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tagesschau
Sep 1, 2006
Guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren.

Femtosecond posted:

I suppose the bull case for housing continuing to go up is that while we may have decoupled from some of these metrics (eg. wages) the reasons for the decoupling relate to housing being more fundamentally coupled with other metrics, namely land use.

If housing prices are most strongly coupled with future values of future land uses then it would make sense that the prices would at some point completely disconnect from local wages which are wholly related to current land uses.

This is of course "speculating" on the future use of land.

Though for some parcels is this even really speculation at this point or inevitability?

Is there a realistic scenario by which some very low density SFH within say a 30m walk of a Downtown core of a a thriving Canadian city isn't under enormous pressure to be redeveloped into higher and better uses say within 20 years?

Even if you account for this, the prices don't make sense. Condos are still being listed for prices that don't match local incomes, and homes of all types well outside the downtown core are not selling for an appreciable discount. There just aren't enough high earners around to pay these asking prices, and there's no prospect of there ever being enough.

tagesschau fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Feb 21, 2023

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Fidelitious
Apr 17, 2018

MY BIRTH CRY WILL BE THE SOUND OF EVERY WALLET ON THIS PLANET OPENING IN UNISON.

Cold on a Cob posted:

Interest is rent you pay to the bank. Maintenance is rent you pay to the condo board and/or home depot. Insurance is rent you pay to the insurance company. Property taxes are rent you pay to the city.

A surprising number of people don't really think about the unrecoverable costs of home ownership.

The main advantage to buying (aside from some measure of control over your living situation) is usually interest, maintenance, and property tax increases are a lot less painful than what can happen in a tight rental market but that's not always the case, as we've seen recently.

Edit; didn't even mention how many people rent their goddamn HVAC in Ontario, add that on to the "rent" column for homeowners!

Yeah, buying is quite often not a better plan financially speaking than renting. For people who aren't "investors" the benefits are that you can do whatever you want to do with the house (within the law), and make it your own. As well as some semblance of stability in your shelter situation. Home ownership comes with its own set of stress points but you generally don't have to worry that you could just be made homeless with 3-month notice.

Segue
May 23, 2007

Fidelitious posted:

Home ownership comes with its own set of stress points but you generally don't have to worry that you could just be made homeless with 3-month notice.

I think overall it's the last point that is a deciding factor for renters like me. My previously nice old building was bought by a corporation and now I pay rent to "Real Estate Investment Fund III". I've had friends renovicted or threatened with renoviction and the idea of going through that when I'm (ever) retired is terrifying.

While it might not make financial sense to buy, the increasing lack of stable long-term rentals makes the decision increasingly weighted even for people like me who saw themselves as forever renters.

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

Segue posted:

I think overall it's the last point that is a deciding factor for renters like me. My previously nice old building was bought by a corporation and now I pay rent to "Real Estate Investment Fund III". I've had friends renovicted or threatened with renoviction and the idea of going through that when I'm (ever) retired is terrifying.

While it might not make financial sense to buy, the increasing lack of stable long-term rentals makes the decision increasingly weighted even for people like me who saw themselves as forever renters.

Yeah this is pretty much the only reason I've _ever_ wanted to buy. Getting evicted so the owner can reset rents to market sucks. And even worse in markets w/o rent control, like when my rent doubled in Calgary one year.

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
Tim Hortons franchisee in P.E.I. evicts tenants to make way for temporary foreign workers

Hahahahaha wow

COPE 27
Sep 11, 2006

Fidelitious posted:

Yeah, buying is quite often not a better plan financially speaking than renting. For people who aren't "investors" the benefits are that you can do whatever you want to do with the house (within the law), and make it your own. As well as some semblance of stability in your shelter situation. Home ownership comes with its own set of stress points but you generally don't have to worry that you could just be made homeless with 3-month notice.

Yeah almost everywhere I've rented was cash flow negative for the landlord. Even if you factor in capital appreciation it's not really a better investment than a stock market ETF. The part that pisses me off is being forced to waste 100's of hours and 1000's of dollars every couple years because someone is allegedly moving in.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

COPE 27 posted:

Yeah almost everywhere I've rented was cash flow negative for the landlord. Even if you factor in capital appreciation it's not really a better investment than a stock market ETF. The part that pisses me off is being forced to waste 100's of hours and 1000's of dollars every couple years because someone is allegedly moving in.

I have to imagine it will begin to shift as this generation realizes that property is not the magical, perfectly safe investment they were always promised it was.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

tagesschau posted:

Even if you account for this, the prices don't make sense. Condos are still being listed for prices that don't make sense, given local incomes, and homes of all types well outside the downtown core are not selling for an appreciable discount. There just aren't enough high earners around to pay these asking prices, and there's no prospect of there ever being enough.

This is def true and so the takeaways have to be either 1) We're pricing in multiplexes broadly across the city but for some reason not skyscrapers or 2) the valuation model actually has nothing to do with speculation (despite how much people shake their fist at "speculators") and in fact has more to do with a combination of what incomes the property can produce + what a buyer can borrow.

For context again we're basically talking about the fact that you have this Vancouver Plan here where Vancouver has pretty much big time hinted like, "hey we think Strathcona & Kits should probably be like 30+ story residential towers at some point "soon" meanwhile they do not suggest the same for other areas of the city.



You would think then that there'd be some uptick in prices for these near downtown dark purple areas? Yet we haven't really seen it.

Now in the stock market when you have a company announcing its intention to buy another at some set price (eg. MSFT announces it would like to buy ATVI at $80 a share) the stock price for the buyee immediately spikes but only near that price target and the gap between that price and the buyers' stated price is essentially the risk that the market is calculating that somehow the sale doesn't actually go through, and time is factored in here, so the closer one gets to the sale date, the closer these numbers approach.

Could be that with these sort of future looking zoning expectations there are similar things at play, where even though everyone knows that eventually there's going to be 30+ story apartment buildings here, there is so much uncertainty about how and when that will happen, that the price doesn't gap up remarkably.

There is also the fact that the city does have it's Community Amenity Contribution (CAC) concept that tries to claw back land lifts in rezones, and that this is actually very effectively depressing the value of the land, which is literally what it is designed to do.

All that being said, man if I had a $2M+ house in one of these light yellow zones, I feel like the best thing I could do for my ancestors would be to trade that for a $2M house in one of those darker zones that will inevitably be upzoned for some tower development. Even with CACs in mind you have to figure the ultimate payout will be bigger.

So yeah interesting thought experiment but given that we've seen remarkable price appreciation in like South Vancouver of all places it suggests that other factors are dominant. Most likely income generation and borrowing ability dominate, and these things are related, as if you have an income generating rental suite, the amount you can borrow for that house increases, and then after that fuzzy subjective "Canadian Dream" related demand for detached homes.

And on the topic of income generation, the fact that extractable rents from basement suites are continuously increasing means that that revenues from a SFH are continuously increasing, which means that the mortgage underwriters are increasing the amount that people can borrow to buy these revenue generating SFHs.

As Vancouver shifts toward fourplexes, we should expect the prices to gap up, as we've shifted from a revenue generating capacity of two (three if building a laneway home is possible) to four units, and this ability will enable mortgage underwriters to allow for even larger mortgages. If we don't see a remarkable gap up it could be because that the market had already priced in the notion that all these properties would be fourplexes soon?

Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Feb 21, 2023

Purgatory Glory
Feb 20, 2005

COPE 27 posted:

Yeah almost everywhere I've rented was cash flow negative for the landlord. Even if you factor in capital appreciation it's not really a better investment than a stock market ETF. The part that pisses me off is being forced to waste 100's of hours and 1000's of dollars every couple years because someone is allegedly moving in.

I use housesigma and its got some really good data in there. They show listings that are best for schools, yearly increase in value and also best for rentals. Looking at their top listing in my area of metro Vancouver is a place that is cashflow negative of 535 bucks a month, second best is negative 662 per month. Truly the cream of the crop. Having said that, people were buying because the value of the place goes up not the mortgage coming down. Now these investors want help because the numbers don't work otherwise.

tagesschau
Sep 1, 2006
Guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren.

Femtosecond posted:

what incomes the property can produce + what a buyer can borrow

By this metric, though, the vast majority of SFHes in Toronto (and I'm not even including the 905 here) are laughably overpriced. Borrowing has been heavily curtailed, and potential renters simply don't earn enough to make the cap rate on a rental SFH better than just sticking your money in a GIC without the obviously unsustainable capital appreciation that was made possible only by cheap mortgages that aren't coming back anytime soon.

Hubbert
Mar 25, 2007

At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Femtosecond posted:

There is also the fact that the city does have it's Community Amenity Contribution (CAC) concept that tries to claw back land lifts in rezones, and that this is actually very effectively depressing the value of the land, which is literally what it is designed to do.

All that being said, man if I had a $2M+ house in one of these light yellow zones, I feel like the best thing I could do for my ancestors would be to trade that for a $2M house in one of those darker zones that will inevitably be upzoned for some tower development. Even with CACs in mind you have to figure the ultimate payout will be bigger.

Community Amenity Contributions: Balancing Community Planning, Public Benefits and Housing Affordability – March 2014





 

Internaut!
Apr 3, 2022

by vyelkin
Search sucks in this dogshit website but has anyone posted this yet:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canada-build-housing-immigration/

And does anyone think this is putting the cart before the horse and maybe immigration can be turned off for a while until things get sorted out for actual Canadians? 🤔

COPE 27
Sep 11, 2006

Internaut! posted:

Search sucks in this dogshit website but has anyone posted this yet:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canada-build-housing-immigration/

And does anyone think this is putting the cart before the horse and maybe immigration can be turned off for a while until things get sorted out for actual Canadians? 🤔

Sorry but you just committed a racism by questioning Trudeau's policies.

McGavin
Sep 18, 2012

Stopping immigration is an incredibly stupid idea that would put Canada’s economy directly on the road to turbofucked. Building more houses is something that should have been done ages ago, but wasn't and now we're seeing the consequences.

Internaut!
Apr 3, 2022

by vyelkin

COPE 27 posted:

Sorry but you just committed a racism by questioning Trudeau's policies.

Is it racist to proclaim I actually do not want to sell off my family's quality of life to the third world so that MP landlords can get even richer?

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Internaut!
Apr 3, 2022

by vyelkin

McGavin posted:

Stopping immigration is an incredibly stupid idea that would put Canada’s economy directly on the road to turbofucked. Building more houses is something that should have been done ages ago, but wasn't and now we're seeing the consequences.

Ah yes what Canada needs in this era of unprecedented automation and productivity is *shuffles neoilib talking point flash cards* more unskilled foreign workers.

McGavin
Sep 18, 2012

It has nothing to do with unskilled foreign workers and everything to do with needing more people working to support the incredible burden aging boomers are going to put on our healthcare and social welfare system. There are nowhere near enough old stock Canadians to do that.

Oakland Martini
Feb 14, 2008

D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
THE APARTHEID ACADEMIC


It's important that institutions never take a stance like "genocide is bad". Now get out there and crack some of my students' skulls.

McGavin posted:

Stopping immigration is an incredibly stupid idea that would put Canada’s economy directly on the road to turbofucked. Building more houses is something that should have been done ages ago, but wasn't and now we're seeing the consequences.

Can we not, like, consider immigration and housing policy jointly given how tightly intertwined their effects seem to be? It's obvious at this point that the optimal immigration policy is conditional on the expected growth of housing supply. Plowing ahead with 500K immigrants per year regardless of whether we're building enough housing for them is idiotic. No one is advocating to shut off immigration completely forever. But bringing it back down to 250K per year or so until we get our poo poo together on housing is totally reasonable.

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord

Oakland Martini posted:

Can we not, like, consider immigration and housing policy jointly given how tightly intertwined their effects seem to be? It's obvious at this point that the optimal immigration policy is conditional on the expected growth of housing supply. Plowing ahead with 500K immigrants per year regardless of whether we're building enough housing for them is idiotic. No one is advocating to shut off immigration completely forever. But bringing it back down to 250K per year or so until we get our poo poo together on housing is totally reasonable.

Think of the land owning class, how could you do this to their equity?

COPE 27
Sep 11, 2006

Internaut! posted:

Is it racist to proclaim I actually do not want to sell off my family's quality of life to the third world so that MP landlords can get even richer?

Sir, please reset your irony detector.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003


Man this is a really good link. I'd heard all these things discussed and debated in other places, but wasn't aware that there was an (old!) government report that literally spells out all the pros and cons of CACs clearly.

The report clearly sets out the sort of problems that CACs introduce when you have an environment like Vancouver where property is already very expensive and people don't really need to sell. (Effectively the situation in Strathcona/Kits that I just laid out)

quote:

Land Owner Incentive to Sell is an Important Consideration
Developers often do not own the land they want to develop. They often have to purchase the
property, and in many cases have to assemble a number of independently-owned parcels. Their
ability to proceed with projects depends on whether land owners see it in their best interests to
sell their property, and this will vary from person to person.

Consider two contrasting scenarios:
....
B. An established residential area, with homeowners who are reluctant to sell and relocate
their families, but where the community plan calls for higher density. A developer trying
to assemble land in these circumstances would likely have to pay a premium to convince
owners to sell. The developer would be less able to provide CACs, without jeopardizing
the viability of the proposed development.


This is the mechanism by which CACs could result in projects becoming unviable, which results in less housing, which results in higher rents.

We already know that people are perfectly happy to buy some house in East Van for $2M just to live in themselves. Therefore a developer needs to pay a premium to buy the property. If the CAC would depress the value of the land to $2M (or below!) then the developer has no ability to encourage the existing owner to sell, and so the developer cannot acquire the property and the development doesn't get built.

Another big warning in the report:

quote:

Negotiating CACs Based on Property Value “Lift”

Some local governments use the property value “lift” approach to securing CACs. This involves
estimating the land value prior to rezoning, estimating the value after rezoning, and using this
information as the basis for determining a financial target to negotiate as CACs.

Negotiating CACs based on a “lift” approach is inconsistent with the principles set out in this Guide,
and is the approach most likely to reduce the supply of developable land and housing, thereby
contributing to higher housing costs. The CAC principles set out in this Guide, including ‘planning
ahead’, nexus and proportionality, support an approach that clearly identifies community needs
and the impacts associated with new development, and links the CAC not to the “lift” in land value,
but rather to the cost of providing a package of amenities that makes sense given the development
being proposed.

Other issues to consider with the “lift” approach are that:
* the negotiations are often more complex and time-consuming, relative to the other
approaches; and,
* the value of the CAC is often highly unpredictable, compared with the other approaches.

I wonder who happens to do CACs based on property value lift? Of course it's Vancouver. Amazing how the report recommends so strongly "do not do this."

The broad takeaway of the report seems to be like "sure do CACs, but be modest because you can definitely gently caress people over by making any and all new development unviable." We've seen over in Ontario a lot of discussion around limiting the cities' abilities to put charges on developers in order to get rid of this problem and encourage as much development as possible. Maybe not the best solution, but this report spells out some of why one could see that as a solution. I believe the more recent BC task force on housing affordability report also suggested reigning in CACs and making them more straight forward and predictable.

All of this makes sense to me though it's nonetheless enormously frustrating to see like the only way (barring full communism now) to ensure that new homes are created, that development actually happens, is to reward and guarantee big profits to rich established land owners that speculated on land values increasing.

img_he_cant_keep_getting_away_with_it.jpeg

I don't blame activists and city planners at all for feeling like surely there is a way to tap and tax this unearned wealth, and I think there is, but seems to me like the implementation details really matter here.

COPE 27
Sep 11, 2006

Oakland Martini posted:

Can we not, like, consider immigration and housing policy jointly given how tightly intertwined their effects seem to be?

I don't remember if it was posted here already, but as a perfect case in point a Tim Hortons owner in PEI is evicting a bunch or renters to make room for TFWs.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

Faced with the decision between allowing people to build residential buildings that accommodate more than one household and stopping immigration, I'm afraid the choice is clear: We're going to need to stop immigration.

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Oakland Martini posted:

Can we not, like, consider immigration and housing policy jointly given how tightly intertwined their effects seem to be? It's obvious at this point that the optimal immigration policy is conditional on the expected growth of housing supply. Plowing ahead with 500K immigrants per year regardless of whether we're building enough housing for them is idiotic. No one is advocating to shut off immigration completely forever. But bringing it back down to 250K per year or so until we get our poo poo together on housing is totally reasonable.

Currently immigration levels are required to just maintain Canada's population. Any population growth is almost entirely dependent on a ton of immigration continuing into the future. If you gently caress with that, Canada's population will rapidly age and actually decline as the boomers die off.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

Here's the article to avoid the paywall

quote:

Canada needs to boost home building by 50 per cent to keep up with immigration, report says

Canada needs to ramp up home building by 50 per cent just to keep pace with immigration, according to a new report.

The country is on track to break ground on about 210,000 housing units this year, according to Desjardins Securities. But the Desjardins report says about 100,000 additional housing starts are needed this year and next, as Canada gets ready to admit a record number of immigrants.

Many economists and real estate industry experts believe there is a severe shortage of housing in the country – and it will only get worse. Canada has increased immigration levels to make up for the shortfall during the first year of the pandemic and to help fill jobs in construction, health care and other areas.

With the federal government planning to admit 1.45 million new permanent residents over the next three years, the report says, housing starts must become a priority, in part because of the time it takes to complete a housing unit.

“We have to dig out of a hole and move higher ultimately,” said Randall Bartlett, Desjardins’ senior director of Canadian economics.

A large share of new immigrants end up in Ontario and B.C., two provinces where home prices have historically risen faster than in the rest of the country.

Although the typical home price across Canada dropped 13 per cent from the peak last February by December, the average price in the most popular destinations – Toronto and Vancouver – still tops $1-million.

“If these newcomers to Canada continue the recent trend of moving to Ontario and British Columbia, affordability there and nationally will erode further,” says the report, authored by Mr. Bartlett and Marc Desormeaux, the bank’s principal economist.

At the same time, rental rates have been quickly increasing as many would-be homebuyers have had to continue renting owing to higher mortgage rates.

Desjardins’s call for more home construction echoes statements from the national housing agency, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., which has repeatedly said the country needs to increase its supply of homes.

There were 261,849 housing starts last year, according to government data. That is expected to decrease this year because developers postponed product launches when the costs of borrowing and construction soared.

Hmm given that the Feds are the ones increasing immigration so much, maybe they could help out with the housing problem somehow. Hey look the Minister for Housing just announced something. Let's have a look.

quote:

Feds announce $6.7 million for rapid housing projects in Saskatoon
The funding will be used to create at least 33 new housing units in the city.

A new injection of federal money is expected to create at least 33 new rapid housing units in Saskatoon.

On Tuesday, the federal government and Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark announced that $6.7 million will be directed to Saskatoon as part of the Rapid Housing Initiative. Saskatoon is one of 41 recipients selected for the third round of the RHI’s city stream in November.

“This important funding will help to build badly needed affordable housing units for some of the most vulnerable individuals and families in our community,” Clark said. “We continue to see an increase in residents at risk or already experiencing homelessness in the community.”

The money will be used to create new permanent affordable housing or purchase existing buildings that will be rehabilitated or converted. According to a timeline on the City of Saskatoon website, a call for proposals was opened in December and has since closed. Projects selected by the city have an expected occupancy date of November 2024.

...

wow 33 whole units in Saskatoon. I'm sure we'll have this problem fixed up in no time.

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Looking at Canadian population pyramids is always wild because you look at basically every generation under like 16 and you're like holy poo poo we do not have enough people, we are turbofucked. Then always get a bulge in the 25-30s where we successfully convinced hundreds of thousands of foreigners to fill in the gaps and gifting us another ten years of prosperity. The problem for homegrown Canadians is not the immigrants, it's the boomer generation has made life so loving expensive for Gen-Z and Millennials that it doesn't really make financial sense for them to have kids, so we have to keep importing people to fill out our consumption and tax base. In short, if you want to shut the immigration taps off, then start eviscerating all the benefits the boomer generation is currently reaping at the expense of the young, and also maybe have like 4 or 5 kids yourself to set an example for everyone else.

Precambrian Video Games
Aug 19, 2002



Perusing their half-assed platform for last election, the Liberals did:

quote:

Launched [the] National Housing Co-Investment Funding to build new housing and repair or renew the existing community and affordable housing supply.

This $13.2 billion fund provides grants and low-cost loans to support the development of up to 60,000 new affordable units and repair up to 240,000 affordable and community units over the next ten years. Investments will also support the creation or repair of at least 4,000 shelter spaces for survivors of family violence, the creation of at least 7,000 new affordable units for seniors, and 2,400 new affordable units for people with developmental disabilities.

There are two streams within the National Housing Co-Investment Fund:

The Housing Construction Stream for new construction, which provides $5.19 billion in loans and $2.26 billion in capital contributions over 10 years; and
The Housing Repair and Renewal Stream, which provides $3.46 billion in loans and $2.26 billion in capital contributions over 10 years.

Part of the latter half is trickling in to TCHC, for example. Something like $110M/year. That's not enough to cover the current repair backlog but it's something.

quote:

Our plan will invest $4 billion in a Housing Accelerator Fund which will grow the annual housing supply in the country’s largest cities every year, creating a target of 100,000 new, middle-class homes by 2024-25.

Per this article, this has turned into:

quote:

The government issued a statement to the Daily Commercial News this week indicating the fund “will construct 100,000 new homes by clearing up roadblocks to construction at the municipal level.”

The target is to be reached by 2027-28.

There was also a bit on converting offices to housing, which as far as I know is costly and not as practical as it sounds. No clue if anything has actually happened with that:

quote:

As the demand for retail and office space has changed due to COVID-19, some landlords, particularly in major urban cores, are facing higher vacancies. This is an opportunity for property owners and communities to explore converting excess space into rental housing, enhancing the livability and affordability of urban communities.

We will also double our existing Budget 2021 commitment to $600 million to support the conversion of empty office and retail space into market-based housing. We’ll convert space in the federal portfolio, but commercial buildings as well. We will also work with municipalities to create a fast track system for permits to allow faster conversion of existing buildings, helping maintain the vibrancy of urban communities.

So as usual, too little, too late, and begging the question why they're continuing to increase immigration annually now when the half-assed plans to expand housing and support new immigrants are years away. To which I'd say that the likely answer is that corporate overlords demand cheap labour and do not really care how that labour subsists. On that note, the other day there was an article on Fiera Foods having yet another scandal, this time for tax avoidance/evasion/who gives a poo poo it's 100% fraud. They're an industrial bakery notorious for hiring (mostly recent immigrants) through temp agencies, giving them inadequate training in dangerous conditions, causing three deaths in the last decade or so: one crushed inside a dough mixer, another run over by a truck, and a third having her head scarf sucked into an improperly guarded machine, strangling her. And they're still loving operational!

Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Feb 21, 2023

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


The way I had it explained to me once is that immigration policy is ultimately decided by the federal government, because the federal government cares more about the longer term health of the tax and consumption base of Canada as a whole. We need immigrants because Canadians aren't having children, it's unarguable, and that is completely regardless of whether there's housing there waiting for them. Housing policy however is not decided by the feds, that is the domain of the individual provinces and municipalities who, in the cities with all the great jobs and social networks, are full of NIMBY fuckwads sitting on massive mostly empty houses and refusing to back any projects that might increase housing availability. In short, if you want someone to blame for the cost of housing in your area, go speak to your local government.

McGavin
Sep 18, 2012

Bring back the CMHC we had in the 40's. With the tax rates we had in the 40's.

Precambrian Video Games
Aug 19, 2002



qhat posted:

The way I had it explained to me once is that immigration policy is ultimately decided by the federal government, because the federal government cares more about the longer term health of the tax and consumption base of Canada as a whole. We need immigrants because Canadians aren't having children, it's unarguable, and that is completely regardless of whether there's housing there waiting for them. Housing policy however is not decided by the feds, that is the domain of the individual provinces and municipalities who, in the cities with all the great jobs and social networks, are full of NIMBY fuckwads sitting on massive mostly empty houses and refusing to back any projects that might increase housing availability. In short, if you want someone to blame for the cost of housing in your area, go speak to your local government.

Local governments are entirely a creation of provincial governments and are really neither designed nor equipped to expand desireable housing on their own. Left to their own devices, they either promote sprawl (where still possible) or preserve the interests of existing FYGM residents above all else, because... what else would you expect them to do? I'm happy if Victoria is a good counterexample, but it's a federal responsibility to provide (funding for) basic services for everyone. Setting immigration levels based on perceived labour needs and then saying VOTE locally if you all want adequate shelter at some point in your lives is a bad joke.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

qhat posted:

The way I had it explained to me once is that immigration policy is ultimately decided by the federal government, because the federal government cares more about the longer term health of the tax and consumption base of Canada as a whole. We need immigrants because Canadians aren't having children, it's unarguable, and that is completely regardless of whether there's housing there waiting for them. Housing policy however is not decided by the feds, that is the domain of the individual provinces and municipalities who, in the cities with all the great jobs and social networks, are full of NIMBY fuckwads sitting on massive mostly empty houses and refusing to back any projects that might increase housing availability. In short, if you want someone to blame for the cost of housing in your area, go speak to your local government.

Also, the difference between someone moving from Delhi to Vancouver versus Saskatoon to Vancouver is literally an arbitrary line on a map. A person who was born a Canadian citizen has fundamentally no more moral right to move to a place to which they have absolutely no real connection than a permanent resident or naturalized citizen.

Is there a moral right to not be essentially gentrified out of your own home? Arguably, yes, there is; but intra-national migration ought to be viewed no differently than international migration in that respect.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

There's a bunch of detached from reality egg heads in Ottawa that are like "ah yes well thanks to our elegant federal division of powers, the Provinces will respond to the increased demand that we've caused by spiking immigration by unleashing the power of the Free Market to build more supply, therefore we here in the Federal government don't need to do anything" but meanwhile the Mayors are like "why the hell should I stick my head out to do something that will be unbelievably unpopular?" and the Province is caught flat footed by the realization that they actually have to do something, and are similarly weary of upsetting residents in key urban ridings.

So we're all hosed apparently. Does seem like the Provinces are realizing they need to do something, but are stuck in the making reports and evaluating reports stage, making change oh so slowly and most of it so far much to timid to have any real effect. It seems like it will be years before something notable happens.

End result of all this is that voters are gonna look around, realize their lives have become a lot worse, and blame the Federal government and vote them out.

Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Feb 22, 2023

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

COPE 27 posted:

I don't remember if it was posted here already, but as a perfect case in point a Tim Hortons owner in PEI is evicting a bunch or renters to make room for TFWs.

Literally on this page I posted it, yes

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

lol man I thought the government back tracked on allowing TFW for like fast food and poo poo but I guess they quietly went back and allowed it again.

Femtosecond
Aug 2, 2003

no u see employing Canadians as fast food workers would mean paying them a living wage, which would be inflationary.

Precambrian Video Games
Aug 19, 2002



Femtosecond posted:

lol man I thought the government back tracked on allowing TFW for like fast food and poo poo but I guess they quietly went back and allowed it again.

Ah, sweet summer child:

quote:

Temporary foreign workers and international students have become an integral part of the labour force

Canada is increasingly reliant on temporary foreign workers (TFWs) to fill labour shortage gaps. The number of TFWs (work permit holders on December 31 in each year) increased seven-fold from 111,000 in 2000 to 777,000 in 2021. The share of TFWs among all workers with T4 earnings rose from 2% in 2010 to 4% in 2019, and was particularly high in some of the lower-skilled sectors in 2019, such as agriculture (15%); accommodation and food services (10%); and administrative and support, waste management and remediation services (10%). TFWs were also overrepresented in some higher-skilled industries, such as professional, scientific, and technical services sector (6%); and information and cultural industries (5%).

Between 2000 and 2019, the number of international students with T4 earnings increased from 22,000 to 354,000, a result of both a higher number of international students and their rising labour force participation rate (from 18% to 50%). The increases were particularly large at the non-university postsecondary level, where the labour force participation rate rose from 7% to 58% and the number of participants rose from 3,000 to 173,000.

Purgatory Glory
Feb 20, 2005
I'd be really curious what new immigrants think of the situation. Are they feeling like they were lied to when it comes to Canada being prepared for them. Are they telling family back home it's a poo poo show? Imagine picking up the family and heading to Australia cause you see ads saying move to Sydney and then you get there an line up to view a rental property with 100 other people.

COPE 27
Sep 11, 2006

Purgatory Glory posted:

I'd be really curious what new immigrants think of the situation. Are they feeling like they were lied to when it comes to Canada being prepared for them.

At least for the international students / provincial nominees a lot of them feel they feel like they were lied to and taken advantage of, but they can't go back because everything is riding on them. I see a ton of anxiety and depression because of this too.

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


eXXon posted:

Local governments are entirely a creation of provincial governments and are really neither designed nor equipped to expand desireable housing on their own. Left to their own devices, they either promote sprawl (where still possible) or preserve the interests of existing FYGM residents above all else, because... what else would you expect them to do? I'm happy if Victoria is a good counterexample, but it's a federal responsibility to provide (funding for) basic services for everyone. Setting immigration levels based on perceived labour needs and then saying VOTE locally if you all want adequate shelter at some point in your lives is a bad joke.

It's not even an incentative from a democratic view, because only Canadian citizens can vote so why bother diverting resources to make the lives of the PRs/TFWs better. Homeowners are a huge bloc in these cities and are mostly Canadian, so even if the fed did come down and dump a Brink's truck in parliament to be used to spew housing everywhere, any policy that doesn't prop up house prices is political suicide so it still won't happen. This is the paralysis that exists at the heart of housing policy in Canada, and that's without the federal government's pandering to homeowners itself with perpetually low interest rates and policies explicitly designed to encourage housing frenzy.

That still however doesn't change the fact that Canada needs immigrants. The fact that we need immigrants is a purely symptom of Canadians not having children, which is a symptom a government whose only concern is the accumulation of wealth by the older generations. The sooner you stop pandering to people who provide nothing to the economy in 2023 except keeping the realtor commission as a % of GDP stat high, the sooner you can start shutting off the taps.

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redbrouw
Nov 14, 2018

ACAB
Toronto and Vancouver are the only places making an honest effort to have immigration services. There are some niches elsewhere but it's not as broad.

The federal government needs to make immigration services available outside of big cities, or people moving here need to be able to do a cursory examination of the internet to find out that they can't afford to live in one of two cities, and they can't easily live outside them.

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