It’s interesting to perspectives from elsewhere. The Netherlands is also facing a housing crisis, and they’re also talking about significant increases in construction. Part of that will be to limit local control.
Interestingly, they’re also talking about changing the type of construction: fewer rooms.
There isn’t quite enough context to explain why that would help, but it’s something I haven’t really heard politicians saying here in Canada.
What changes would you make to speed up housing growth here?
There’s a really simple answer. Many countries have done it before. The best example is the UK “Council Housing” system that they used to clean out the tenements and slums in the late 1800s.
First of all, we have to deal with the the fact that a lot of people have their whole life savings wrapped up in their houses. You issue “Canada housing bonds” and buy them out with bonds. This gives them an investment vehicle that can be traded or held until mature to ensure they’re not losing their shirts and we end up with a bunch of old people who can’t take care of themselves. Then you turn around, transfer those to municipal governments along with a bunch of development loans. Cities manage the properties, the already have massive construction and maintenance contracts on public buildings so by economy of scale they can actually build and maintain buildings at a lower cost than private property owners.
The loans back the bonds, the rents pay the loans, and you can still set rents so low, being a private landlord is no longer profitable and get a reasonable return on the bonds. At the height of the program in the UK the average rent was around 10-15% of monthly income and around 40% of the country had lived some part of their lives in council housing. The system was so effective it basically rebuilt Britain after the German Blitz. We have nearly 100 years data on both the positives, the potential hazards, and how to mitigate them.
We know how to fix this, we just won’t. It doesn’t make rich people richer and so there’s no political will to actually go out and do it.