CanadaPolitics

I tried to point this out on Reddit and Lemmy so many times and usually got downvoted. People want to believe there's some nefarious boogeyman buying up houses and keeping them vacant, but the reality is that virtually all homes in Canada have occupants. We just don't have nearly enough housing for the population.

Edit: it's still happening. In the other thread on this board about this article, people are saying "it's not the foreign buyers we should tax, it's the corporate buyers". People will do all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid considering the possibility that we need to densify our housing.

Residential property shouldn't be an investment, but we can make great strides if we ban corporate and foreign ownership (NO exceptions this time)

It's the kind of thing that might occur if people don't have pensions and need to secure some sort of income that would sustain them when they retire. 🫠 Perhaps in addition to tackling the lack of density, number of non-market units, etc. we should also look at the industry pushing people to create their own pensions.

Sort of. The thing is - they are factors, just the small low hanging fruit; more specifically it's the easiest to attack from a political stand point: Foreign owners don't vote in Canada.

The reality is - we need to pull out the stops at this point. Go after Foreign ownership, corporate ownership. Go after Vacant properties through taxes, and go after the short term rental market.

Foreign ownership might be say a few percent, short term rentals might be a few percent. But you couple 3-4 small sources and suddenly you are freeing up some 5-10% of housing and putting it back on the long term rental market or they are being sold on the open market... to people who want a home.

It's silly to point to the data on % of buys from foreign buyers because foreign buyers don't buy as foreign buyers, they buy through companies or children that they sent here as a student.

It's a quick hot take that many I know like to spout off without any effort to look into things. They aren't interested in looking any further into it unfortunately. Much like reading in school, they are done with that phase of their lives.

I think if they did, they would realize the major thrust of immigration are students to support universities higher tuitions and a continual new workforce for low wage jobs that others aren't going to work.

There is the added bonus of these people needing rental housing but it's not the main thrust of the issues which are too much for many to bother looking into.