Housing Minister Sean Fraser says the government is still considering a wide range of potential moves to help ease the acute housing insecurity Canadians across the country are feeling.

  • Voroxpete
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    My suspicion is that this would actually just serve to spread the contagion of investment property ownership to previously less affected areas.

    The fundamental problem will always be that as long as housing remains an investment, there must be a housing crisis.

    Scarcity creates competition for housing. Competition inflates prices. Price inflation becomes investment growth. Without the scarcity, there is no investment growth.

    And as long as you control the capital, scarcity can be created. No matter how much housing the government builds or creates access to, if the people with money can afford to buy it all up then they will intentionally hoard it and force scarcity.

    I do agree that encouraging more work from home is a good thing, and the government should absolutely institute their own WFH policy, as well as creating strong incentives for companies to institute WFH. While I don’t think it will make that much impact on housing, WFH has numerous other benefits that are worth investing in.