this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
39 points (95.3% liked)
Canada
10678 readers
412 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Related Communities
π Meta
πΊοΈ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
ποΈ Cities / Local Communities
- Anmore (BC)
- Burnaby (BC)
- Calgary (AB)
- Comox Valley (BC)
- Edmonton (AB)
- East Gwillimbury (ON)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Guelph (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kingston (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Niagara Falls (ON)
- Niagara-on-the-Lake (ON)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Squamish (BC)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Whistler (BC)
- Windsor (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
Sorted alphabetically by city name.
π Sports
Hockey
- Main: c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- MontrΓ©al Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL): incomplete
Football (CFL): incomplete
Baseball
Basketball
Soccer
- Main: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
π» 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.
π΅ Finance, Shopping, Sales
- Personal Finance Canada
- Buy Canadian
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Canadian Skincare
- Churning Canada
- Quebec Finance
π£οΈ Politics
- General:
- Federal Parties (alphabetical):
- By Province (alphabetical):
π Social / Culture
- Ask a Canadian
- Bières Québec
- Canada Francais
- Canadian Gaming
- EhVideos (Canadian video media)
- First Nations
- First Nations Languages
- Indigenous
- Inuit
- Logiciels libres au QuΓ©bec
- 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 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
lol people would go wild if that was even muttered on the news
I agree, but it needs to still be talked about.
People still think we can build our way into affordable homes, which is impossible. Alternatives like this would actually deliver affordable housing, but you're right that a lot of people would be unhappy about it.
"which is impossible"
I beg to differ. In Alberta, three years ago I bought a home for 65,000. Two months ago I bought another one for 60,000. The second one needs some love but it's livable. I'm currently building a small alleyway home by combining two used buildings and the final cost will be under 30,000.
It IS possible - with some sweat equity - but not in Toronto or Vancouver, thats for sure.
So you buying places where nobody wants to live and doing all the construction yourself is somehow proof that it's possible to build affordable housing for everyone?
Give your head a shake.
Nobody wants to live in Alberta? Did we mention that Alberta has the HIGHEST interprovincial migration of any province in Canada? We're building as fast as we can cause there are so many people moving here.
And yes, all the skills Ive learned over the years are now on youtube and can be learned by anyone. My first house gained about 25% in value because I painted it, cleaned up the yard, and built a tiny 4 x 8 front porch and then waited a couple of years to sell it. Not rocket science, just takes some work.
You sure as shit didn't buy a property for $60k in Calgary or Edmonton, which is where most of the jobs are, and where people want to live.
And, on top of that, housing prices are STILL rising in those two cities compared to last year.
I will say it again, we CANNOT build ourselves out of the housing issue we're in right now. It simply isn't possible.
Calgary and Edmonton are the two main centers but not everyone wants to pay the price for living in a big city. There are lots of jobs in smaller centers.
But here's the thing. You can move to Calgary but you're going to need to buy a house for at least 600,000. OR you can move to a smaller center and get a house for one tenth of that price.
Now look at the difference in mortgage payments at 5.25%. The Calgary house is going to be 3400. The small town mortgage is going to be $340.
Which means in the small town, you can buy a house paying your mortgage working a minimum wage job and still have money to spare, but in Calgary you better be making over 100k if you hope to qualify for that 600k house.
Sometimes small town living just makes far more financial sense. Especially when youre in driving distance to a bigger city.
I just looked for property in Alberta under 100k, and could only find a handful of places under 100k that were not inside mobile home parks (where you don't own the land) most of them are court ordered sales and are also mobile homes(on private lots) that essentially need to be replaced entirely.
The only reasonable one I found in the entire province which wasn't in terrible shape, had it's own land, and was drivable to what I consider a city was in Elnora, which is about an hour outside red deer. Unfortunately it's unlikely you could get even a minimum wage job there, because the population is only 288 people and they have only 18 total businesses in the town, and that includes some public places like the post office and library.
The thing to remember about this though, is that it can't support a larger population choosing this option. A few people could move there, but the moment you get more than a few moving in the prices go way up since there isn't just a million houses sitting empty in these small towns. There's maybe hundreds, total in the province.
Yes there arent thousands of them. I had to hunt around and keep my eye open for a good deal for several months to find the ones I bought. But they do exist in centers much bigger than Elnora.
So how exactly can they solve the housing crisis?
Alleviate, not necessarily SOLVE the housing crisis. Thats a long term thing thats going to take time and a whole lot of changes.
If you have a problem that affects 10 million people, and you build 100,000 units. Have you alleviated anything?
The simple answer is no.
You're right that solving the housing crisis is going to take time and a whole lot of changes. The problem is that none of the changes we're making right now will do a damn thing but prolong the suffering. The whole lot of changes that will actually fix it will happen once the ownership rate has dropped so much that enough people are willing to actually harm (economically hopefully) the remaining landlords. That process is going to take decades.
The simple way to understand this is by doing some math. There are already more bedrooms in this country than there are citizens, by a reasonable margin. (You can confirm this with numbers from statscan if you want). Given that lots of people share bedrooms (couples, children, etc.) that means we don't actually have a supply issue with housing. We have a demand and distribution issue.
no, this would not pass, a small minority might be ok with, but the vast majority of millennials and gen Z/Alpha would shoot this down
Why? Most of those groups don't even own property, and many aren't ever likely to be able to afford it.
There's some pretty pissed off young people out there.
government taking control of land where you live = communism to the general public.
That's an education problem. The government already controls the land.
listen i get yall think your very smart and if you really are that's great, but you have to swallow the pill and realize there are people who don't concern themselves with technicalities of every day life or their country. To them, when they buy land, they think they now own it, and not the country. Positioning this as "The government owns the land and rents the houses" will make people spin their heads 5 times over and go "what the fuck no way are we allowing that, that sounds like socialism/commie"
Its all fine and dandy discussions happen on here or reddit about what the government should do or this law or that, but the vast majority of Canadians just don't have the time or interest to look into things like the average user on here does. Why do you think populist leaders do so well in elections, like doug ford? he talks in plain common words and points, no complicated language that people go "oh this ""nerd"" is talking again".
I mean, the easy way around this is just to jack up property taxes so high that there's no real difference between you owning it and you renting it from the government.
that's one way to loose voters
lose, not loose.
And you're right, for now, currently more families own than not. That balance is changing though, as property prices are being pushed out of reach of entire generations. If you look at the percentages of home ownership at a certain age milestones and compare by generation it's dropping pretty fast.
sorry, unsure why, but for the past while my typing has been horrible and i'm mistyping words. dunno if it's related to my IIH.