Why does the conversation always centre on us pee-ons at the bottom or the supposed ‘middle’ … the ones at the steering wheel are the ones with money, power and control. They are in the drivers seat as they are taking us all over the edge and we are all arguing about how to make ourselves comfortable inside this moving vehicle.
The missing middle is used to refer to the middle size of apartment building.
Feels like the classic neoliberal plan of one step forward, two steps back.
Make a plan that sounds like it can solve the problem, but then add a bunch of ‘well intentioned’ rules (space requirements around a home, requirements for dedicated parking etc) and the new opportunities are entirely lost.
This article talks about converting a single detached to a multiplex would require 4x the empty space between property lines that a single detached would. This prevents conversions, and forces developers to acquire expensive land, bulldoze the existing home to build another structure that will have to be smaller than the original home, to fit more people on the same land space in smaller dwellings. It’s impossible to drive living costs down when replacing single detached with the missing middle costs 5x to get 2-3x the units.
It makes sense to have rules and regulations with building, but government seems to be more than happy to make a big paradigm shift, while doing everything they can to stimy their own attempt at progress.
Tax the wealthy and use the taxes to build stronger government and support people at the bottom.
Otherwise we’re just handing more power to the wealthy, they get more power and they find it easier to squeeze more money out of the government and all of us.
The system is built on money and whoever has it gets the power … as it is right now, us plebs at the bottom have no money and therefore no control.
It’s a feature, not a bug
Middle density housing is severely lacking in most of Canada. Montréal is one of the few cities that does have a bit of mid-density housing and its housing costs are lower than most other similar sized cities. Obviously there’s many more factors but I definitely think mid density is important for reducing this crisis.
Mid density is extremely resource efficient (both in terms of building it, and the infrastructure serving it), and desirable -considering the property values in cities with lots of mid-density housing. It’s a shame we lost so many years not building it.
Mid density building is also dense enough to support frequent transit services. You’re not going to get 20 minute buses in the suburbs forcing everyone to drive which means more spread out lots to accommodate 2+ cars, larger roads, etc.
Mid density doesn’t work for everyone but it works for a lot of people, the issue is we have so little of it in most Canadian cities so people aren’t exposed to it enough to think of it as a viable option.
TLDR: no, but not having it worsens it a great deal
Personally, I think the bubbles already popped, we just don’t know it yet. Let’s fast forward a year or two, when Vancouver and Victoria and Toronto, and all the other pumped up areas, are renewing their 1,300 sq ft 1.4 million dollar shacks at >6.25%.
In fact if the government and the Bank of Canada were actually serious about battling inflation and the ever so climbing housing bubble, they’d hint in the throne speech that the principle residence tax exemption is coming to an end for 2024. That would probably unleash a torrent wave of selling in the fall, that would maybe actually save some peoples behinds. But this of course won’t happen…
Bubble has not popped.
When people are handing the house keys back to bank and saying fuck it, then you will know it has popped.
A good indication of that is when you start seeing for sale signs popping up everywhere and those signs stay there.
Seen it before elsewhere. Canada has done an amazing job with smoke and mirrors to keep the bubble inflated but Canadians have run out of money to prop it up.
When it pops, the government will have already run through all the ink in the money printing machines to do anything about it. Rough times ahead. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, but it seems the writing is on the wall.
When people are handing the house keys back to bank and saying fuck it, then you will know it has popped.
When people are handing the house keys back to the bank and saying fuck it, then you’ll know that you’re no longer in Canada. No recourse mortgages aren’t a thing here.
Lol, when someone doesn’t have the money to pay the mortgage and realizes they are in way over their heads and file for bankruptcy, that’s a no recourse mortgage right there. What’s the bank going to do? Make you extend your mortgage for 70 yrs?
- Bankruptcy is not free of recourse.
- You may not even be granted bankruptcy.
- You’re not just saying “fuck it” when you find yourself in a position where bankruptcy is on the table.
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There are are jurisdictions with no recourse mortgages. There you really can just say “fuck it”, hand in your keys, and walk away. But Canada is not one of them.
Is it that you are not Canadian or is it that you focus your attention on US media and have forgotten that Canada is a different country?
Oh, I’m not saying they can walk away and just hand in their keys, done and dusted. Granted bankruptcy? You do understand that all loans in Canada are civil matters. If you move through the proceedings of declaring bankruptcy, and it’s genuine because you don’t have the money to continue to pay you mortgage, bills and debts, you think that you will be denied the option to proceed with that? Or do you think a consumer proposal to pay out all the outstanding charges on a defaulted mortgage and loan will be suitable when you can’t pay it?
I don’t even know of any places where you can just hand in your keys and walk away without reprocussions. But trying to pay for a repossessed house isn’t really for many in that situation.
fmhy.ml user, so… most likely the former.
Instance shaming now? Hilarious.
Canadian for my entire life last time I checked.
Curious how you came to that conclusion based on a comment and instance?
track record from instances is poor
lots of tankies that just so happen to be whatever nationality that want to be
Did it solve it in this tokyo?
Nope. The thing making tokyo somewhat affordable is absolutely tiny units and a declining population.
What it does do is stabilize city budgets. Low density suburban units carry a huuuuuge infrastructure burden on cities to maintain. In most places, the suburbs cost more to maintain than they generate in tax revenue, hence why so many North American cities are in such poor finances
Kind of. Per unit of area Tokyo is every bit as expensive as even the most expensive parts of Canada, yes, but when you are buying a smaller area that does put it in greater reach of the average person. The idea being presented is that people would rather have a small space to call their own over having no space, while current policy pushes for a minimum amount of space that is usually larger than the small spaces people will accept.
