Housing Bubble II: The Quest To Build Enough Homes Where People Actually Need Them

[theman23]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

So what do we do? It's obvious, we slow our population growth but I think everyone knows that but often the issue is by how much? What exactly is an ideal population growth rate? The answer to that question is NOT a financial or demographic one but rather a one based upon our values.

Basically every Canadian, regardless of income, believe that there is a minimum standard of living that all Canadians should enjoy. That means having enough nutritious meals to eat, having access to good healthcare, and having a decent and affordable roof over your head. Those basic and shared values cross all political and socio-economic boundaries.

So in order to again realize these values {Canada once was able to meet these standards}, we have to gear our population growth, 95% of which is due to immigration, with these shared values in mind. Can we grow at a rate that ensures that we can reach these targets for all current Canadians and ones hoping to come here.

Our values should determine our immigration rates and if that means bringing our immigration down from 1.3 million to 13,000 every year then so be it.

I'm not sure how you can separate quality of life from finances. But the current answer of "lets bring in 500,000 but also another million or two in case Ted wants to sell more cell phone plans" is probably not doing much to put meals on the table for Canadians.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by theman23

I recently had a taxi driver who spent the entire ride ranting to me about the influx of immigrants into this country and how it was affecting his cost of living, when judging by his accent he probably did not grow up here himself. It's mostly the comfortable boomers and Gen X who have their heads in the sand, who look at their large investment portfolios and negligible effective tax rates and wonder what the problem is.

Yes. I have sometimes seen points about how immigrants must like immigration but it's very natural for people to want to pull the ladder up behind them. Some people view it through a lens of tolerance but that has less and less relevance as a cultural differentiator in Canada and I wonder again how much of this is influenced by older people looking back on no longer politically dominant attitudes.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

I tend to prescribe to the philosophy of "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" or however it goes. I doubt the diploma mills with a few hundred students have a tangible influence on policy decisions.

I don't think there is a malicious plan but I do think personal impacts on the decision makers matter and that it's easy to have luxury beliefs when you are sheltered by wealth and power. I forget the exact figure but here in BC a large number of MLAs, maybe the majority, own multiple properties for example, and virtually all of them own at least one property.

Lots of politically-connected people have high-level roles and may receive payments relating to postsecondary educations and will feel the tailwinds there, and virtually all of them are experiencing a wealth effect from rising assets while none of them are trying to compete with TFWs for gas station jobs.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Basically every Canadian, regardless of income, believe that there is a minimum standard of living that all Canadians should enjoy. That means having enough nutritious meals to eat, having access to good healthcare, and having a decent and affordable roof over your head.

If these are these are the values we want, especially good healthcare, then immigration is traditionally the way to handle our aging population. Immigrants tend to be higher earning than domestic workers so they provide a bigger tax base, and immigrants tend to be younger than the domestic population and we're not providing healthcare with 70 year old baby boomer nurses.

I actually have no idea where this 1.3M number comes from, we generally are targetting 500k permanent entries per year. It just might be the case that that's the rate we require to maintain our standard of living (or prevent it from reducing faster).

Originally Posted by someone123

I don't think there is a malicious plan but I do think personal impacts on the decision makers matter and that it's easy to have luxury beliefs when you are sheltered by wealth and power. I forget the exact figure but here in BC a large number of MLAs, maybe the majority, own multiple properties for example, and virtually all of them own at least one property.

Lots of politically-connected people have high-level roles and may receive payments relating to postsecondary educations and will feel the tailwinds there.

This has been the case everywhere as long as governments have existed. The McDonalds worker doesn't exactly have the free time, connections, or capital to run an election campaign (or join the dictatorship depending where you are). Politicians are still voted on by the common man (or at least in theory), and I like to believe we have a fairly functional democracy so I don't think politicians here are uniquely out of touch with the general population.

Do they make unpopular decisions sometimes? Yes. Doesn't always mean they're the wrong decision for the country. Sometimes it is but I don't believe it's out of self centred greed.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by chowhou

You're extremely extremely dumb if you think I'm talking about Baffin Island.

You're very dumb if you think that development of additional homes in our cities is even close to legal.

One of the dumbest things in this country is the fact that on a 10k sqft lots we allow for 6000sqft houses (which are often inhabited by multiple families) but god forbid we allow for 4 1500sqft homes on that lot. That would be ruining the established community and quality of life.

I'm trying to say you're very dumb.

If you were to ever suffer from a bowel obstruction, you would likely be admitted to hospital and be told not to eat. Chances are that your doctors would insert a pump into your stomach to pump out any food or gastrointestinal secretions, because any further distention to your bowels would cause a tremendous amount of pain and put you at risk for a possibly fatal perforation (think of an overinflated balloon popping). Likely they would schedule you for surgery or some form of treatment to relieve the obstruction before allowing you to eat again.

The current plan of bringing in record amounts of new immigrants without having the downstream ability to support them is akin to your doctor deciding to force feed you while your bowel is still obstructed, because "there's basically no good argument against nutrition that is the fault of nutrition. It's the other systems that have to keep up".

Originally Posted by chowhou

I actually have no idea where this 1.3M number comes from, we generally are targetting 500k permanent entries per year. It just might be the case that that's the rate we require to maintain our standard of living (or prevent it from reducing faster).

Our population grew by 1 million in 2022 and 1.4 million in the first three quarters of 2023, entirely through immigration. These numbers have been posted many times in this thread and are well known.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by theman23

If you were to ever suffer from a bowel obstruction, you would likely be admitted to hospital and be told not to eat. Chances are that your doctors would insert a pump into your stomach to pump out any food or gastrointestinal secretions, because any further distention to your bowels would cause a tremendous amount of pain and put you at risk for a possibly fatal perforation (think of an overinflated balloon popping). Likely they would schedule you for surgery or some form of treatment to relieve the obstruction before allowing you to eat again.

The current plan of bringing in record amounts of new immigrants without having the downstream ability to support them is akin to your doctor deciding to force feed you while your bowel is still obstructed, because "there's basically no good argument against nutrition that is the fault of nutrition. It's the other systems that have to keep up".

Oh my mistake, I forgot that we were proposing immigration as a solution to the housing crisis?

This analogy almost exactly makes my side look good here, eating is absolutely not the issue. Everyone needs to eat, it's good for you. Your problem here is that your body isn't able to absorb the nutrition that you need to survive because there's an unhealthy blockage. Perhaps we should remove the blockage...?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by chowhou

This has been the case everywhere as long as governments have existed. The McDonalds worker doesn't exactly have the free time, connections, or capital to run an election campaign (or join the dictatorship depending where you are). Politicians are still voted on by the common man (or at least in theory), and I like to believe we have a fairly functional democracy so I don't think politicians here are uniquely out of touch with the general population.

I dunno. I wouldn't be surprised if Canadian politicians have become less in touch with the working class over time compared to a few decades ago. Even the NDP don't really seem that in touch these days. They used to have a more obvious labour focus. There seem to be more separate media bubbles as well.

There are historical trends like what happened after the global financial crisis that tend to gather steam over time. We had a long period of very low interest rates without a major real estate correction, and that has altered the relationship between asset holders and labour. We also have the Boomer cohort exiting the labour force.

There are of course many factors, and a lot of things would have to change to make housing affordable in Canada.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by chowhou

Oh my mistake, I forgot that we were proposing immigration as a solution to the housing crisis?

This analogy almost exactly makes my side look good here, eating is absolutely not the issue. Everyone needs to eat, it's good for you. Your problem here is that your body isn't able to absorb the nutrition that you need to survive because there's an unhealthy blockage. Perhaps we should remove the blockage...?

Jesus Christ this thread is Groundhog Day.

Aren't you also the one who tried to explain that real estate is actually an economically productive activity because someone selling a house for $2 million can invest that money elsewhere?

[chowhou]

Our population grew by 1 million in 2022 and 1.4 million in the first three quarters of 2023, entirely through immigration. These numbers have been posted many times in this thread and are well known.

Statcan reports 1M for the first 3 quarters of 2023 so that doesn't exactly make your point.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Jesus Christ this thread is Groundhog Day.

Aren't you also the one who tried to explain that real estate is actually an economically productive activity because someone selling a house for $2 million can invest that money elsewhere?

I don't believe I ever said productive, just that it isn't destroying our capital, it just slows it down.

I'm glad you remember, though!

I believe my exact point was that foreign investment in real estate can be a good thing because it brings capital into the country, but if you didn't remember you didn't remember.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by chowhou

Oh my mistake, I forgot that we were proposing immigration as a solution to the housing crisis?

This analogy almost exactly makes my side look good here, eating is absolutely not the issue. Everyone needs to eat, it's good for you. Your problem here is that your body isn't able to absorb the nutrition that you need to survive because there's an unhealthy blockage. Perhaps we should remove the blockage...?

No one has ever argued that we don't need to build more housing or even immigration. It's a question of whether it's appropriate given the current context.

You don't feed a patient with a blocked bowel until the blockage is cleared.

You don't bring into 1.5 million newcomers into a country that can't build enough housing until you have the capacity to build housing.

The appropriate time to eat is after the blockage has been cleared and they have the capacity to absorb the nutrition.

The appropriate time to bring in 1.5 million new comers into this country is when the country has the capacity to absorb the newcomers.

The Liberals have not laid out any concrete plan as to how they're going to increase our capacity to build housing. The 3.5 million CHC deficit is looming, and we have no idea about how much of that deficit we'll be able to eliminate. Sean Fraser has been asked that question numerous times, but refuses to touch it (my bet is that he know it'll grow). Housing completions are expected to go down, not up. Despite this, they've pursued a policy that continues to ramp up immigration to historic highs.

Originally Posted by chowhou

Statcan reports 1M for the first 3 quarters of 2023 so that doesn't exactly make your point.

I guess I was off by a bit. That's still literally double your number and with a quarter to go, so I'm not sure how it supports your point.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by chowhou

I actually have no idea where this 1.3M number comes from, we generally are targetting 500k permanent entries per year. It just might be the case that that's the rate we require to maintain our standard of living (or prevent it from reducing faster).

Again, you're looking strictly at immigrants entering through the permanent resident program, but ignoring that the significant majority of entrants to Canada are now coming through the student, TFW, or refugee streams.

Our population growth in 2022 for example was ~1 million, of which ~950,000 of those new residents came via immigration. Of those 950,000, only 430,000 were PRs. The full 2023 data is not available yet, but we're on track for somewhere in the range of 1.5 million new residents (with the population growing by 430,000 in Q3 alone), despite only 450,000 PRs expected.

This is also a quite a departure from our recent past, when PRs comprised more in the range of >80% of all entrants to Canada. In other words, looking at the number of permanent residents arriving each year is an (increasingly) inaccurate proxy for total growth.

Originally Posted by chowhou

You're very dumb if you think that development of additional homes in our cities is even close to legal.

This is a weird take. Developing new homes is obviously not illegal given the massive amounts of development happening in all cities across the country right now. I'm assuming you're alluding to zoning restrictions, which until recently in most cities restricted more than a single unit per lot on the majority of lots (though nowhere near 99%, more like 60-80% depending on the city); though these have also been loosened quite significantly in many cities in various stages over the past few years. None of our largest cities have any 1-unit/lot zoning anymore.

In any case though, even if zoning regulations were eliminated entirely & immediately, that still doesn't address how all the necessary new housing would actually be built. Making it easier to proposed new housing is great, but approvals are only one small part of the process - material, capital, and labour are needed to actually get them built; and those are all the things that are much harder to scale up (and to do so takes time & money - it can't happen overnight).

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Again, you're looking strictly at immigrants entering through the permanent resident program, but ignoring that the significant majority of entrants to Canada are now coming through the student, TFW, or refugee streams.

Our population growth in 2022 for example was ~1 million, of which ~950,000 of those new residents came via immigration. Of those 950,000, only 430,000 were PRs. The full 2023 data is not available yet, but we're on track for somewhere in the range 1.5 million (with the population growing by 430,000 in Q3 alone), despite only 450,000 PRs expected.

This is also a quite a departure from our recent past, when PRs comprised more like >80% of all entrants to Canada.

Students and TFWs numbers cannot be directly compared because we do not expect them to remain in Canada and they are replacing earlier students and TFWs who have left Canada. For the calculus you have to count entries as well as exits for them. It's pretty well known that the student visas have been increasing, but it's not a one-to-one comparison there. It does seem to be the case that in the past two years the immigration rate was higher than normal I grant this to everyone here.

This is a weird take. Developing new homes is obviously not illegal given the massive amounts of development happening in all cities across the country right now. I'm assuming you're alluding to zoning restrictions, which until recently in most cities restricted more than a single unit per lot on the majority of lots (though nowhere near 99%, more like 60-80% depending on the city); though these have also been loosened quite significantly in many cities in the past year.

Either way though, even if zoning regulations were eliminated entirely & immediately, that still doesn't address how all the necessary new housing would actually be built. Approvals are only one small part of the process - material, capital, and labour are needed to actually get them built; and those are all the things that are much harder to scale up (and to do so takes time - it can't happen overnight).

It's not just single unit lots that you have to consider when what matters is adding additional housing units. If a lot is zoned for medium density 2.0 FSR and it already has a 2.0 FSR lowrise on it, then it is illegal to build additional housing on that lot. This applies to 99% (or somewhere in the 90%s) of lots in any particular city (hell, in some lots here in Vancouver it's actually illegal to even replace the existing medium density buildings in some areas). The density has to be added somewhere along the line for legal additional units and until it's made legal by rezoning for additional density, it is defacto illegal and you have to lobby your local government to legalize it for your specific lot. The BC provincial wide upzoning should make a huge difference, but as it stands today that policy has not been enacted yet.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by chowhou

Students and TFWs numbers cannot be directly compared because we do not expect them to remain in Canada and they are replacing earlier students and TFWs who have left Canada. For the calculus you have to count entries as well as exits for them. It's pretty well known that the student visas have been increasing, but it's not a one-to-one comparison there.



It's not just single unit lots that you have to consider when what matters is adding additional housing units. If a lot is zoned for medium density 2.0 FSR and it already has a 2.0 FSR lowrise on it, then it is illegal to build additional housing on that lot. This applies to 99% (or somewhere in the 90%s) of lots in any particular city. The density has to be added somewhere along the line for legal additional units and until it's made legal by rezoning for additional density, it is defacto illegal and you have to lobby your local government to legalize it for your specific lot.

The 1 million+ number being cited refers to actual population growth which takes into account emigration, and is not simply the numbers of new TFWs and Int'l students. This is a net increase in demand for services including housing.

There really needs to be a knowledge quiz required to participate in this thread, it seems like every couple of weeks we get someone barging in without even the most basic understanding of the issue.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by theman23

The 1 million+ number being cited refers to actual population growth which takes into account emigration, and is not simply the numbers of new TFWs and Int'l students. This is a net increase in demand for services including housing.

There really needs to be a knowledge quiz required to participate in this thread, it seems like every couple of weeks we get someone barging in without even the most basic understanding of the issue.

What knowledge exactly am I missing? Sure seems like I correctly identified the population growth when your numbers were incorrect?

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by chowhou

Students and TFWs numbers cannot be directly compared because we do not expect them to remain in Canada and they are replacing earlier students and TFWs who have left Canada. For the calculus you have to count entries as well as exits for them. It's pretty well known that the student visas have been increasing, but it's not a one-to-one comparison there.

This is net increase though. If the population grew by ~1.5 million last year, that doesn't mean that just 1.5 million people arrived: that's the total increase from immigration + births - (emigration + deaths).

And temporary or not, those students and TFW still need places to live, and use services, infrastructure, and participate in the economy. They can't conveniently be excluded when talking about the needs of the nation or of the pressures imposed by rapid population growth.

Originally Posted by chowhou

It's not just single unit lots that you have to consider when what matters is adding additional housing units. If a lot is zoned for medium density 2.0 FSR and it already has a 2.0 FSR lowrise on it, then it is illegal to build additional housing on that lot. This applies to 99% (or somewhere in the 90%s) of lots in any particular city (hell, in some lots here in Vancouver it's actually illegal to even replace the existing medium density buildings in some areas). The density has to be added somewhere along the line for legal additional units and until it's made legal by rezoning for additional density, it is defacto illegal and you have to lobby your local government to legalize it for your specific lot.

Yes, there are still some archaic and overly restrictive zoning bylaws in place in many places, but to say that "new housing is illegal in 99.9% of the country" is obviously hyperbole and very far from the truth.

Also still doesn't address how you propose for more housing to actually be built above & beyond what is already in the works, or for how the at-capacity construction industry can be expected to create additional capacity.

[Build.It]

Canada's population was estimated at 40,528,396 on October 1, 2023, an increase of 430,635 people (+1.1%) from July 1.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dail...31219c-eng.htm

[theman23]

Originally Posted by chowhou

What knowledge exactly am I missing? Sure seems like I correctly identified the population growth when your numbers were incorrect?

You seemed to be unaware of the fact that our immigration numbers have exceeded one million for the last two years in post #684. I was off by 400,000 but you were off by 500,000. Anyways, we'll see what the numbers shake out to when statcan releases final numbers but they'll likely be closer to mine than yours. You also don't seem to understand what population growth means in the post I most recently quoted.

And this isn't a problem over the last two years. Net growth of NPRs was on the uptick even before the pandemic, only falling for two years before booming again. 2019 was the previous record year for NPRs before 2022. Prior to that the record was 2018. Now the record is 2023.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/migrat...tcan-1.6704262

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

This is net increase though. If the population grew by ~1.5 million last year, that doesn't mean that just 1.5 million people arrived: that's the total increase from immigration + births - (emigration + deaths).

And temporary or not, those students and TFW still need places to live, and use services, infrastructure, and participate in the economy. They can't conveniently be excluded when talking about the needs of the nation or of the pressures imposed by rapid population growth.

Never said to exclude them, just that they're not exactly the same as other immigrants.

If tomorrow we stopped issuing new permanent residencies, Canada's immigrant population would be about the same next year.

If tomorrow we stopped issuing new permanent residencies, TFWs, and student visas, Canada actually gradually lose immigrant population over the next 4 years as people returned to their home countries (again not all, but many).

Yes, there are still some archaic and overly restrictive zoning bylaws in place in many places, but to say that "new housing is illegal in 99.9% of the country" is obviously hyperbole and very far from the truth.

Is it? Pick a lot in a random location in Canada and let me know if you could build additional housing beyond what already exists there. I think it's pretty hard to find in this country.

Also still doesn't address how you propose for more housing to actually be built above & beyond what is already in the works, or for how the at-capacity construction industry can be expected to create additional capacity.

There is a huge housing backlog in this country which started somewhere in the 1970s. There's no overnight solution, but if we can accelerate housing development just a little bit we might have a slim chance of catching up eventually. You seem to be assuming that the construction industry cannot expand when it's free to expand.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by Build.It

Canada's population was estimated at 40,528,396 on October 1, 2023, an increase of 430,635 people (+1.1%) from July 1.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dail...31219c-eng.htm

We're up 246,044 people from Oct 1, 2023's 40,528,396 to today's current 40,774,440 estimated population. That's like adding the Regina CMA.