Just a couple of years ago that money would have bought you that view, and also a decent shack included, never mind "building lot."
Our best and brightest currently campaigning for the PM job are unanimously promising to fix the housing affordability crisis.
That crisis, as anyone who passed Economics 101 knows, is the result of an imbalance between supply and demand. Giving tax breaks and incentives to first-time buyers gooses the demand side. How does that address the problem?
Meanwhile, we're aiming to admit at least 400,000 new Canadians every year going forward, while building 200,000 new housing units annually. That too puts more pressure on the demand side.
Why is no political leader addressing the supply side?
It's been a tradition in our society that the free market takes care of the housing supply, but you can't expect private enterprise to build housing for people who can't afford it. Larding up the development process with interminable levies and fees doesn't help, but those pay for a lot of city planners and environmental consultants, so they'll never go away.
Governments at all levels own lots of land and control the development process. Building four-storey walk-ups isn't rocket science. The Romans, Incas, and Pueblos were doing it thousands of years ago.
Hire a few kids out of Construction Technology programs, provide the land and the green light, and you'll be building 100,000 government-owned geared-to-income units per year in no time.
But, that would take political will.
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