Barry's Construction

Once a month or so I have breakfast with an old pal who is very much on the left end of the political spectrum. We were discussing the homelessness situation in town, which is very much a part of the overall affordable housing crisis facing Canada.

That's a crisis that's been brewing for decades, and is only going to get worse until our politicos start taking it seriously. Justin got a lot of friendly press when he announced the "National Housing Strategy- a place to call home" initiative a couple of years ago. He even bragged it up on the campaign trail last fall, reminding us that it was he, Justin, who brought us the National Housing Strategy.

Unfortunately, the initiatives this initiative has put forward thus far, have only served to boost the demand side of the supply and demand equation. The number of new housing units produced by Trudeau's "National Housing Strategy" is...  zero.

None!

If you're inviting in a million new residents every year, and putting up only two hundred thousand new builds, demand will obviously outstrip supply. As it has been doing for many years.

The complete lack of a comprehensive housing policy has been a bonanza for the REIT crowd. I'm old enough to remember when Bill Player and Lenny Rosenberg went to jail for flipping those apartment buildings to imaginary Saudi investors for what, $25,000 per unit?

Those same buildings are now changing hands at $250,000 per unit, and the REITs are the buyers. Why? Because they know that there's no threat on the supply side.

If nothing else, I think Bill and Lenny should have their criminal records expunged.

They weren't crooks, they were just ahead of their time.

They were real estate magicians.

Look who is in the White House today; a real estate magician.

And here's a real head-fuck; all that stuff trading at $250 per square foot today was built in the sixties and seventies at ten to fifteen bucks a foot.

That's what happens when housing becomes just another commodity to be traded amongst the wheeler-dealers.

But let's get back to breakfast.

My pinko pal was telling me that his daughter is living happily in a new-build rental put up by Barry's Construction. It's a for-profit rental built with no government subsidies that I'm aware of.

Here's the thing about Barry; he's a Christian who takes his faith seriously. Barry owns a lot of downtown storefronts, and a standard clause in his lease agreements is that nobody who rents a storefront from him is gonna be open on Sunday.

That's remarkable! Visit downtown St. Jacobs on a Sunday. Everything is open! It's their busiest day of the week, and pretty much the whole she-bang is owned by Mennonite Christians!

Barry is obviously one of those outliers who puts faith over profit. He could max out the rent on his new builds. He could get more for his storefronts if he let them open on Sunday.

But he doesn't.


We need more people like that.