Ideas on how to make homes affordable

@BlueVeins They have been trying the "build more" idea for years. What they end up with is a new house that is worth 1.6 million dollars. There is no incentive there for new buyers at all.
If they changed the rules so they built tiny homes everywhere instead. Make it so you can buy a home for 200k, even if you share that same property with 5 others, that would help, but there are no plans for that.

The rent control thing no longer works because people have paid 1.6 million for their homes and they need to charge 1500/month rent just to make their mortgage payment. You can't suddenly take away half of that or they would default.

Back in the day, the government used to build "Vancouver Specials", you see these all over the city still. They are small homes, not tiny houses, but small, on small lots, and they sold for cheap. Those same old houses now sell for over 2 million dollars, but it isn't the house you are buying, it is the land.

@MisterBander
If you decrease the cost of housing, the people who own that housing will lose money, no matter how you go about it. Duh. Housing is a human need, not just an investment.

This kind of logic is why cities like Vancouver don't loosen regulation nearly enough despite recognizing to their voters that there's a problem. A lot of people out there have a vested interest in housing being expensive, and they sure as shit show up to the ballot box.

@ninalanyon People want to live near a city so they have access to stores and medical. There is a lot of space, but we share it with Natives and Animals. A lot of British Columbia is mountainous and unsuitable for housing, and the North is permafrost. Who wants to live in the flat-lands of Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan? Not me. I like it by the ocean. I need to see mountains and go hiking in them. A lot of the East of Canada is French. Government is holding a lot of land too that you have no access to.

@MisterBander I'm looking at Vancouver on street view and most of the city is very low density. Like, detached single family homes, 1 story offices & retail establishments, big lawns & parking lots everywhere. You guys could build like 6 times more housing easily without encroaching on more wildlands.

@MisterBander Strange how difficult things are in big countries when smaller countries can do them. Here in Norway we have people living all over the country. Every small town has stores and medical facilities, schools, etc.

But even in the capital we seem to have lower accommodation costs.

Vancouver has five times the area of Oslo for a similar population so you have vastly more room for housing than we do in Oslo but in Oslo 1.6 M CAD would get you a really nice house in some of the best parts of the city. If you are willing to live in a flat you could live right in the most desirable areas for that much money.

So you need to look at what is constraining the supply of housing (almost certainly poorly designed regulations and excessive bureaucracy) and why people all want to live on top of each other (poor town planning and social policies mean that services are not available where they are needed so everyone piles in where the services are available).

Ever heard of dynamite? It's a pretty useful tool for housebuilders here in Norway, they make it in a factory a few kilometres up the fjord from where I live. Houses built half way up a granite hill have a better view and often command a premium price here. But you might have to hire someone with a rock drill and explosives licence to level the plot first :-)