Think this through with your own numbers but without time swapping the fertility rates across generations. (Suddenly having a house means we’re going to pump out 4 kids? Holy bold assumptions Batman!)

Say a condo at 800 feet, 800 / 3 = 266.

Even a small house, 1500 / 3 = 500.

Heck, even if we double the fertility rate for folks in a small detached home, you’re still ahead:

1500 / 4 = 350.

I did the math on a condo project in Vancouver (not even in downtown, just in the City across the bridge) the land cost for each unit they were building was $300,000. That number alone makes them unaffordable, before even talking about the construction costs.

Yeah, so essentially some of the most expensive real estate in the country, no doubt it’s going to be more expensive. That’s why you have to build condos there not detached homes. Try putting a detached home there. Do that and the house is suddenly what, tens of millions?

In this case, you’re effectively saying that because we build condos where it is too expensive to put detached homes, condos are more expensive? That’s some pretty silly logic there.

but that type of development isn’t possible anymore.

There simply isn’t the available land

You should read about that history again. Land costs weren’t the prohibitive factor, it was that there just wasn’t enough housing being built.

Not to mention building condos cost a lot more per square foot than detached houses.

This one is A) doubtful but B) more than a little misleading, condos are much smaller than detached homes, so the people per square foot works out cheaper.

But yeah, this won’t get everyone detached homes in the middle of a big city like Vancouver, like I already said. What it does do is allow us to do is build more multi unit places (hardly a factor in the post war efforts) as well as more detached homes in less populated areas (in BC, my goodness, we have some dirt cheap land a few hours away from Vancouver.)

I dunno, you’ve just made a lot of assertions about what will happen but none of it seemed particularly based on facts. I’m not going to say I’m confident in the government but I certainly like our odds more than I did a year ago.

Unfortunately, people like you keep getting their hopes up on policies that have no historical record of working.

Feel free to share an example of a country with a similarly ambitious housing plan in the last 20 years.

Canada certainly hasn’t had one.

I fins the notion of “well, we tried something about a third as comprehensive and it didn’t work” to be pretty silly. It’s like folks who go to the gym a few times over a month, don’t see results and decide they’ll never be in shape. Some things require a significant effort.

I’m not saying there’s a guarantee housing prices will drop but to declare they can’t because “a government said they’d try, they didn’t do much and nothing happened so nothing will ever happen” is nonsense.

that have no historical record of working. Building more homes has never dropped prices anywhere in the world.

Edit:

that have no historical record of working. Building more homes has never dropped prices anywhere in the world.

Like an ignorant goof, I forgot to mention, that it has worked, in Canada! In fact, parts of the current government’s approach (pre approved design, emphasis on modular fabrication etc) are taken straight of the playbook from the last time we did this, after the second world war. For you to believe the statement above means that you probably don’t know about this neat period of history, you can learn about it here!

Need? Probably! Willing to pay for? Sadly, probably less so…

Hey fellow oldie!

I feel, the song is similar but much louder and more coherent this time. Harper really had nothing besides some mucking about at the margins, Trudeau tried a bit but like a lot of things he tried, didn’t get all that much done. This one at least feels like a fairly coherent, federal through to municipal approach on the government side, with a bunch of private sector ideas.

That being said, I think the key is what you mean by affordable. I am hopeful they can lay the foundations to get housing back to something like just pre-pandemic (and hopefully just keep going!), which still wasn’t great for many people. I’m lucky enough that I think I’d be okay to buy something I want in that scenario.

But overall, yeah I think housing standards are just going to be different for us than our parents and similarly, between us and the youngings coming up now. I live in Vancouver, it’s almost doubled in size since 1990! The single detached houses a 10 minute bike ride from downtown that a middle class couple could easily afford? Probably not happening again.

Nope. Why do you ask?

Housing productivity hasn’t improved at all over the last 50 years, in fact it’s gone down

Yeah, that’s why it takes something bold like putting together a new agency tasked with fostering innovative new companies. Those are the folks currently contracted to build the 4,000 affordable homes in the first wave.

Voters would actually be quite unhappy with a 20% drop in prices that occurs too quickly and doesn’t have an external event to blame.

Remember, the time scale is 2035, which should have two elections beforehand.

A chunk of voters would be happy, another would be unhappy.

The Conservatives would eat his breakfast in the next election if he dropped the value of homes by 10% before then.

That’s a fight almost any politician would love to have. “We’re here making things affordable for the middle class and our children and you’re complaining that they can finally buy homes?”

the liberals launched a “National Housing Strategy in 2015”… it’s 10 years later and things are just significantly worse.

I don’t find this argument particularly persuasive. Many governments have tried many things, that doesn’t mean nothing can work. This is a significantly larger. more concerted push at the problem than anything that came before. (And y’know, presumably won’t get interrupted by a pandemic.)

Most rural houses are effectively worthless and practically ghost towns

This happens everywhere, not unique to Japan or even demographic decline.

Except the CMHC said you would need to double the housing starts between when they released that report and 2035 for that to happen. The report came out last year. Did we double housing starts in 2025? Nope. Will we double it in 2026? Also no.

They released an updated version this year, here’s the CBC write up on it. Essentially, 4.8 million homes are needed by 2035 to get housing costs back to 2019.

I assume Carney can do basic math. If you watch the interview in the post, he notes that we’re only going to have a small number initially as we start scaling up new processes, companies and the like.

10 years to double the number of workers, and that assumes not a single existing one retires in that period.

Sure but again, part of the push is to move into new ways that require fewer workers etc. That’s the push with modular/prefabs.

it wasn’t affordable in 2019 either

Like I said, totally fair. For me, 2019 levels are workable. I know that’s a very lucky position etc.

That being said, all the factors and processes that get the country to 4.8 million by 2035 don’t suddenly stop. Coupled with population decline or maybe staying roughly steady, that means prices should continue to fall slightly.

How many houses would you need to build in order to have prices drop by 20%?

According to the CMCH, double the housing starts. Which is what the government is aiming to do.

Current housing prices aren’t reflective of their availability, they’re mostly reflective of their value as investments (including for single home owners). Until that part is removed from their pricing, they will never become affordable again.

This would always have been true, housing didn’t suddenly become investments in 2020.

And yet, houses were at 2019 prices in 2019, regardless of their ability to act as investments. And that happened without any of the radical proposals outlined. Why would these proposals not have been necessary in 2019 to hit 2019 prices but suddenly are required regardless of how much we build?

I’m curious, what makes you so confident in that prediction?

I’m not saying I’m confident it will happen, but it seems like a reasonably coherent and significant push at the problem. They’re investing in more tradespeople, being a guarantor for new technologies and approaches and attacking it from every possible regulatory angle, I don’t really have much to fault with it.

(Admittedly, I could live with 2019 “affordability” which isn’t true of everyone maybe even most.)

Carney has made me, well, not optimistic but certainly less gloomy about my chances of buying a proper home.

Which is better than I’ve felt about it in almost 2 decades or so.

Honour among thieves was an absolute blast, felt like a quality throwback to the old adventure comedies.a

Another one I’ve never heard of but will check out, thanks!

Oooh, haven’t seen Loaded Weapon but fully agree on Top Secret, so I’ll have to check it out.

Ahaha, you’re a class act!

I finally caught this in a theatre this year, amazing to watch it with a hundred people all roaring (admittedly, at various times as some people remembered jokes before they happened, but that just added to the charm.)

“All we did was rip up agreements we signed causing job losses, accused you of poisoning our people with fentanyl (despite shipping more of it to Canada than vice versa) and threaten your national sovereignty! What’s the big deal?”

“Do you want to be called a neo liberal bootlicker for pretty standard positions shared by a majority of people? Have I got the place for you!”

“Want to be compared to a mass murderer if you read enough to think proportional representation isn’t a great plan?”

That put a huge smile on my face, thanks!

Think through the logic of the 2024 election but under a PR system…