RBC urges Canada to prioritize construction skills in immigrants to tackle housing crisis
RBC urges Canada to prioritize construction skills in immigrants to tackle housing crisis
Canada needs to admit more immigrants with trades skills, embrace other building techniques to tackle the housing crisis, RBC says. Read on.
Incredibly stupid, but I'd expect nothing less from a big bank that's complicit in the country's economic woes. There's no shortage of people who know how to build homes.
There's a shortage of people who will do it for starvation wages though. And that's what the big banks really don't want.
I'm not certain about your neck of the woods but we were looking at a bathroom reno in BC and the wait lists started at a year out. Now the organizing contractors might have been stiffing the actual labor but the quotes we were getting were quite high.
Alberta had over 200k immigrants last year. There's a huge shortage, not just a shortage of good pay.
And that's mostly because other areas cost to much, it's all just a part of the same problem.
Alberta goes through booms and busts, once population hits a point wages will go down and housing prices will go up
I don't argue with your basic premise (companies pay the cheapest contractor, etc), but it is worth noting that because of those pressures, many experienced people leave the industry, thus creating the lack of workers they are talking about. Reversing that change is slow, even if wages rise, and there is no instant fix. Getting people who have left for another industry to return can be difficult, especially in the case of people selling off tools, etc. where the cost to re-enter is often too high to justify.
Add on to that, developers have no incentive to construct everything at once, thus stalling future growth for their company and over saturating the market, driving down housing prices and their enormous margins.
What we need is for CMHC to start building houses instead of leaving it to developers. Developers will only make the most profitable houses, which are the McMansions you see going up like crazy but no one can afford.
The CMHC isn't a constructor, they have no way of building houses themselves. They need to pay people to build it through their funding, except them providing funding comes with issues too.
I am a designer on a low-income apartment building being constructed by a non-profit organization in Niagara Region and it is 100% government funded (through CMHC I believe). The government took nearly 9 months to approve the funding after all the bids by constructors were received around April 2022 and given the rate of inflation at the time (and construction inflation was higher than the general rate) no subtrades held their price. The government refused to increase the funding to cover the extra cost due to inflation and as a result this building is being value engineered to high heaven and will probably be pretty terrible build quality.
What you're asking for is effectively a blank cheque for subtrades (and to an extent, designers... even if CMHC uses generic plans everywhere they need local professionals to take responsibility for the permitting process of each individual build, which includes regular inspections and reports) because none of these people trust that the government is competent enough to actually do it properly so they price high to account for fuck ups. (Ex. If CMHC handed me plans to be used I definitely would not blindly sign things off for the local AHJ and put my professional license at risk)
The government can be efficient and competent if it wants to be. The fact that it isn't when controlled by people who are ideologically opposed to the government overshadowing organizations with a profit motive is not an argument against the government doing things.
It's an argument for the government actually being focused on meeting residents' needs, rather than business owners'.
The government took nearly 9 months to approve the funding after all the bids by constructors were received around April 2022 and given the rate of inflation at the time (and construction inflation was higher than the general rate) no subtrades held their price.
Barring the case where companies reneged on a quote and still earned further business, is it illegal to say "$15million plus inflation of 0.x%/mo" or "$20mil which is $15mil plus adjustment for inflation over typical 9mo review process" ?
One of those two have to give.
I work on the linear infrastructure side as a consultant - any particular reason that they took so long to award the tender? That seems extreme given that I regularly work with municipalities and tendering processes, and its a pretty well oiled machine - 1 month is about as long as I've ever seen the award be stretched, unless the engineering cost estimate was waaaay below the bids and they had to secure additional funding.
RBC needs more mortgages.
Won't someone please think about the corps and the rich !
They can fuck right off, there are over 600 electricians sitting at home out of work in Toronto right now
It really doesn't seem like an available labor shortage.
From my observations in Newfoundland it's a combination of the most profitable product being huge single family homes and outdated (and car-centric) zoning policy that makes it difficult to construct anything else even if it was profitable.
Our issue is there's no incentive to construct affordable housing and because of years of lobbying by the automotive industry they have to be extremely low density to accommodate the large front lawns, driveways and streetside parking required for car centric living. All of this adds additional cost.
I think step one would be to fix our zoning policy and step two would be to incentivize construction of low margin high density housing. This isn't to say that single family homes should go away just the they shouldn't be the only option.
I think step one would be to fix our zoning policy and step two would be to incentivize construction of low margin high density housing. This isn't to say that single family homes should go away just the they shouldn't be the only option.
Hike property tax and you'll lose the mayorship. But that's the way: make the comically-inefficient mcmansion-with-hoarded-greenspace something only the super-rich can afford again.
Do you have a source for this? From my discussions and research, most of the contractors we work with on a large scale basis complain about a lack of labour (though that's always a complaint from businesses).
The source is my union out of work list that is updated daily.
I know a bunch of out of work framers. No one wants to pay their rates... The megacorp developers rather wait for a few to get desperate enough to take the poverty payouts.
So, now we will need a masters of engineering and 15 years in pouring concrete for a Canadian to get a job in construction?