The second section is the first one about (physical) building. This is a good point to recognize that all three major national parties basically "get it" now: they want lower fees on new housing & to end exclusionary zoning. The Lib advantage is they have clean & comprehensive rhetoric on it. - ThreadSky

oweninvan.bsky.social • 21 days ago

The second section is the first one about (physical) building. This is a good point to recognize that all three major national parties basically "get it" now: they want lower fees on new housing & to end exclusionary zoning. The Lib advantage is they have clean & comprehensive rhetoric on it.

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oweninvan.bsky.social•21 days ago

Now at the meat of the home-building promises: I'm not sure that the Federal gov being its own developer is actually a great idea or substantially better than leasing public land to non-profits, but it carries the great potential advantage of being able to ignore zoning. And,...

oweninvan.bsky.social•21 days ago

it creates the enabling circumstances for the second part, to create demand for modular & pre-fab construction, business models that typically don't work out exactly because they can't keep their factories busy in a cyclical construction market. I don't know if they can pull this off, but...

oweninvan.bsky.social•21 days ago

we have a severe cost disease in construction. Governments have to at least try to increase productivity, such as by creating economies of scale, and they seem to have a rough idea on how to make it work (for housing, at least).

oweninvan.bsky.social•21 days ago

But there is also cause for concern. Other governments, including the Canadian government in the past, have focused on building suburban/exurban low-density homes instead of building densely where the jobs are.

https://bioeconometrician.github.io/order_without_design/

oweninvan.bsky.social•21 days ago

... Obligatory @uytaelee.bsky.social interlude ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26iVJfiDgP0

oweninvan.bsky.social•21 days ago

The Feds traditionally have a major role in social housing. $10B in *financing* is not a big deal & it's not clear what this promise is exactly, e.g. equity is way better than loans & zero-interest is much better than prime. Per the costing plan, maybe roughly 1B/year is equity/interest subsidies?

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