Canada

As someone who believes:

A) Housing investors collectively have made incredibly large amounts of money at cost of other Canadians.

B) Essentially every single level of government has done little to aid in housing/infrastructure developments. If not outright block them.

C) Given the other 2 issues aren't dealt with immigration is the only thing that can completely pivot overnight but we've only increased it.

I think the biggest issues is that in the last election 80% of voters seemed to think more of the same was okay. To be clear I'm talking about the people who voted for a party who's housing minister said that investor is helping the situation or the party's leader said the same or people who couldn't even be bothered to vote.

50% of Airbnb in Toronto are hosted by entities of 10+ full homes. The average occupancy rate is 37 nights/year. How are we letting this happen?

You know what would go a long way? Make housing a shitty income source. Bring about heavy taxes on any additional livable property beyond the one you live in yourself. Ban all politicians from landlording - it’s a conflict of interest holding us all back. Ban corporations and foreign organizations from owning housing. You’d see a fire sale. Prices would plummet, and people who need housing would have a greater chance at it. Finally, get a fucking UBI going, and grow universal healthcare to include eye and dental care.

Enough is goddamn enough. We know who the problem is and it isn’t immigrants, it’s well-off folks taking and hoarding more than they need using their much larger disposable income and connections to take advantage of the rest of us.

There are solutions to making Canadian’s lives better, and they’ll take work and time to make happen, but this continuous pissing in the wind isn’t getting us anywhere. We can do this civilly with hard work, or we can get to a breaking point and do things like 1789 France. One way another, the bullshit has got to go.

Corporations should never be able to buy homes, they're not a commodity. I'm in the US and we have the same problem, it's fucking us over with no end in sight.

Immigrants have always been the punching bag of long term residents...

People from r/Canada are so pathetic and predictable that they got pissed at the article and the thread about this has already been locked.

"Why would corporations hoard housing if it wasn't for immigration?" is the main argument they use, like corporations wouldn't be attempting to profit over a basic human need in any circumstances.

This pisses me off so much.

I was researching the other day when we might expect the housing market to recover to the point where people can actually afford a house again.

Instead, what I found was lots of articles proclaiming that the housing market will "recover" by 2024. By "recover" they meant that the downward trend in $$$ is going up again. Meaning house prices going up.

It really blew my mind that there is so little concern for affordability and it's all about the investments.. So sad. Seriously considering leaving Canada at some point in the future in order to buy a house, which is nuts.

Blaming corporations is a cop-out. Small "mom and pop" landlords are just as capable of gouging their fellow Canadians for profit. At least there are real-estate corporations that build stuff instead of being purely parasitic.

And at least the corps have to pay tax on their profits. Private owners who bought when things were cheap and are now multimillionaires got all that money effort-free and tax-free thanks to the principal residence exception.

The beaverton speaks truth once again!

As a Lemmy passer-by and one-time resident of Toronto... I almost ate the onion on this one.

Ahh, didn't know Canadians had their own version of The Onion.

And they can't wait until we push our govt to build more homes ... So they can buy them up.

Everyone saying we need more supply is a loon. We need a reallocation of existing homes. Building more will just line these assholes' pockets.