Is the only thing that's going to fix the housing crisis actually reducing the cost of homes? And nobody actually wants that to happen.. so...
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
61 points (96.9% liked)
Canada
9587 readers
2651 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Related Communities
🍁 Meta
🗺️ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
🏙️ Cities / Local Communities
- Calgary (AB)
- Comox Valley (BC)
- Edmonton (AB)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Guelph (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Windsor (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
Sorted alphabetically by city name.
🏒 Sports
Hockey
- Main: c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- Montréal Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL): incomplete
Football (CFL): incomplete
Baseball
Basketball
Soccer
- Main: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
💻 Schools / Universities
- BC | UBC (U of British Columbia)
- BC | SFU (Simon Fraser U)
- BC | VIU (Vancouver Island U)
- BC | TWU (Trinity Western U)
- ON | UofT (U of Toronto)
- ON | UWO (U of Western Ontario)
- ON | UWaterloo (U of Waterloo)
- ON | UofG (U of Guelph)
- ON | OTU (Ontario Tech U)
- QC | McGill (McGill U)
Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.
💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales
- Personal Finance Canada
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Buy Canadian
- Quebec Finance
- Churning Canada
🗣️ Politics
- General:
- Federal Parties (alphabetical):
- By Province (alphabetical):
🍁 Social / Culture
- Ask a Canadian
- Bières Québec
- Canada Francais
- First Nations
- First Nations Languages
- Give'r Gaming (gaming)
- Indigenous
- Inuit
- Logiciels libres au Québec
- Maple Music (music)
Rules
- Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Nobody who owns a home wants that to happen*
Even moreso, those who own other people's homes.
Because the entire economic system inherently benefits entrenched Capital.
This game of Monopoly was decided before we were born.
My home price has doubled since Covid, but so have all the others around me. The gains are fake. The only benefit is to the real estate agent, and my ego.
Drive the prices into the ground.
I had a friend do this. It's a great house and the process went very smoothly.
It's a sensible way to do it. Modern prefab doesn't necessarily mean the house is entirely built offsite and then dropped in place. It just means that more of the assembly is done in a controlled, precision, effficient environment (a factory) and then assembled on site with less time and expense. It means more houses, faster and cheaper. Which is what we need.
This can work in some places (mostly looking at the prairies), but will do close to zero in others (like eastern Canada+BC). The simple problem is that the land the house is built on is often worth something like 80% the cost of buying property. The cost of a new house can be zero, but that will do little to help people afford new homes. Only slightly better than the tax cuts PP is proposing, which will have just as weak of an effect helping those who don't already own six houses.
The solution is to use the land we already use for homes more efficiently, and the only way to do that is to build condos and apartments. Make them mixed use and you can add the rental fees of a grocery store and several other services to the mix to subsidize the cost even further. A single grocery store that'll take up half the ground floor paid something like a million in rent a year, and that was before COVID. Add a convenience store, a couple fast food restaurants, a bar, and a dentist or salon, and you've got a mini-mall that'll rake in several million in rent that has a captured clientele in those that live above and near them. And that number will be in the hundreds for a 30 story apartment in the space of half a city block, since there'd be more than ten units per floor, even if it only has two-four bedroom units.
Such buildings can't be built in a factory, even partially. Not if we want them to last more than ten years, since that's the problem with the quick condos China tried to build.
You might not be able to pre construct the whole building, but there's a lot of new technology out there that pre builds very large parts.
I've seen 15m pre fabricated concrete walls placed with cranes before.
There's a lot we could probably do like that which would speed up build times.
If I remember right, that was basically what they did to make commie blocks.
If the building isn't too tall, maybe 5 stories or less, that is proven to work, though I don't know about the quality, at least it's durable. But I strongly doubt that it would work for skyscrapers. I don't think there's any way to get beyond single large support struts to go throughout the entire building, and concrete walls feel too heavy to be used. Maybe prefab concrete floors could work, but I don't work construction.
The Vancouver special was made illegal in the late 80s for seemingly no reason. Every municipal has tons of bureaucracy on what can be built, likely in order to stifle new development and to raise home values.
This will succeed only in so much as the Liberals through Brookfield will take a chunk of profits. Which is fine, if it took a bit of corruption to wipe out municipal bureaucracy then its still a win for the poor.
I was also in favor of Doug ford getting kickbacks for opening up greenbelt, I don't see how we do 4% annual population growth without actions like that.
The greenbelt doesn't even need development. The province's own report said we just need to make better use of our land. In too much of Ontario for too long, zoning has restricted most homes to be inefficient single family housing and suburban sprawl far from peoples' jobs. We need missing middle housing, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and greater density.
load more comments
(4 replies)
I was also in favor of Doug ford getting kickbacks for opening up greenbelt, I don’t see how we do 4% annual population growth without actions like that.
Going to assume this was awkwardly worded because why would you ever think that politicians getting kickbacks is in your best interests?? That's pants-on-head.
What in the world does the greenbelt have to do with housing? Do you think lack of space to build is anywhere on the roster of issues standing in our way??
I think land values are extremely high due to a lack of available land relative to demand. Exacerbated by sprawled zoning that nimbys have fought tooth and nail against.
Weird take.
Honest request: Explain to me how Brookfield is involved
They are heavily invested in prefab homes. Which will help us bypass municipal laws, and build architectural style to maximize floor space with relatively cheap construction costs, like the Vancouver special used to be.
They are heavily invested in prefab homes
That could have been because they believe prefab homes are a good industry to invest in because they saw the potential to solve the affordable housing crisis that afflicts populations around the world. That doesn't make it nefarious.
Which will help us bypass municipal laws
Do you have any facts to share about this? I would expect any new, modern, prefab homes to be built in Canada to the local building codes. Municipalities have as much at stake and to gain in solving our local housing shortages.
view more: next ›