Poilievre introduces housing bill, plan focuses on getting cities to build more homes
Poilievre introduces housing bill, plan focuses on getting cities to build more homes
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has introduced a private member's bill in the House of Commons that outlines a plan to address the national housing crisis.
Building homes won't fix anything. The way we build cities for the past 70years is the problem..
I don't think any one thing is gonna be a magic fix. We gotta do all the things rather than focus on just one aspect.
The most important one is density and active transportation of people. We are building cities in a way that Absolut requires enormous expense. For example, a house need a driveway, a big street, 4 walls to heat, 1 or sometimes 2 cars, a lot of piping to go everywhere, a lot of wires to go everywhere. That's why everything cost so much. We are not efficient with our lands. A big wide street and enormous highways is a financial drain on everyone. We need to pay for this at some point or another.
If we were a bit more conservative with the way we build cities, everything would be more affordable today.
Or just wait. The housing market has quite clearly crashed already, peaking in 2022 and dead cat bouncing over the past few months. It took around three years for the US housing market to go from crash to finding the bottom during their last event. It is likely we will see something similar play out here.
Of course the politicians know that which is why they are just now all of sudden, after decades of ignoring the issue and trying to pass the buck to other levels of government, ready to swoop in as the saviour. "Look what I did!" they will proclaim, even though it will have nothing to do with them.
Personally I'd like to see one of the parties come up with a plan that doesn't just funnel money into developers' pockets, and addresses other necessary solutions such as easing zoning restrictions (which is not the same as selling off protected forest and wetlands, Douggie), limiting or removing speculators, corporate ownership, and short term rentals that are preventing first time homebuyers from entering the market, public transit options to developing neighbourhoods to allow people who rely on it to move there, even (and this is a pipe dream) high speed rail between small towns and major cities so people could more easily spread out across the provinces without giving up jobs or doctors or their entire lives, etc.
There's so many ways to come at this, but all I ever see is people who think throwing more money at developers will fix the problem.
The current liberal plan where they are giving money to help build houses in cities does require the city update their zoning related laws to make it easier for developers to build higher density things.
Unfortunately financial support is the main thing the feds can contribute, most of the other things fall under provincial jurisdiction, and it's clear the provinces don't intend on doing a thing.
Limit the number of parcels any one company can own disallow property ownership from numbered companies. No anonymous holdings.
Allow companies to own one or two parcels. They can decide if they want to build 150 unit apartment buildings to rent out or single family homes to rent out, but they only get the one or two properties to build them on.
Here's the thing: Liberals and Conservatives solutions will always rervolve around giving more money to entities that already sit on variously sized piles of money. Even NDP won't risk alienating home owners. Political and economic system requires massive rework to actually address underlying issues. However I know of no Canadian political entity ready to sacrifice themselves and go through with necessary changes, including changes to electoral system that sustains current status quo. I'm in Alberta and AB NDP has walked away from the electoral reform as soon as they figured how to win in current system (sort of) so I'd expect the same from gederal NDP, or any party, really as reword system is wired for that. "Small steps" are all cute and heart-warming but they will never solve real problem and with major parties eager to rip out legislation of previous "other party" moving forward is unlikely. Not arguing for dictatorship, rather the opposite - real multi-party system that has to represent all Canadians. Any decision made has to be supported by 51+% of Canadians, not 51% parlamentsrians. (end of rant)
Any decision made has to be supported by 51+% of Canadians
A referendum model? Best of luck with that. We don't even elect political parties that represent 51% of voters. You'd end up with a) almost nothing getting done , and b) probably no way back to the current model.
They're talking about getting a more representative voting system, so that who holds the seats actually reflects who voted.
I don't believe current system is working either. Precisely because we operate under "majority" governments elected by 30% of population. So either 100% of population got to vote or we're down to referendum.
I see Kevin spacey making a comeback. He can play poilevre in the canadian version of house of cards.
And still no word on any plans to ensure houses are bought by people who don't already own a whole bunch of investment properties.
Until we address that issue, building more will continue to make the rich richer. But this is to be expected of the politicians whose lobbyists consist of real estate investors.
And I'll chime in that yours is but a small part of a multi-facetted problem to be fixed, as is building new homes.
What is disingenuous is selling it as a simple problem that can be fixed quickly and easily.
Not saying you're doing this intentionally but we are notoriously lazy and looking for an easy fix when there is none. I wish politicians would be stressing that more.
I'm starting to think I'll vote for a politician that provides a comprehensive plan addressing multiple of the conditions that got us in this mess. To that I say good luck!
we also have a historical problem of demanding a perfect solution to a complex problem and then being upset when nobody can provide it. Even if someone provides a Very Good solution, the moment it causes financial discomfort for wealthy people you'll see next-level lobbying and media saturation of "the plan isn't working."
Seeing as we're currently lacking a multi-faceted plan for this multi-faceted problem, I'd settle for taxing the fuck out of those who own more than 3 single-family houses as a good first step.
I agree completely. There is no quick, easy, silver bullet for this.
But it is a bit of a problem if the lobbyists are actively positioning all of our politicians to keep things as they are.