this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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In a country with some of the world’s most expensive real estate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government wants housing to become more affordable.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Supply and demand control prices. Period. Adding supply will only fail to control prices if demand keeps rising. And if buyer demand keeps rising to keep up with prices? It would suck, but there's actually a silver lining to that: Rent goes down then.

Remember, now that we're punishing vacant units, every investment unit must be rented out. So as the investors make a mad dash to build and buy our endlessly-rising housing units, more and more inventory gets dumped onto the rental market.

Now, there's obvious downsides to this story, I'm not going to pretend the "own nothing and be happy" end is ideal. But it's better than the "own nothing and live in a fucking tent" ending.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No, market failures exist. It’s not all supply and demand. The cartoon economic world of libertarians is not reality.

That said, we do have a supply problem. Vacancy is essentially zero in Canadian cities, and that’s not true in more affordable housing markets like the US or Japan.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, market failures exist. It’s not all supply and demand.

Huh? Supply and demand is an observation of human behaviour. Market failure is equally observable through the supply and demand lens. It too is ultimately human behaviour.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

That's trickle down housing and it doesn't work, the end.