Why it's time for a serious debate about rent control in Canada

Not enough houses isn't really the problem, or rather there's no such thing as "enough houses" ever. If more housing were to become available, people would just inflate their expectations for what their housing should be (larger, more land, fancier, etc.)

There's enough bedrooms in this country for every single person to sleep in. They just aren't distributed properly (desirable locations, who owns them, etc.)

There will never be enough housing to meet people's desires.

The question then becomes, how can we get the right people in the right amount and location of house, and what does right mean for these things?

The current allocation system we are using simply doesn't achieve the optimal social outcome.

One big issue, is there are far too many older people that are over-housed. My parents live in a 4 bedroom home, by themselves. It was a great home for me and my brother to grow up in, but it hasn't been optimal in the 20 years since we moved out. They should have downsized and freed that home up for another family. Instead you have couples in their 20s who are either underhoused for their family size or who won't even have children because they don't have enough space.

The only solution I've seen that would work is significantly taxing land based on the desirability of the location and size of land, to incentivize people to leave too much housing for their needs and free it up to house more people (either more people in the same home, or through density development). Those taxes should be really high, like income tax level of high, and income taxes should be dropped. It would overnight reset home prices to affordable levels. Unfortunately it's never going to get voted in because it would also destroy the equity for every single current homeowner, and there's no way they would accept that.

Their other proposed solutions aren't accepted by politicians and the masses, because there's too many people benefitting from the system fucking the next generation to want to change it. We're literally living in the largest pyramid scheme ever constructed.

Since I can't seem to read this, what are their other solutions?

If you're trying to imply that rent controls are good by your statement, can you show me anywhere that's implemented them that has affordable housing prices?

It's not like they haven't been tried, they just continually fail.

Renting only became a problem when it became a problem elsewhere... oh... well then it looks like it didn't work well did it.

Ah yes, the Anglos made you price up your own real estate. /s

Nobody builds new rental properties that aren't profitable. I dunno, would you, if you had that kind of money?

First, it's Cited, not Sited.

Second, I think you misunderstood me. I'm advocating for removing their profits almost entirely, or at least the portion of profits attributed to the increase in land value that they had no part in improving.

I just think that rent controls are a stupid way to attempt to do it because they don't apply to new units and they often have loopholes. Rent controls can also exacerbate the problem where new units get rented for much higher prices, to try to compensate for the fact that they won't be able to increase them over time. There definitely isn't enough supply to stop that issue happening.

Vacant House Taxes have been tried throughout Canada and are generally ineffective. They are just a distraction.

The main reason why they don't work is fairly obvious: Why would someone own property to keep it vacant?

Sure, there are some people with vacation homes, or second homes where they frequently visit (heck, I might have to get an apartment where my office is located now we're being forced to return to the office). Oh the Urbanity has a great video where they point out the vast majority of "Vacant Homes" are either students who don't permanently live there, in the process of a move, under renovation, etc.

Aggressive and escalating.

The longer you leave a residential property vacant, the higher the tax rate becomes.

Speculating on residential housing needs to become costly more expensive than making it livable and available for people to live there.

Government can do this tomorrow but it will never happen.

These regime whores who will NEVER do a policy that hurts their owners.

"apartments built by thr public or coops" is right there. Don't look at a package proposal and treat each part of it as unrelated or judge it in a vacuum.

as much as your typical canadian city subreddit complains about homeless encampments?

I don't see how this would make money laundering for organized crime any easier than it is today, the tax would just be shifted to the landlord side (likely at a higher rate since they're probably in a higher tax bracket) and off the tenant.

Right now the tenant earns money, pays income tax on that money, pays rent, and the landlord pays taxes on that money (if they're honest and report it all) but can claim their mortgage interest as a tax deduction.

I think the tenant should be able to claim some portion of their rent as a tax deduction. It would require an official record of rent paid, which would keep the landlord honest. I'd say the mortgage interest on a rental property probably shouldn't be tax deductible either, but even still this would have the biggest impact on those large private landlords that are often what you'd call slumlords.

Edit: I'm obviously not an expert on taxation or housing policy so if I'm wildly out of touch I'll accept that, I just think it's kind of bullshit that the government subsidizes the mortgages we pay for our landlords with the money we paid the government when we worked for it.

Like how Donald Trump does it?

This is only really a thing in a paradigm of housing scarcity. Can't speculate on houses if houses are not abnormally rising in prices year over year.

The housing scarcity is the root cause, and is most effectively addressed by the aforementioned method

I'd advise you to avoid defeatism. This is a policy that has historically been implemented in various countries, and it can be done again if pushed for enough from the voting population.

Step one is identifying the correct solution, which we've now established. Step two is to spread the word about it.