Activists in many cities are calling on tenants to withhold their April rent payments tomorrow. Given the number of people who have lost their jobs in the past month, this could catch fire.
From what I can see, Canada has taken a more generous approach to supporting working people than has the US, where they're trying a more trickle-down approach; bail out the rich again, and let the benefits make their way to workers as the economy returns to "normal."
The question we should be asking is, how sound is it to have that supposed normalcy as our goal? The pandemic is giving us an opportunity to reevaluate the status quo. For renters in many cities in both Canada and the US, the status quo has clearly been failing for many years. This is because rental housing has become a commodity instead of a human right.
For almost fifty years after WWll our federal government was active in funding and promoting social housing. By the turn of the 21st century, that was over, having succumbed to the belief that the private sector will meet the need, because as we all know, the private sector is more "efficient."
What should be obvious is that the private sector is called that because it operates with private capital and therefore requires a return on investment. There's no incentive to build housing for people with little or no money. With wages mostly stagnant for the past forty years, and no new construction of rental for the last twenty, we've gradually allowed a housing crisis to overtake us.
This is an opportunity to revisit our housing policy. Government needs to return to social housing in a meaningful way. Let the private sector do what it does well; build luxury housing for those who can afford it.
Those who can't, still have the right to safe and secure housing. Expecting the private sector to deliver
affordable housing is like expecting your pregnant cat to deliver a baby elephant - it ain't gonna happen.
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