Honestly, the government doesn’t even need to subsidize public housing to fix the housing crisis, just create non-market housing. There’s plenty of charity organizations that are able to build homes that are less than half of market prices. Hell, apparently even the YMCA does this.
We don’t need to increase housing for those who are unable to work, just those who don’t make 6+ figures. If charity organizations can fund these housing projects entirely off the back of bank loans that the renters are able to pay off themselves in addition to maintenance costs of their buildings, I don’t see how the government can’t do the same by using the subsidization funds.
We don’t need a bunch of $200 apartments, we need lots of $1000-2000 apartments.
I think we could do well with both. We build less public housing than virtually all of our peers. Our housing deficit is such that we need to do everything. I wouldn’t be so sure half measures will be enough.
Furthermore, I think we need to remove the stigma around public and non-market housing. In Scandinavian countries, public housing is for normal, even upper middle class families. These homes are beautiful and comfortable. If you want to stay out of the housing market, you can. Canadians are desperate to enter the housing market as a matter of dignity, as if they’re pathetic failures, less fully human, if they don’t own. It’s because of this unnecessary stigma in Canada that public housing often has the reputation of a ghetto for undesirables.
Just 5 per cent of the Liberals’ $82 billion National Housing Strategy is allocated to the Community Housing Initiative, and those funds are only for maintaining expiring operating agreements - not new housing.
As long as this remains true the federal government is not taking housing seriously. Any prospective governments which do not make public housing a centrepiece of their strategy are also not taking housing seriously.
Housing is this federal government’s biggest failure. It’s causing the economy to contract, GDP per capita to fall, and affordability to collapse. Housing is not a productive part of GDP, which is why people aren’t better off when real estate prices grow. Conservatives of course would be much worse, since they also wouldn’t build public housing and would cut taxes for the rich and services for everyone else.
The provinces aren’t much better. The BC NDP is one of the only provincial governments massively expanding public housing programs.
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