Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to believe he can amend a heretofore inviolate law of economics: that of supply and demand.
He said as much in a recent appearance on The Globe and Mail podcast City Space in which he talked about housing affordability. He was asked whether current homeowners will have to accept some sacrifices so aspiring homeowners – who are presently priced out – can enter the market.
Canadian real estate prices have surged in almost every market, with a typical home price doubling in many regions. A median household in major cities like Toronto and Vancouver would need to save over 20 years for just the down payment, more than 3x the historic average. Seems absurd? The outlandish scenario was apparently a part of everyone’s retirement plan, according to Canada’s government.
That’s according to statements made by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in an interview with the Globe & Mail’s City Space podcast. “Housing needs to retain its value… It’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future nest egg,” he explained when discussing affordability.
The statement is shocking. If the intention was to never lower home prices, what was with the tens of billions spent on improving affordability about? We’ve long argued many of the measures implemented were actually to reinforce prices, not lower them. But let’s look past all of that, and get to the most disturbing part of that sentence.
An unhoused woman almost a year into exile at a small RV encampment in Hamilton’s North End says she’s hopeful a permanent housing solution that fits her needs will arrive soon.
Heather Grant’s precarious life at the Barton-Tiffany brownfield continues after a dispute over plumbing with a landlord last June put her family into a tent at Woodlands Park then the recreational vehicle they currently reside in today.
Sometimes, politics is simple.
Occasionally, voters disregard all the noise, look at their own personal circumstance and vote accordingly.
That would not bode well for the Liberals in next year’s election.
In the House of Commons on Monday, Conservative Leader, Pierre Poilievre, pointed out that three-quarters of the outstanding mortgages in the country will be coming up for renewal before the end of 2026.
As predicted on this blog, Trudeau is working to support sky high real estate prices in cities to protect his urban vote base.
Trudeau says real estate needs to be more affordable, but lowering home prices would put retirement plans at risk
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government aims to make housing more affordable for younger Canadians without bringing down home prices for existing homeowners.
Cutting shelter costs while ensuring that homeowners’ property values remain high could be viewed as contradictory, but Mr. Trudeau was adamant that property owners would not lose out.
“Housing needs to retain its value,” Mr. Trudeau told The Globe and Mail’s City Space podcast. “It’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future nest egg.”
Mass immigration will be maintained at unsustainable levels to force housing prices ever higher and drive rents out of reach.
Trudeau’s corporate cronies will reap a bonanza from the shortages mass immigration brings not the least of which is depressed wages.
By 2021, Ryan Fehr had grown tired of renting.
Fehr, 40 and a single dad, had just broken up with his girlfriend. He found there was no limit on how much landlords could raise the rent in Calgary, and he yearned to put down some roots in a house, especially for his then-two-year-old son, whom he had with his previous partner. It was also the middle of a pandemic. House prices were falling. Fehr felt he had a shot at earning his place in the vaunted club of homeownership.
… Not only did the central core resemble a ghost town – mostly because thousands of civil servants, backed by powerful unions, refuse to return to their office desks – but many of the walking routes I used to take through downtown have morphed into a distressing obstacle course of homeless people camped out on the sidewalks. In fact, the last time I felt like that – and I’ve been to some of the meanest cities in the world – was in Pretoria, South Africa, around the time of the BRICS summit last year, when a wrong turn to the diplomatic quarter brought a few anxious encounters. On many strolls through my former home, I shook my head in disbelief thinking, “This isn’t the Ottawa I know or love.”
Canadians fleeing major cities was supposed to be a temporary trend, but it’s accelerating at a breakneck speed. Net interprovincial migration, the balance of people who arrived and left provinces, accelerated in 2023. Economists at BMO are warning this trend was unusually strong in the country’s traditional economic hubs—Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. The bank attributes the unusually rapid flight to a number of reasons, but ultimately the biggest one is affordability. That issue is about to reshape these cities, and Canada’s economy.
I am growing curious about white flight from Toronto. No records are publicly available assuming they even exist.
Toronto to take human-rights-based approach in dealing with homeless encampments
The City of Toronto is proposing a new approach to dealing with homeless encampments in parks, saying it will emphasize human-rights-based supports and use forced clearings only as a last resort.
Last year, a report from Toronto’s ombudsman criticized the city for “significant unfairness” in its 2021 direction to clear encampments in downtown parks. This week’s proposal represents the city’s response in the form of a set of guidelines that would make clear that encampments will only be cleared as a last resort, and only when certain conditions are met.
It’s a Big Business.
Budget Office calculates feds @INFC_eng spend $561M/year to save 6,000 people from homelessness: "Billions have built bureaucracies." https://t.co/Y4ncGze4t8 #cdnpoli @PBO_DPB pic.twitter.com/1dnauGynl5
— Blacklock's Reporter (@mindingottawa) May 23, 2024
The Bank of Canada’s decision to hike rates is making it harder for buyers to get mortgages — and builders to afford new projects.
Orange construction cranes pepper the skyline of Metro Vancouver, seemingly more than ever.
Gleaming new condo towers are going up like never before, from North Vancouver to Surrey. House and rental prices are exorbitant. Old houses are being torn down for multi-unit buildings. It all gives the impression the residential construction business is booming.
OTTAWA — Despite $443 million in new annual spending aimed to reduce homelessness the number of people without a roof over their head has grown by 20 per cent in Canada, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The new $443 million was a 374 per cent increase compared to prior spending, but it doesn’t appear to be having the desired effect.
It’s a vicious circle with no end in sight, courtesy of the current Liberal government. Canada needs to build more houses, so it needs more construction workers. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reports a shortage of construction labour as one of three factors contributing to longer build times, and RBC’s assistant chief economist Robert Hogue predicts that Canada requires over 500,000 additional construction workers to build all the homes needed between now and 2030.
A new report says shelters are not designed to meet the physical or mental health needs of the growing number of older adults who are homeless.
Lead author Dr. Jillian Alston says people who experience homelessness age faster than people who are housed due to factors such as ongoing stress and the inability to properly manage chronic medical conditions.
New home construction in Ontario has slowed to a pace not seen since 2018, putting Premier Doug Ford’s government further off track from hitting its housing targets.
Housing starts in April in urban areas of Ontario were down a whopping 37 per cent from the same month last year, according to the latest figures reported by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
Economists see no signs of the slowdown reversing in the months to come, creating the potential for a grim 2024 when it comes to new home construction.
Rule of thumb: Everything the Trudeau government has or will have to say about “fixing” the housing crisis they themselves created is a lie.
The city of Oakland recently removed traffic lights from one busy intersection and replaced them with stop signs after the electrical boxes that controlled the traffic lights were repeatedly tampered with and copper from them was stolen.
Local residents and those who own businesses in the area say the issue with the traffic lights stems from the nearby homeless encampment, which has grown over the years.
It’s all about the land, the price of dirt.
The facts and figures are discouraging for people who don’t own urban property, which in a few decades has become the greatest source of wealth in the English-speaking world.
Although land inflation is a global urban phenomenon, Metro Vancouver residents suffer from the worst from it. The cost of dirt in Vancouver, for instance, hyper-escalated by 500 per cent between 2008 and 2016.
