Quote:
Originally Posted by BaddieB
If the government is buying these apartments, it artificially increases the prices of the housing as there is now more demand for the housing than there otherwise would have been. It makes the housing more expensive for everyone else, even if marginally. This is 'crowding out' the market.
There's also the opportunity cost. This is a billion or so dollars that the government taxed its people, who could have spent it better on themselves than the government could have.
Condos are also a depreciating asset. Unless we want the government to now have an incentive to keep the rents on these condo high to eek out a profit, which again is not good for affordability.
It's a lose-lose.
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The government has been involved in the housing market one way or another forever and, in particular, they have been in the social housing business in some way since the 50s (with the biggest drop-off in the 90s when we had the debt crisis). I live steps from a social housing project and we've got huge developments in the south of False Creek and in Champlain Heights (and many others) that are forms of subsidized housing for Canadians.
If you don't think the government should be in the housing business in this way then nothing anyone says will change your mind about this no matter how it's run.
I'm mostly a "let the market decide" guy - I want liberal zoning rules so that we can a shit tonne of housing so prices come down that way but I'm also cognisant that it's not the only solution and it's also not going to work for all demographics so you have to have some component of gov't intervention especially in a housing crisis.
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