[whywhywhydude]

I wonder why Canadians always look at housing from the demand perspective. What about supply? Canada is big. Unless everyone is trying to live in Vancouver and Toronto, there is more than enough space to build houses. Do you not have enough construction workers to build houses?

[renewiltord]

The truth of the matter is they're fighting very hard to not build anything. In Vancouver, they tried to suppress First Nations people's rights to build apartment blocks because they didn't want anyone to build homes. It's the same story as in California, and they have the same explanations: starting with the foreigners and techies, and then going down the list.

The fortunate thing is that the First Nations have rights over their land https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/vancouver-real-est...

The unfortunate thing is that others don't.

[LegitShady]

People are moving from toronto and vancouver, selling their houses there for a million, and then going to other cities and overpaying for houses there. That brings up the cost across all of canada. On top of the excessive immigration that is putting a huge strain on housing and healthcare. It has provided a massive upwards pressure on housing prices across all of canada.

And no, canada does not have the capacity to build housing at the rate immigration is bringing people in. half a million per year is a small city each year, mostly going to areas where work is available.

[Tiktaalik]

Lots of people look from a supply perspective. There's significant and growing political appetite for broad rezones and liberalization of housing rules.

However regardless of near term future policy that would enable more home development, interest rate hikes have soured the lending environment and caused housing development to plunge.

It may well be that we don't have enough construction workers too.

[bonadrag]

That is an excellent question.

As usual, there are many factors that contribute to the current housing situation. On the supply side, I feel a major issue is lack of qualified workers. And I am not sure immigration can solve this problem easily unless you are prepared to accept lower quality housing. It is not a coincidence that specialized trades like electrician, heavy machine operators, roofers are not immigrants. The standards are higher here. In the developing world, standards are much sloppier. So it isn't simply a "plug-and-play" situation. There are other issues though. I know that input prices have skyrocketed.

To me, the focus on the demand side is becuase it is easier to solve whereas the supply issues are more structural.

[pcthrowaway]

Are the standards for electricians, heavy machine operators, roofers somehow higher than software engineering, such that immigrants are more than capable of software engineering but apparently not trades?

[preommr]

You don't understand.

There's layers of rot that have created an untenable situation. The past few years Canada has become all about taking shortcuts and juicing numbers as much as possible. Bad decisions and incompetence create a feedback loop where we dig even deeper. If we built more houses, it would devalue the rest of the housing market - just for a start, it would wipe out the retirement plans for millions. It's not going to happen. It's a depressing downwards spiral where there is no easy exit. Not to mention that Canada wouldn't be able to execute that kind of plan because different parts of the government are trying to do different things.

[xienze]

> Unless everyone is trying to live in Vancouver and Toronto

They are, pretty much.

> Do you not have enough construction workers to build houses?

I don't think most people understand what's going on with Canada. Relative to their population size, the number of immigrants they're bringing in is absolutely insane. 500K+ a year with no signs of slowing down. And those people all need housing TODAY. Canada needs to commit to an absolutely massive, never-ending nationwide construction project to keep up with demand.

[lushdogg]

As someone who recently moved back to Canada I echo this.

This is an existential issue.

I own two houses, both mortgages paid, make 150k as a family and would need to save for decades to put a down payment on a detached home in a far away suburb of Ottawa.

People who didn't own a house a few years ago bought too much house for fear of being priced out of the market and now their mortgages are coming up for renewal...can't pay it so the banks are doing 50-90 year mortgages!!

[tenpies]

Actually the quarterly numbers came out today.

Year over year, Canada grew by 1.2 million new residents. That's 20% higher than Trudeau's already absurdly high target of 1 million new residents.

This is an engineered crisis in the making.

[theironhammer]

There's no people in those places in Canada because there's no jobs. And the climate is harsh. Canada is not as big as u think it is.

[Tiktaalik]

Yeah biggest misconception about Canada. It may be the second largest country by surface area but an enormous majority of all of that land is unsuitable for housing development due to either 1) literally being unbuildable ie. tundra or sheer mountain or bog 2) enormously more valuable for agriculture (ie. all the prairies).

There's places where sure yes it would be technically possible to build some new town but it's so cold and miserable that no one would want to and there's no local economic reason to put such a town in such a far flung place. Ultimately we probably will though if the population continues to increase at such a pace.

[refurb]

There is plenty of cheap(er) housing in Canada, but everyone wants to own a single family home in Vancouver or Toronto.