Ideas on how to make homes affordable

The current trend here in Vancouver is to build duplexes with sub basements or with attached tiny homes that can be rented out.
The cost is still 1.6 million dollars, but the buyer at least has a way to make some extra income from it. Still it's a big struggle to pay 5k/month mortgage when you are only making 4k in wages.
The rich get richer, the working stiffs struggle harder and harder. A lot of kids aren't even going to try it, they will just live on the street, or in a car, or OD and die. It's pretty sad.

Why don't we, as a Country (Canada), just decide that ALL properties be devalued by 80%. So if your house was worth 1 million dollars, now it's worth 200k.

This would apply to ALL properties, no exceptions, and it would apply immediately so there is no chance for debate or changes or protests. Since it would hit EVERYONE evenly, it should all work out just fine.
Would need to put restrictions on out of country purchases, and maybe set a limit so nobody can own more than 3 properties.
Government would hate to lose all that tax income but they can suck goats.

It would help relieve homelessness, it would bring wages back in line with the cost of home ownership too.

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

Surely a country like Canada has plenty of space for housing? I mean it's a huge country with only about half the population of the UK. So why should housing be so expensive?

Isn't the solution to spread out a bit instead of all trying to live in Vancouver and Toronto?

MisterBander ·

@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.

BlueVeins · 26-30

@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.

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@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).

A lot of British Columbia is mountainous and unsuitable for housing

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 :-)