BURNABY – On Thursday, Canada’s NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh attended a housing roundtable where young Canadians explained that they can’t afford housing in their community. While just blocks away sits federal land at 6025 Sussex Avenue where the City of Burnaby had proposed building 300 non-profit, affordable homes back in 2019. Instead of supporting the proposal to build affordable housing— the Liberal government refused.
“If Justin Trudeau wasn’t so out-of-touch, this building could have been already built and those people behind me could live there,” said Singh. “But instead I just spent the morning hearing from young people who can’t find an affordable place to live and the dream of one day buying a home is completely out-of-reach for them. We’re in this mess because successive Liberal and Conservative governments have let big money developers use the housing market to get wealthy instead of protecting the people who need these homes.
“Both Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre want to use public land to help rich developers get even richer– instead of building homes young people could afford.”
Despite campaign promises, after eight years of the Liberal government, in Vancouver, it can take a young teacher as much as 44 years to afford the down payment for an average home. And in neighbouring Burnaby, the average 2-bedroom apartment now costs $3,166 a month.
“In the next election, young people will have a choice to make. Do they want out-of-touch Trudeau who used federal land to make big developers richer at your expense? Do they want corporate-controlled Poilievre who will sell off public land to rich developers’ donors like Doug Ford is doing? Or will they want a New Democrat government that will use federal, public land to build non-profit homes young people can actually afford?
“Whether you’re 40 years old or 20 years old, whether you are making minimum wage or a higher wage— everyone should be able to find a place they can afford that’s safe and fits their family’s needs.”
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Must every discussion about housing availability in Canada be centred (exclusively) on immigration as if it’s the only factor driving inaccessibility? Such reductionism is not helping those on the brink of poverty or losing their homes here in Canada. However, it does help shift attention away from corporate landlords, their accomplices, and anyone else profiting off of the current situation
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Canada is one of the largest countries in the entire world with a fairly small population. We have more than enough room to grow. The issue isn’t that the population is growing, it’s that cities and infrastructure aren’t growing with it.
As Singh points out, why are governments shooting down proposals to build high density affordable housing in our cities? It’s because corporations want high priced luxury condos and single detached homes built there instead. It makes them more money and keeps neighbourhoods expensive. A cheap place to live next to a fancy house brings down that house’s value.
We can absolutely build more housing and make it affordable. It’s just that not everyone wants that. People who own lots of expensive property don’t want it to be devalued, and these people have money to lobby governments.
This is why. Profits mean taxes.
My brother in Christ, immigrants are returning to their home countries because Canada’s housing and rental market are being killed by corporate greed.