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Anytime someone wants to build housing, they better be increasing regulations to prohibit investment housing. Housing is meant to give people shelter and home, not make investors rich.
As you'd expect from the central banker whiz kid, he has creative policy ideas. I'm pretty excited to see the budget split into separate maintenance and investment budgets if he gets in, and now this.
That being said, there's definite notes of what Gould was talking about here. It's just way, way more focused and detailed. I'd give a summery, but the CBC version, at least, already feels like a summery.
I listened to his speech. He's talking in no uncertain terms that he's going for a post-war style build-out. He also pointed out that the market hasn't delivered and won't solve our housing crisis.
This is exactly what's need on high level.
I agree, but I'm also acutely aware that it is campaign season, and the LPC has a nasty habit of running left and governing right.
If we wind up with a Liberal minority with Conservatives in opposition, or with a Liberal majority, I honestly fully expect this to get dropped or strategically undermined the way electoral reform did.
In other words, we're gonna have to be ready to fight for it.
100%
That said, I think there's a better chance this to materialize because I think Carney knows he'll lose the next election if he doesn't deliver on this file. This isn't 2015 when things were not great but tolerable. We have a huge homeless population which is not limited to the largest cities anymore, and the cost of housing is hitting every part of the economy. The knife has hit the bone for way more people today than even a few years ago. So while I completely agree with the skepticism, I have a sliver more optimism this time around.
I've been concerned that we might get a giant influx of Americans, who have more purchasing power with that strong USD and would price Canadians out of any and all housing. Plus building aggressively like this is a good stimulus to the economy. Let's hope it works.
I mean, pretty much everything else the Liberals promised has at least been attempted. They've gone extra ambitious on some things, even, like doubling their tree planting goal because they were ahead of schedule.
Main exception being voting reform.
I did say everything else.
It's a breath of fresh air to hear an actual plan that sounds like it would actually work. This is what Carney is here for.
The fact that they're creating a crown corporation to build homes on public and private land is huge. This includes prefab and modular homes too. They're even committing to using Canadian lumber.
We cannot contunue to rely on capitulating to and deregulating private developers and expecting them to act in any way other than own self-interest. They have no incentive to bring down the cost of homes. It is now crystal clear that the neo-liberal solution does not work.
A crown corporation that exists to create housing rather than maximize shareholder value is a massive step in the right direction. Frankly, I'm surprised Carney is doing this but happy about it all the same.
I expect Carney to get pushback from Doug Ford who is firmly in the pocket of private real estate investors.
We cannot contunue to rely on capitulating to and deregulating private developers and expecting them to act in any way other than own self-interest. They have no incentive to bring down the cost of homes. It is now crystal clear that the neo-liberal solution does not work.
I'm hoping to see more details about how production will be split. The article/release describes the new organization as both overseeing and building. I really want the emphasis to be on building, since that will allow them to push down sale or rental costs of the final product. .
As long as most of this money goes mainly towards high density housing, it's not a whole lot but infinitely better than what I was hearing just a few days ago. We don't need houses three hours drive away from work, but homes where people can not only live in, but around.
I really hope this new organization will have the power to ignore NIMBY organizations while listening to city councils for advice. At the very least I hope they get things done directly plotting out and signing building contracts rather than simply instructing and funding individual municipalities and delegating. We can't have people divert this desperately needed money for homes to be diverted towards private projects and making political buddies wealthier.
They should be pushing to restrict these rental company assholes from buying all the houses and preventing potential owners from getting them. "Landlord" is not a job.
They should only allow Build Canada Homes to sell to first time home buyers, Co-operatives, and not-for-profit Community Land Trust.
Corporate and "mom and pop" investors must be barred from buying these units. Otherwise, the problem will not go away.
I mean, if they can make a meaningful increase in supply, no investor is going to want to hold onto a house in that market. You might get that result without having to enforce it.
I'd say better safe than sorry.
OK, this sounds like a real plan. I really like they are paying attention to prefab construction.
Prefab is not as useful as it sounds. Houses are already factory made - they just bring the factory to the site on a truck. Most of the parts are already pre-cut in a separate factory, only a small minority need to be cut. They just take parts and put them together.
Most prefab attempts are cheaper only because quality standards are lower.
? Woodframe construction starts with lifts of lumber dropped onsite after a basement is poured, you cut what you need as you go off the prints. You'll probably get a truss package and chances are you'll have your trilam and silentfloor joists delivered at the correct lengths or slightly long, that's about it for pre-made pieces. I've helped a relative frame new houses over the winter for the last 5 or 6 years.
This is exciting news!
Now, what do we do when our Provincial or Municipal governments become the barrier to housing? Because lord knows that Doug Ford is fully capable of screwing this up.
About fucking time. Fifteen years later , but better late than never.
Force the rich to sell their multiple houses too. Tax their wealth and they won't have a choice. 3rd homes should get taxed at 10% of their value or more. Let's stop kidding around. That'll force them to divest fast as fuck.
Remember when the Liberals also promised the 2015 election would also be the last under FPTP?
I'm willing to give a 2nd chance after a decade
I understand the commendable instinct to give another chance, but this isn't about a one-time broken promise - it's about a century-long pattern. Liberals have promised proportional representation since 1919, starting with Mackenzie King.
The 2015 promise wasn't just casually broken - Trudeau literally admitted last year that Liberals were "deliberately vague" to appeal to electoral reform advocates while never intending to implement proportional representation.
Just last year, 107 Liberal MPs (68.6% of their caucus) voted against even creating a Citizens' Assembly to study electoral reform, despite 76% of Canadians supporting it.
This isn't about partisan politics - it's about our declining democracy. Canada's effective number of parties is down to 2.76, showing we're sliding toward an American-style two-party system under Duverger's Law.
In a democracy, citizens deserve representation. Every election under FPTP means millions of perfectly valid votes are discarded. How many more decades should we wait?
What is your solution
I don't know the particular solution to the housing crisis (nor did I insinuate I have one).
But the solution to the millions of perfectly valid ballots being tossed out every single Canadian election, is proportional representation.
I've been repeating this: Simple things you can do to grow the proportional representation movement.
Perhaps after we get PR, we can get actually effective governments, that respond even more deeply to the people's needs.
This is an amzing comment. Thank you soo o much for the links.
Just a Canadian concerned about democracy!
Here are some more links: Simple things you can do to grow the proportional representation movement.
The plan announced today by the Liberals would create a new federal housing entity that the party says would oversee affordable housing construction, speed up construction and provide financing to homebuilders.
Carney says the new agency, Build Canada Homes, would act as a developer to build affordable housing at scale, including on public lands, and develop and manage projects.
I really want to see the details on this one.
The second paragraph suggests BCH would do the building, while the first paragraph's "oversee" suggests existing developers would do the work. If BCH will finance construction, control where/what gets built, and control the final cost to buyers, then this has the potential to sell decent housing at below-market prices. That could start diffusing the housing crisis (although other reforms are necessary to improve costs in the near term).
That would be very different from what the Liberals and CPC have been proposing so far, which is to ask developers to pwetty pwease lower sale costs by making it easier and cheaper to build. It's hard to be optimistic given their track record.
Would love if the government is finally going back to its strategy from the 70s and taking charge here to build affordable housing instead of waiting for magical altruist developer unicorns to swoop in and save us.
Sounds like the new entity would do all of the above. Which makes sense. If they're builders willing to build what the government wants, they'll gett the money. But the government won't wait for such developers to volunteer. Instead it'll start the development itself, perhaps hiring developers to execute the actual building.
non paywalled: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-double-pace-home-building-1.7497947
It's something. Not clear it has to be public-private partnership, or focus on manufactured housing. 4 story apartment buildings is a good mix of density and low cost. CMHC made a lot of this post war baby boom.
Seems like some of the funding is for this.
double Canadaβs rate of residential construction housing over the next decade to nearly 500,000 new homes per year.
So it sounds like the goal is 500k houses a year at the end of a decade. I assume that means 230k-ish this year, slowly ramping to 500k in 2035. It only needs to be an extra 27k/year to make that goal.
CMHC says we need ~3.5 million houses by 2030 to get housing costs back to reasonable levels. I really want this proposal to be good, but it doesn't seem like it will be enough.
Is it better than nothing? That depends on who controls the final prices, and how much gets built.