If you listen to Canadian politicians, the solution to our housing crisis seems to be some combination of immigration reform and a herculean countrywide building effort.
But Paul Kershaw, a public policy professor at the University of British Columbia and founder of the affordability advocacy group Generation Squeeze, says the emphasis on increasing housing supply obscures an issue politicians are less likely to address.
Namely, that we, as a country, have become addicted to ever-rising home prices, largely because we've been conditioned to see our homes as financial assets.
"There are multiple things we need to do [to reduce prices], and more supply is one of them," said Kershaw. But funding announcements for building projects are a "way to organize our concern about the housing system so that we don't have to … look in the mirror — particularly homeowners who have been homeowners for a long time — and say: 'How are we entangled?'"
He said the current system incentivizes extracting profit from real estate, rather than prioritizing that everyone has access to affordable shelter.
"We need clarity about what we want from housing," said Kershaw. "And it has to start with: 'We don't want these prices to rise any more.'"
Unfortunately there isn't really much of an alternative other than government ownership. I don't think there's any issue with publicly owned apartments, but we obviously don't have the resources or political will to build enough housing in the short/mid term so corporate ownership is kind of a necessity.
We should have federally owned, provincially owned, municipally owned, pensions funds-owned, and non-profit owned housing. Having a large number of non-market housing from many different sources is the best way to move towards the Vienna model.
Best way in the sense that the money will not be dependent on a single source but multiple sources.