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Canada needs to build 1.3M additional homes by 2030 to close housing gap, says PBO
(www.thecanadianpressnews.ca)
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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That's an interesting difference. The PBO report just looks at improving the vacancy rate, while CMHC's is about affordability.
I know folks who bought around 2003 for $350k. Comparable houses in their neighborhood are around $1.2m. I have a really hard time seeing a drop of that magnitude.
That's how many need to be built, there is no reality in which we could build that many. There simply aren't enough construction workers, materials, land, or political will.
There's plenty of land; it's just zoned wrong.
Yes and no. There isn't plenty of available land where people want to live. You'd have to buy up existing properties to build up. Even if it got rezoned, it would take decades to get enough people to sell and move out to build 3.5 million more units and that's the build target for 2030 (which is only 6 years from now if we're being generous)
There's not plenty of land with infrastructure to support people. That many houses also needs more schools, hospitals, roads, gas stations, grocery stores, etc
It's not just houses we need to build.
You may not have understood my point. The land I'm talking about already has infrastructure; you just have to bulldoze the houses that are already there and replace them with multifamily.
Schools only have a set amount of space and hospitals a set amount of beds.
Bulldoze a neighbourhood of 500 detached units housing 1500 people, 500 of which are children, to build towers which can house 6000, 2000 of which are children, you will then need to bulldoze the school which was there to be able to build another school 4x as large or find vacant land to build extra schools.
More people = more infrastructure not just houses.
IDGAF; it's still infinitely better than sprawl.
Political will is the bottleneck. We'd be able to figure something out if the political class gave a shit.
If nothing else, they could start changing the tax laws so real estate became less of an investment vehicle.
Not really, the political class would cause a revolt from the voters (remember, home ownership is still around 65% in Canada) if they passed policies that dropped the price of housing by 80-90% that quickly.
I always hear that 65% homeowner number floating around but I still haven't seen a source that differentiates between home owners, and people who live in a household with home owners. Do adult children who can't afford to move out count as part of the 65% or the other 35%? Also, I don't know if any of the basement suites I've lived in have legally counted as a separate household as they don't have their own address or unit number. Do the stats take families like mine into account? I'm not trying to disagree with your point here, I'm just very curious if that statistic is actually as accurate or relevant as it seems.
The way it's calculated by Stats Canada is that of 100% of the residential properties that exist, 65% of them are occupied by the family that owns the property. This can include adult children.
Basement suites are counted as a separate household, even less-than-legal ones.
That does mean that there are less than 65% of people that own a home, but you also have to account for the fact that Homeowners are FAR more likely to vote than non-home owners from a demographic perspective. The voting block is absolutely massive AND is the group that has money to fund political campaigns.
Apparently it's 63% of Canadian families:
other fun facts:
I think the stat remains sort of relevant.
65% of Canadians agree with reducing the home ownership tax shelter.
Any change to tax laws would need to preserve the position of folks who have already made choices based on the current tax structure.
Adding a lifetime maximum on the capital gains for selling a primary residence would be a step in the right direction. Many US states apparently have that.
Similarly, removing/reducing the mortgage interest deductions for improvements to primary residences would clearly signal that homes are not investment vehicles.
As Gen Squeeze suggests, we can also increase taxes on residences that spike up over a certain value. They suggest one million dollars, but that could vary by region.
Other reply is correct. At best we can build 200-300k homes annually.
There's no possible way we can reach the 3.5m target