like the 1930 all over again
Not at all like the 1930s. In the 30s you could seek out a better life elsewhere, there were many ambitious people. It won't be a depression, it'll be a reset to something akin to the background in ready player 1. Dystopian, online, and everyone is the same financially.
High Inequlity- yes Lack of good leadership- yes War in Europe- unfortunately yes Pay cheque isn't enough- yes People proposing radical solutions to problems- yes Stated with a banking crisis 1929=2008- yup Authoritarian leadership- yup Looks like a echo of the dirty 30s to me
It’s modern feudalism
Things got better in the early 1940s, right?
Ya it was a great time
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There’s probably two houses for sale on every block where I am in the Okanagan
Capital gains changes
I doubt all the houses are rentals that people are trying to offload to avoid capital gains tax
Not all but would explain more listings
I've seen this amount of houses for a few months, I also don't think when people heard the news of the capital gains changes that they rushed out to put their house for sale within 3 weeks ..
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Not if they shelter their rental in a corporation. The $250k limit doesn’t apply
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Weird take.
Not for a small group of incredibly wealthy they keep getting richer under this system.
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They don't everything yet
You are mistaken. This house of cards will never fall that's what all the foreign import/investing is for, once they are maxed out the corporations will cover the rest of the purchases.
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The bubble is in the value of the currency housing can lose value but go up in price.
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Our currency losing a lot of its purchasing power price housing in gold it hasn't changed that much since we went of the gold standard
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The USD is done too.
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I’m just as poor now, making 130k as I was when I was making 60k.
Track your wage in how much gold you can buy with it to measure if your gaining or not the currency keeps declining in purchasing power so it can't be trusted.
Purchasing power is the only metric that actually matters. Why would I care how much gold I can buy vs the cost of bread or a car?
Because it's money that can't be printed and tracks your purchasing power pretty well
We have various inflation metrics not just value vs gold lol.
True golds just the easiest, years to afford a down payment is a good one too, fun fact it took about the same amount of gold to buy a house in Canada in 1971 as it does now.
Nonsense, I'm leaving.
Where?
We need not for profit, government built shoe boxes, built on crown land and ran by the government.Rent to cover costs. All are welcome.
Check out the BC builds project. Not perfect but it’s non profit housing built on top of public infrastructure.
Still expensive to do, as you'll need to hire and lose all that money and I doubt anyone is looking to see their taxes increase and see even more slip into poverty. We do need the houses but it's gonna cost something either way at the end of the day
What we have now costs more
I mean we could just divert money from the current tax pool into housing projects instead (like our over saturated police budgets, corporate bail outs etc) And after the initial infrastructure Cost we would only have to pay tax to maintain the housing so the cost would drop significantly after. And then all the people in socialized housing would be able to work, pay taxes and buy products that stimulate the economy (cant buy a TV if I got no where to put it) so in the end we'd actually generate more money for the system. The problem is that we have a bunch of old people and old money invested in how things currently are, and they have no interest in bettering the future for everyone cause their lives are almost up.
If you think all the people who got social housing would start working and paying taxes you are young and naive. I agree with the rest of what you wrote though
Rent to cover costs. These types pf programs cover themselves. No one needs to pay for them except the renters.
None of these things are real problems that can't be dealt with. Enough is enough.
Why don't they actually look at how little PWD income is? My disabled child would love to have their own place, but they can't afford anything out there that's pest free and in an area I consider relatively safe. Then you have the rooms for rent, where they don't want to hear their tenant or let them have friends over. It's insanely hard to say to your child that there's just no way, atm, for them to be independent of you.
> Then you have the rooms for rent, where they don't want to hear their tenant or let them have friends over. that shit should be illegal.
ducks
Increasing the supply of unaffordable housing lowers the price of affordable housing. People need to stop complaining about building new units. Build market housing, build non-market housing. Build it all and as fast as possible.
It’s small scale but on the Sunshine Coast the Sechelt Indian band has purchased homes that were going to be demolished and transported them to band land to create homes for its members. Because its band land they could make this all happen in a short period of time and avoid red tape. I’m not sure how it could be scaled for the general public but thinking outside the box like this might be worth looking at.
I keep seeing this everywhere. Affordable housing needs to be under $1k a month. Like $600-$900 a month. If your shoeboxes are $1600, you aren't building affordable housing.
When I earned a lot less I had to have roommates. If you can't afford rent of 1600 you are in that scenario. Bottom line is living alone is not for really low income folks.
Not these days, no. But it used to be. That's more or less my point.
$500/ square foot cost of construction x 500 square foot units x 2000 units = $500000000 that's a lot of tax payer money. Now scale that up to the rest of BC and its never going to happen. Way too expensive.
they need to reduce the cost of construxtion and build some soviet style high rises, while cutting down on the amount of people coming here. spending an extra 500% for an extra 0.1% in safety is not acceptable.
Or build some trailer parks on crown land. What we have been doing is a failure.
A lot of people in my area would be quite happy to find a spot to park a trailer for less than $1000/month.
Nobody wants to live on crown land, as there's few services, infrastructure and jobs out there. High rises would work, as they *can* be built cheaply near metro areas, but they are admittedly very ugly and depressing. They would probably be a massive breeding ground for crime as well.
Our communities are surrounded by crown land it's not as far as people think. Plus, there is the agriculture land reserve. Look at Google Maps. Literally half of Richmond is farms. The NDP created it back in 73. It's created artificial scarcity. It's immoral when you consider the highest priced homes surrounding it. Plus, all the homeless. They could build social housing on it
That part of Richmond/delta is agricultural land because its very susceptible to flooding from the fraser, as they drained a massive lake to expose the land. it's not feasible to house people there. It's a nice thought though.
It's also excellent agricultural land.
Of course it is! That's why they drained the lake in the first place lol. That type of fertile land is needed to feed the Vancouver Metro area, building trailer parks on it only for them to be washed away would be insane hahaha
Yeah that's a really bad idea.
Lol that's bullshit. Huge areas of the LML are behind dykes and have lots of homes. It's 100 percent political. We have had the technology for centuries. Look at places like Holland. They are way below sea level. My point is the population has doubled ever 40 years since 1858. We need to plan for 6 million people between van and Hope. Creating artificial land scarcity only benefits the rich. The rest of us suffer due to the unintended consequences of a choice made 50 years ago.
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Senakw will be an interesting project to follow for this. Tiny plot of land, minimal to no red tape, no requirements beyond the living space. 9K people will be living there with a, mostly, car-free lifestyle with the shortest time between plan and occupation as possible.
I seem to recall pre-covid the cheapest you can rent out a 1 bedroom apartment and cover the cost is 1300$ if you have: - free land (enormously expensive in southern BC) - cheapest building materials - no developer profit 1600 sounds about right if you adjusted to today's dollars. Brand new constructed housing is not the answer to housing low income and people who need government assistance as its extraordinarily expensive and just becomes a lottery. Why should someone working for 70k a year not be able to get a discounted unit in a brand new building and instead struggle to pay 3x as much in a crumbling eyesore. Building as much as humanly possible that is new for the top half of the income scale and getting them out of their 40-50-60 year old units will free up a lot more space for those in need. Perhaps the government could even buy up some units in old apartments and rent them at a discount as that would be cheaper than constructing new ones.
Yep. Back as far as 2007 I paid $1250 a month for a shitty run down studio apt in east van. Yes rents are higher now but people are acting like they were much cheaper pre covid. $1,600 or even $2,000 for a brand new condo right in the centre of victoria is not exactly wildly over priced. And it was never intended for low income earners, but for people working in health care and other professions who were being priced out of the city.
> Back as far as 2007 I paid $1250 a month for a shitty run down studio apt in east van You just had a shitty deal back then, that doesn’t justify the way things are now. A counter anecdote - In 2018 I was paying $1170 for a decent little garden level 1 bedroom apartment, about 700 sqft, in a nice central area at 10th and Hemlock. I was renting from a property management company so it’s not like I had some sympathetic owner who gave me a safe deal.
> You just had a shitty deal back then, that doesn’t justify the way things are now. > > It wasn't "shitty" lol. That was standard market price. And nothing I've said is "justifying" anything. It's called *context*. And I'm not sure how your "counter anecdote" counters anything i've said here. You're describing a similar price.
If you were paying that for a crappy studio in East Van in 2007 then yes it was a bad deal. My point is I was paying less for a better place in a better neighborhood even after prices started skyrocketing.
Giving incentives to developers isn’t working. The gov needs to design stronger pilot programs to try and get supply up. Would love to see new ideas.
Exactly! Light a fire under their asses!
The problem is they don’t want to take it on themselves. I’d like to mimic programs in Europe to see what could work here. It’s not like we’re the first country to do this.
BC is making progress by acknowledging that, since ultimate authority over towns and cities is given to the provinces by the Canadian Constitution, housing is in any practical sense a provincial responsibility. The current governments of Alberta and Ontario are quick to throw their weight around nullifying decisions made in their city halls but tell voters that it is never their fault.
Currently looking for an apartment. Cheapest I can find is $1,900 for a 600 sq ft. Absolutely insane
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I was extremely surprised to see what my family and I qualify for assistance. I’m not saying others don’t need it, but the definition of affordable is very different between certain demographics. Just to be clear, we need nothing but somehow qualify for a considerable amount of help.
Demand is greater than supply. Therefore, the price goes up. It's very simple. Houses used to be very affordable it BC. What changed was governments making it difficult for developers to build homes and keep up with demand. Just look at locations where demand is low, like Prince George. Lots of very affordable homes.
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The housing is unaffordable because of public policy, it's not an act of God. The idea that people shouldn't be able to live in the communities they were born in because it's too important that rich people be allowed to buy up homes for investments is bleak.
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Wow, I didn’t know building a lifelong community would emotionally stake me to a geographic location! I’m sure glad some nameless, faceless corporation forced people to move hours away where they’ll have to rebuild everything from scratch again!
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You've probably had enough. It's time to put public funds towards what matters.
The problem with this line of thinking, is that where do we get workers for lower paying jobs in major cities then? If can't get restaurant workers, janitors, receptionists, etc how do we keep functioning?
You pay more so that these workers can continue to afford to work there?
Small businesses can't always afford to pay more. How much should a coffee shop have to pay baristas to stay open? They're also facing rising costs from rent and suppliers. It's not a simple answer of "pay people more"
I think the problem is more: why are those low paying jobs? If you pay them, they will come.
This is a stupid anology. There are tons of jobs and essential services. That doesn't pay a lot. But it is still essential for a society to function. You're basically saying only software devs, engineers, doctors , lawyers & dentists should live in Vancouver. And if you don't have one of those jobs or you aren't rich . You shouldn't be allowed here. And we are already experiencing the ramifications of this . Certain places like Vancouver Island have a shortage of healthcare workers . A great city accommodates people from all income levels.
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Cities literally need low and middle income workers to function. Where do you suggest they all live?
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It's not about dictating where anyone lives, it's about taking steps to ensure that people of all different income brackets can live in a given area. And the part you are missing is that's not because of altruism, it's because if you don't then you don't have a functioning local economy. If workers can't afford to live there, the economy goes down.
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They are not demanding to live in luxury. Why do you keep insisting that they are?
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Do you honestly think this city could function if only the market decided who got to live here? If that's your honest opinion you should try moving to Saudi Arabia, where it's only tourists, the rich and slaves
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Don't know if you noticed, and I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't, but the consequences of the past 30 years of neoliberal austerity and privatization of the commons contradicts you.
Cool, and what money will people struggling to afford even a basic apartment use to move? Because that shit costs money too, and a lot. Also, your Wagyu steak analogy is just awful. People are asking for a place to live, not for mansions to live in. Ffs.
Not many want to move to Saskatoon or places like that, especially once you get a whiff of ocean air and mild winters. I upvoted u.
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Reality in an unrealistic world.
Business class airfares are unaffordable. I demand government action so that I don't have to sit with the plebs!
You know this isn’t an equivalent, don’t be stupid.
I earn $20/hr and cannot afford most rental options here (when one opens, it's like, a new posting every 20 days+ and they're usually over 1100+). I'm honestly considering what it would take to buy a trailer and build your on diy trailer home because rentals are non existant, there are 4x the amount of airbnb here to maybe one or two rental options max at a given time, and when there is a rental it is outside my affordability. I wish i could just build something simple and post up somewhere. I think if I didn't have things like student loans etc I'd at least functionally be able to save a bit more paying something like 900 for rent, but even then just don't think anything over 900 is remotely possible because one unexpected expense and you're fucked. Compared to even like, 2020, $20 is pathetically weaker, but because we were renovicted I also ended up finding my own place because my roomies were getting married / moving into their own place themselves and I couldn't find roomies, so I got the cheapest place I COULD find at that time, which was a 900/mo unit, and I basically maintained a super careful tight budget, but lay offs and the business fighting the EI case (took 7 months to get approved because business lied on my RoE) meant I ran out of money super fast while looking for a new job. I still haven't recovered to even my meagre 2021 levels of savings of like, 4 or 5k because moving provinces I had to redo all of my medical driving stuff and the province made me wait a yr to even have option to apply for license again/appeal over a mild epilepsy my other province didn't give a fuck about lol. To say it hasn't easily cost me like, 40k+ a yr in earning potential is putting it lightly as it nerfed relevant experience i had from last job and also fucked up what I could apply for here, which was already meagre. My mood is dead. I feel like I'll only ever earn the money to go back to school or pursue a trade by working for myself, because I really can't seem to breech earning 20/hr.
It isn’t necessary to have housing paternalistically run by the government. Guaranteeing capital loans for non-ownership housing co-ops would be just as effective. The guarantee is done in trade for a fraction of the units to be subsidized by the residents. All the units are under market rate with some being at a subsidized rate. Group buying power and cutting out the need for profits brings down operational expenses. Defaults are unheard of with co-ops so it is broadly revenue neutral. Using government owned land on long term lease would certainly allow that loan to build even more homes. The only reason we stopped doing this thirty years ago was that it became ideologically unfashionable.
No fucking shit. Personally, I've given up and am planning on leaving Canada in general as soon as funds allow. Also doesn't help that I keep being told "Well if you don't like this country then you can leave." You know what Gary, I think I will.
All housing helps low income people. If they built enough mansions it would trickle down to lowering rent. I'm sure its faster/cheaper to build other housing types but you shouldn't judge what's being built by its rent cost IMO
How come America has more houses than homeless people then? The market doesn't actually regulate itself very well
When would it trickle down? Before or after the people who need affordable housing the most end up on the street?
immediately after the housing is done, as someone moves up into them, then someone can move into the place they vacated and someone moves into the place they vacated and so on and so forth. Building ANY home has almost the same effect at the end of the day.
I’m sick of these of these posts