this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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I feel like I'm missing something. Don't we have a housing shortage, not merely an "owner-occupied" home shortage or a "rental" home shortage? Somebody please tell me what I'm missing.
If too many homes were owned by investors and rented out, why aren't rented homes more affordable? If you say, "greedy landlords," are you suggesting that the roughly 1.4 million landlords in Canada (source) are all effectively colluding? I find that highly implausible.
If we had sufficient housing supply for the demand in general, wouldn't that result in lower prices to both rent and own, depending on what's right for each individual?
AirBnB's a significant part of the issue. Short term rentals don't provide a place for people to actually live, while often providing a higher return over the short term than a long term rental unit.
Real estate speculators, too, add extra pressure to the housing market. Speculators often don't rent the property out at all, and attempt to treat housing as a raw commodity, buying up homes and just waiting for real estate prices to increase as the bubble continues to grow.
There may be real housing constraints in the country, but they're severely exacerbated by the view of housing as capital, rather than as homes.
Look, capitalism works. There are no problems and everybody is happy. As long as we keep pumping out children and just build build build, and then skim some off the top and invest in lawyers and lobbyists to change democracy for the better, we will all be rich and also ok.