Shauna MacKinnon, the chair of Urban and Inner-City Studies at the University of Winnipeg published an article last February calling Canada’s 30-plus year experiment of trusting the private sector to provide housing “a failure.”
Despite a repeated push from advocates to create more non-market housing options, the province of Ontario still relies on the private sector to reach its housing targets. Unfortunately, Ontario has also repeatedly failed to reach its own housing targets.
Ricardo Tranjan, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives with a focus on housing, said for-profit development follows a market logic, and these delayed housing projects shouldn’t come as a surprise given Ontario’s reliance on for-profit developers to build housing.
“It’s cyclical, we only build when we can make a lot of money out of it — or good money out of it,” Tranjan told PressProgress.
Tranjan said that housing prices are currently falling in Ontario, which means housing starts will slow down, which will limit supply and drive up prices. Once prices go up again, supply will begin to increase.
Canada’s non-market housing programs were gutted in the 90s by the Mulroney and Chrétien governments.
Since then, responsibility for housing has been downloaded to provinces — and certain responsibilities have since been passed down to municipalities. Meanwhile, housing affordability has continued to decrease.
ban MPs from owning or investing in realestate beyond a singular primary residence, and a non rental secondary residence. same goes for premiers and PMs. once you become an MP you have to live in your riding full time. if necessary you will have to sell property in order to become a public servant
outright ban corporate ownership of single family homes and condominiums.
give renters ownership rights over the properties they rent, they get a return based on how much of the mortgage was paid for by their rent, adjusted with inflation. if you buy a house for 200k, and sell it for 600k, and the tenant paid for 100k while they stayed there, they should get 300k as a return. fair is fair. you do not get to be rich because you signed a few papers and let someone work a whole ass career on your behalf to pay your mortgage for you.
homes are meant to be lived in, they are not investments. we need to completely gut and remove any and all incentive to treat them as such.
immediate rental freezes. when you sign a rental agreement, you cannot increase the amount of rent paid until the tenant willfully leaves on their own volition, or within a 5 year period. whchever comes first. if it is the same tenant, and they decide to stay, you have to perform any requested upgrades or repairs by the tenant, if you decide not to, you do not get to increase the rental price for the next five years, if they decide to stay. any recorded hostility by a landlord towards a tenant in hopes of removing the tenant and increasing the rent price for the next tenant results in a permanent ban from renting out properties. period. even if you wish to raise the rent, you can only raise it by 0.4% per year since the last contract was signed.
“but Alloi, that doesnt keep up with inflation!”
i know. when you offer someone the favour of letting them live on one of your properties, it is becaus eyou are doing it out of the kindness of your heart. not for profit.
“but Alloi! people will go hungry! retirees wont be able to support themselves”
not my fuckin problem, tenants starve to pay the rent, retirees become homeless because they cant afford rent on a pension.
if you are a landlord driven by the idea of a “passive income” that comes off the backs of people who actually contribute to society. then you are a subhuman, parasite. and deserve zero pity. you tied yourself to a sinking ship, so sink with it.