The inflation is fueled by short supply rather than excess demand.
I’m no economist but if our current supplies cannot even meet the baseline demand, rising rate does little to nothing but hurt the average Canadian.
The average Canadian already have nothing left to “cut” on their spending, people gotta eat and shelter. This is the baseline demand. Unless the goal is to make people homeless and starve, without increasing supply and invest in productive investments, the inflation will not end.
This hurts regular people far worse than the upper class that has spent 3+ years hording and acquiring assets. They’re trying to fix inept government policy on the backs of the labour that allows the country to function rather than having the hording class pay a fair share to sustain society.
Property taxes should increase exponentially with each additional property you own. Double or triple for corporations. That will do a large part to fix our issues, but the government will only enact policies favourable to the landowners.
Agreed. Pretty much any property a person owns past the first single-family home or equivalent should be treated as income and business expense and should be taxed as such. There should be a bigger incentive when you move homes to buy a new home and sell your previous. Rather than buying a home when you move and putting the previous up for rent, slowly accumulating properties to be used as passive income and denying homeownership to younger people.
I’m not 100% sure we should even allow corporations to own housing property at all, but that’s a bigger question.
Unfortunately, in the case of housing a lot of the abuses of tenants’ rights tends to be caused by amateur landlords (who don’t know how to properly plan ahead). There are a lot of laws to know and unexpected costs involved, so having a larger building management entity makes sense here. It would be cool if non-profit renters’ co-ops (like the people in Hamilton trying to buy their apartment building) could be successfully formed.
That’s quite a good solution. I’ve been looking at real estate lately and a lot of the lower priced homes have in their description something like “great starter home or investment property.” Investors shouldn’t be able to snatch up all the “starter homes”. Let’s let some of us get into the market!
“Starter home”, I’m not sure how much more disdain I could have for that title. I bought a home in 2003 that would probably be called that now. It was a typical size for when it was built in 1982 but of course homes must be bigger now. My wife has a friend who has a home that’s nearly double the size yet she’s jealous of all the storage space we have. There’s this trend of building homes with huge main spaces and I don’t understand why.
I understand if people end up having to move for work of course, and if the home they’re in is literally too small for their family, I just don’t understand moving just because a bigger house is available.
Yeah, and rental prices have skyrocketed too.
During the next federal election this will be my “single issue” that will determine who I vote for.
At this point I can ignore our insane grocery/telecom prices, even though that is still a huge issue. The housing crises has far worse ripple effects down the chain: potential buyers can’t buy so they rent nicer places, potential renters can’t rent the nice places so they are overpaying for the rentals they can afford, and people who can’t afford any of the rental prices are scraping by with roommates or on the streets.
And these development companies have the nerve to go to court over government investigations over their shady practices.
Shameless.
During the next federal election this will be my “single issue” that will determine who I vote for.
This should read PROVINCIAL election. Housing policies are the jurisdiction of the provinces. If you think the Premiers are going to tolerate the Feds mucking around in something they perceive as THEIR jurisdiction, there will be a big fight over it. Take this to your Premier, it’s their wheel-house.
Fair point, Dougie needs to fucking go.
And for the record OF COURSE I care about other issues. Maybe my original comment was too extreme. There is no way I am going to vote for any rage-baiting, fear mongering, regressive asshole. If someone presented an amazing, ground-breaking housing plan but was also a neo-nazi I wouldn’t vote for them LMAO.
I am just so tired of all the political theatre around housing. It just seems like a no-brainer that should cross party lines. The only people who don’t care are the people who are rich, or who are in the pockets of rich development/property management companies. Even the older generations who own a single home care, they probably have children who they know won’t ever be able to afford a home or pay a fair price to rent something.
Higher interest rates are the tough medicine we do need today to combat inflation. But government policies need to be there to ensure the social costs are minimized but somehow that safety net isn’t sufficient today is it? Additionally more action needs to be done on oligopolies and consolidation that’s happening across every industry that reduces competition.