Canada's Quiet Decline

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I am a aware of this, and have stated similar in the past, but this flies in the face of the allegations that younger generations will never have houses because... Boomers. Also... boomers control the vote, etc., and it's never going to change.

Getting a house when your kids are in university is pointless. Among many reasons why the birth rate is crap is because young families are stuffed into shoebox condos at exactly the time when they need three space.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by theman23

Generally the ones quoting the vast emptiness of Canada are also the ones who would find it anathema to actually build something on that vast emptiness. They want their cake and to eat it too. Not to single out Pavlov since I don’t know his opinion, but see the uproar in Ontario recently.

Yep. Ontario is great example of all this crap. And most of those protests have been Boomers. Not only against Greenbelt Development. They also show up at Council and OMB hearing to fight against practically anything that's not a single family home. Can't build out. Can't build up. Thanks to this lot.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Getting a house when your kids are in university is pointless. Among many reasons why the birth rate is crap is because young families are stuffed into shoebox condos at exactly the time when they need three space.

Couldn’t agree more, though the urbanists here might argue that a (larger) condo would be ideal for raising a family vs suburban living…

Regardless, I’m just saying that there is probably a cyclic aspect of this whereby housing supply goes up when boomers die off and potentially immigration rates return to sane levels. Maybe it’ll be too late for Millennials, and they will become known as the unlucky generation, but the following generations may have things better whereby they can enjoy what previous generations felt was “normal” life where it’s possible to get a house and plan a family during optimum child bearing years. Then we can just go back to worrying about divorce rates and broken families like the good ol’ days.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Yep. Ontario is great example of all this crap. And most of those protests have been Boomers. Not only against Greenbelt Development. They also show up at Council and OMB hearing to fight against practically anything that's not a single family home. Can't build out. Can't build up. Thanks to this lot.

The complaining NIMBY boomers in my city have had way too much influence up to now. They question and delay pretty much everything. But things are changing and a lot of anger has been directed at them to the point that they are looking very self-centered and keeping the housing issue going.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Just stating the obvious, that the life cycle is one constant that will continue as long as there are living things on the planet... in this case, people. Nobody is saying that it's not tough nowadays for first time buyers to obtain homes. It's absolutely horrible... another thing that is self evident and repeated on a daily basis, but let's just say it so we're both clear that we aren't clueless.

As a response to the response to my post, I'm simply saying that boomers dying will redistribute their wealth, and their homes will become available to people who need homes. In the mean time, their children will probably have been helped by them to get established, and they will soon be sitting on a windfall of inherited wealth (and have to pay out capital gains taxes as a result). Not that this will solve the housing issue, but it's out there.

I don't think the math will work out for this.

For one, even if our population was to stay flat, the proportion of Canadians inheriting wealth will dwindle with each passing generation (and that's to say nothing of loss of economic mobility that comes with this situation).

What's more likely is that our population will continue to grow at a rate greater than what we have seen over the last 30 years, but not so fast as it has the last 3 years. Remember that the CMHC's housing shortfall was estimated using growth figures about 3x lower than what we've actually seen in the last few years, so even with a reduction in that rate we're really not in a great position. Even with all of the boomer homes coming to the market, there's going to be a gap in housing.

I think someone123 said it best a while ago - Canadians are ideologically obsessed with the idea of growth but repulsed by the idea of development. We have to reconcile these two things.