Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Dan's avatar

Crombie’s housing plan is comprehensive and detailed. It goes right to the heart of the matter. It is also very technical. How many Canadians know what development charges are? How many people understand that rental tribunals protect both landlords and tenants against abuse? Crombie needs to get out and explain, explain and explain. She has an excellent plan, selling the plan is not that hard, explaining is.

When she does this, it will also explain to people that provinces have an important role to play when it comes to housing. So far provincial governments have been able to let Trudeau take the blame for literally everything. Once people understand that Doug Ford (and other premiers) are the real culprits, Trudeau will see better political fortunes as well (or least more fair fortunes).

Expand full comment
Argos's avatar

Her plan will have no effect on affordability, and MNTO is a soft front for the developer lobby. If you ask the MNTO people and actually get a straight answer, they do not actually believe any of their proposals will result in lower prices, just a lower rate of growth of prices (if that). In fact, it's right in the name of the org - "More Neighbours". It's not about affordability, but about increasing development. Many of the things they propose are good ideas (development charges are bad! Zoning is a disaster, there's too much red tape, land transfer tax is bad, etc etc), but none of those will have any effect on affordability, theyre good policies because those things have other bad effects.

The private housing market cannot and will not ever deliver affordability unless there's a population crash. It can't. To think that it will is to believe that landowners will voluntarily destroy the value of their asset by overbuilding.

The _only_ solution to the affordability crisis is non-profit building and ownership of housing: co-ops, land trusts, not for profits, and yes, social housing. That's it. Anything else is window dressing.

Expand full comment
2 more comments...

No posts