Canada

That release valve you speak of is unsustainable due to infrastructure and transportation costs. It only works up to some level of sprawl.

housing market basically entirely in control of investors who'll keep it inflated to profit themselves

Correct, which is why it has to be public investment. We need massive multi unit buildouts funded by new public spending. All of it durable, cheap affordable housing. This will not only act on prices via increasing supply, it will also act by bidding prices down because the prices will not be maximizing profits. Whoever wants a place to live, should be able to afford one of thes units. Let the market sort out prices and availability of more premium options.

That urban sprawl mechanism getting nixed is one of the better things to occur. Since maintaining roads, electric and water lines, fire safety coverage and so on are government expenditures this densifing initiative they have going is actually pretty on point.

Problem is the government doesn't want to upset the applecart for those who invested in the family home by cratering their portfolios so they are doing everything they can to mince around homeowners so the initiative to cool the market is the softest most delicate corrections they can manage. That sort of approach is gunna take a long time to work and is going to be vulnerable as hell to NIMBY counter initiatives. It's good to see the government is getting more creative with time but until everyone recognizes that property investing was built on risks one signed on when you bought the sort of big actions needed aren't going to serve up a fix unless the bubble bursts on it's own.

Supply needs to increase, but it can literally never increase enough given its current structure of investors and profiteering. As long as houses are bought by investors (anyone with two houses), then it means that normal people will be priced out as the investors push prices up higher than they should be. If house prices drop they’ll invest in building less housing.

I'm not sure you're familiar with the way the industry works. Builders and investors are very rarely the same people. Builders don't care if the buyer is going to live there or rent the property. Your theory also doesn't account for the ~80% of housing that is owner-occupied.

This is compounded by most new housing being multi-unit buildings that a single person cannot build on their own. When we had urban sprawl, you could still buy cheap land on the outskirts and build your own house if investors stopped building new developments, but with (very necessary) greenbelt policies, it eliminates that release valve, putting the housing market basically entirely in control of investors who’ll keep it inflated to profit themselves.

This is also quite the take — it's very rare to see anyone advocate for more urban sprawl or suggest that building more housing units drives up prices. If you want to live in an urban area, density is good because it means there's more housing supply. Land is the only finite resource in the equation, so making less efficient use of it in the hope that prices will come down is... Well, I'll need you to explain how that math is supposed to work.

You'd be amazed how many people don't understand that causation. For example, most people I talk to IRL about this don't know that most homeless drug users started using after they became homeless. Instead, they think the homeless became addicts first and spent their rent money on drugs. Once they're made aware of that and the fact that a housing-first approach is actually less expensive than the costs of homelessness (shelters, law enforcement, etc.) almost everybody I've discussed this with agrees that ensuring everybody has housing is the best approach. Mind you, they will rarely agree that everybody's house value needs to come down, but it's a start.

That's a relatively small problem (in terms of how many housed people are acutely impacted or even aware) in large sprawled cysts like the GTA. The unhoused population is visible in small localized spots. The vast remainder wouldn't even hear about it if they didn't read the news or don't have to go to those spots. The very large city of Mississauga for example hasn't heard or seen a peep about unhoused people. It's only stories by the few that work specifically downtown. The backyards are as clean as ever and the birds are singing. I wish everyone was acutely aware.

Oh yeah, the whole "greed is good, people are absolutely selfish" is another level of indoctrination. There's so many counterexamples but you need it for the theories based on these axioms to sound plausible.

Capitalism didn’t invent greed. Humans have been killing each other and stealing each other’s resources for tens of thousands of years. Greed isn’t even exclusive to humans. If you’ve ever seen what foxes or weasels can do to a henhouse, or what giant Asian hornets can do to a beehive, then you’ll see what I mean.

Capitalism is just the idea that competition leads to better outcomes for everyone and that the best competitors are people who put their own resources on the line (rather than someone else’s). What we’re seeing today is consolidation and centralization of wealth and power, the exact opposite of competition. Anyone celebrating this is not a capitalist, they’re a (wannabe) oligarch.

As for empathy, I think the only way to build that is to work directly with people and try to make a difference in their lives. Economic planning and policy making does not achieve empathy, you have to already have empathy going into it.

That’s not true at all. If you own your home outright (paid off your mortgage) or even if you’ve only paid off part of it, you can use it as leverage to borrow money you otherwise would not have access to. A common loan of this type is called a home equity line of credit.

Another thing you can do is what is called a reverse mortgage. This is where you effectively sell your house back to the bank but continue to live there rent-free. In exchange, the bank gives you a monthly payment based on the value of the home. You can often see TV ads for this sort of financial instrument. They’re very popular with retired folks who would like some extra money to travel or take up new hobbies.

The home you live in is not an investment if you aren't willing to downgrade

That’s not true at all. A house owned in an appreciating neighborhood or that is thoughtfully invested in (appropriate upgrades) can increase in value over time. Moving to a different neighborhood or selling and buying under different market conditions can allow regular people to realize real gains.