Not surprising at all when real estate is Canada's largest contributor to GDP. Our government(s) have hitched the entire economy to the housing market, which means that as house prices climb, so does our GDP... They're incentivized to keep housing unaffordable. #CDNPoli - ThreadSky

phillipmeintzer.bsky.social • 10 days ago

Not surprising at all when real estate is Canada's largest contributor to GDP. Our government(s) have hitched the entire economy to the housing market, which means that as house prices climb, so does our GDP... They're incentivized to keep housing unaffordable. #CDNPoli

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opheodrys.bsky.social•10 days ago

Reality is that with increased availability, prices will fall. This whole thing is a nothingburger, as it's Economics 101. There is no other way to "make" housing prices fall. The market is the only cudgel that is effective.

phillipmeintzer.bsky.social•10 days ago

I'm less concerned about making house prices fall than I am about making housing accessible to all. Availability is part of the solution for sure. But there are examples where publicly owned or social housing helps give people a non-market option. Home ownership itself is part of the problem.

opheodrys.bsky.social•9 days ago

Access is a function of supply and cost. As inventory increases--public or privately-built--, costs overall will naturally come down. No one has precluded public housing solutions through govt programming.

phillipmeintzer.bsky.social•9 days ago

That's not always the case. For example, there are more vacant housing units across Canada than there are homeless/unhoused Canadians. That's because people with more wealth are able to hoard existing housing stock.

opheodrys.bsky.social•9 days ago

Separate problem. Unoccupied (typically seasonal) housing stock is a problem but access will not solve the problem. Much of this stock is in rural or remote areas where jobs are limited. In cases where it is more practically located, economics would preclude ownership by those of limited means.

phillipmeintzer.bsky.social•9 days ago

I'm not talking about remotes areas. Estimates show that Vancouver alone has more than 20K empty units within city limits, yet people remain unhoused. The problem isn't a lack of supply, but the fact that we treat housing as a commodity in the first place. It's about use-value vs. exchange value.

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