315
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
315 points (99.4% liked)
Canada
7164 readers
202 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Communities
🍁 Meta
🗺️ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
🏙️ Cities / Regions
- Calgary (AB)
- Edmonton (AB)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
🏒 Sports
Hockey
- List of All Teams: Post on /c/hockey
- General Community: /c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- Montréal Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Football (CFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Baseball
- List of All Teams:
unknown - Toronto Blue Jays
Basketball
- List of All Teams:
unknown - Toronto Raptors
Soccer
- List of All Teams:
unknown - General Community: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
💻 Universities
💵 Finance / Shopping
- Personal Finance Canada
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Buy Canadian
- Quebec Finance
- Churning Canada
🗣️ Politics
🍁 Social & Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
The only developed country that doesn't seem to have a housing crisis right now is Japan. After their real estate market collapsed in the 90s, they instituted a number of reforms to make housing less attractive as an investment vehicle. Now housing there tends to depreciate over time, not appreciate. Consequently, it's viewed not as an investment but as a consumer product, much like buying a car, and there is competition that brings costs down.
I think this is the sensible approach we need to follow in the rest of the developed world, but I don't think it's not going to be politically feasible until a lot of homeowners feel a lot of pain and give up on the idea of housing as an investment
This is the biggest issue. It's fine to say we need to stop treating houses as investments, but most people own houses and it is their largest investment. Yes, billionaires and megacorps are profiting off it too, but if the government passed legislation tanking the prices of houses, the billionaires would be fine. Everyone 50+ who was getting ready to retire will loose most of their life savings. It needs to be a slow process, unless we're all ok going through a market collapse like 1990s Japan
While this is currently true, it's going down each year.
So over the course of ten years home ownership went down 2.5%, but population went up from 34 million to 38 million. This quite literally isn't sustainable.
So at a certain point we have to ask, what's worse, two generations who don't own homes, or one generation loses it's life savings.
I'm a member of a generation whose wealth is tied up in home ownership. I say let 'er rip!
We can't keep putting off a fix forever, so the earlier we tackle it, the better. No matter what we do, someone has to suffer, at least a little bit, so get it over with.
There is also plenty of money available to help ease the suffering if only we had the courage to tax properly.
It also might not hurt to let the institutional lenders and the investment class just eat some losses.
With 38% of our federal politicians having real-estate investments or being landlords, and the rate of ownership amongst canadian politicians being twice as high as the general population... They literally have skin in the game.
I'm surprised it's only 38%, that seems too low honestly.
Yup, no spine and maybe no ethics. Sometimes you have to do what is right, regardless of the consequences to yourself. Every ethical person knows that and every ethical person with a spine sucks it up and makes it happen.