Advocates say there’s appetite for protests over the housing crisis, but several obstacles remain…
Data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) shows Canada has ramped up construction in recent years, including over 240,000 new home starts in 2022, just slightly down from the record-high 244,000 units started in 2021. Additionally, Statistics Canada data shows that from 2019 to 2021, housing stock growth outpaced population growth in Toronto and Vancouver, two of the hottest markets in the country.
What’s really needed: make real estate a less lucrative investment by aggressively raising property taxes (which are generally a percentage of the assessed value), or at least land-based property taxes (and encouraging dense development).
And if you raise the taxes on rental properties, who is going to eat that shit? Landlords? No. It will be renters.
Good. Then it penalizes empty rentals and gives the government more resources to combat housing inflation.
What is needed? A whole bunch of people who are willing to live on the streets or in a less convenient suburb or small city rather than in a unit in a major city. If demand drops, so will prices.
