Change My Mind: There is no "Housing Crisis" Except in a Few Places

[Bballfan123]

Canada has an extreme housing crisis. If my previous posts on the matter are not enough to convince you then I don't k own what is

Why doesn't the Canadian government requisition some wood and, I don't know, start building houses?

 

[avenue94]

I am in favor of increasing mental health care and addressing as many issues with as many people as we can, but I am definitely not in favor of continuing to hand out free rides and pay a lot of money for some fat bitch that sits outside a traffic light begging for money all day to be a fat bitch that sits in her new home all day continuing to not work(sorry, just went to the store and had her staring at me like a dog begging for a treat, hoping I would throw some
Money at her to get her to stop staring).

Even if that is objectively cheaper than supporting these people with existing welfare program and trips to the emergency room, etc.?

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

I don't know if you're addressing the employment element. People want to live close to their jobs. Is you small town close enough to those jobs that it would incentivize people to move out there, trading some length of commute for residential options?

It matters because it becomes a quality of life thing. People don't want to travel 1+ hours to work both ways. If the work is close enough, I agree with you. If it's not, then it's wasted money building houses where no one wants to live. We need only look at China's ghost cities for what happens when housing is built before there's sufficient demand.

We're a ten minute drive from a natural gas plant. Seems to work. We need more resource extraction and processing in Canada

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

Yes...which is way more inefficient and expensive because you don't benefit from scale and you'd need new roads and such. If there is economic and popular demand for this, by all means. But there isn't as much demand for it otherwise we would have already seen people doing this.

The federal government is purposefully killing resource extraction in Canada. We just need government to get out of the way.

 

[nixkid]

I see OP has never encountered a NIMBY in the wild.

I don't know about Canada but building housing in America is extremely unpopular in the sense that people understand that more housing needs to be built but no one wants it in their area.

Go to nextdoor in your city and watch as people rage over every new proposed development. Apartments, Condos, Townhomes, Single family homes. Doesn't matter. There will be a mob with pitchforks at the next city council meeting.

And while they generally don't like ANY housing (including very expensive housing)...just try to propose something "affordable" (meaning that people poorer than them might be moving in) and then you'll experience the wrath of their final form.

 

[UFCUCF]

This one would be easily solved by increasing the number of residency spots in this country. We've increased medical school spots. But without accompanying residency and clinical training spots, lots of those graduates won't be able to practice in a meaningful way.

I was being a little young in cheek, but your point is a good one.

it’s been a minute since my peers were graduating med school. Do we really have a problem of qualified med school grads with no residencies??

Yes, that isn’t good if we are trying to contain costs.

 

[Bballfan123]

There absolutely is something stopping Canada from building more houses. It's a severe shortage of construction workers. The people coming in through immigration don't seem to have any construction workers among them. At least not yet.

Another thing is NIMBY zoning, obviously, and the solution is legislation, IMO.

TS has no idea what he's talking about with no housing crisis. In my province house prices doubled from 2016 to 2021, doubled in 5 years. And we were late to the game. Everywhere else in Canada prices were rising at a rapid rate for many years before that.

You can't just wave a magic wand and poof! more houses. You need the supplies and people to build them and there are only so many of those to go around in any given area.

Don't you have a Canadian Army of tens of thousands of able bodied young men? Train them. Use their potential. The government of Canada is far more powerful than you think, they are just busy indulging... I don't even know who. Stupidity?

You CAN wave a magic wand- use your Army. It's not like you're going to be invaded. If you are, simply stop cutting down trees and call the soldiers in to battle. Romans had this figured out before Christ showed up, it's really not that hard! The Romans would employ their soldiers to do numerous public works projects when they were not actively campaigning.

 

[avenue94]

The federal government is purposefully killing resource extraction in Canada. We just need government to get out of the way.

Again: Energy is one of the most subsidized industries you'll find. What regulations do you want the gov to waive exactly?

it’s been a minute since my peers were graduating med school. Do we really have a problem of qualified med school grads with no residencies??

Yeah. This year there were juts under 38,000 slots for new grads. American doctors are comically overpaid (compared to Europe) and then have dreadful conditions due to no other reason really other than, well, residency always sucked , so it will continue to suck. Plus doctors in the US ensure that other medical professionals can't do as much, which both increases their compensation and workloads.

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

Again: Energy is one of the most subsidized industries you'll find.

https://financialpost.com/commoditi...on-into-government-coffers-this-year-says-rbc

It's also one of the most taxed.

 

[avenue94]

https://financialpost.com/commoditi...on-into-government-coffers-this-year-says-rbc

It's also one of the most taxed.

Because they hit the threshold for windfall taxes. That's not exactly evidence of the industry facing too much regulation. If we pulled back the windfall tax, I guarantee you those companies would direct most of the freed up money back to shareholders and for bonuses, and not to building new sites.

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

Because they hit the threshold for windfall taxes. That's not exactly evidence of the industry facing too much regulation. If we pulled back the windfall tax, I guarantee you those companies would direct most of the freed up money back to shareholders and for bonuses, and not to building new sites.

I mean is this the first you're hearing about over regulation or are you just being disingenuous as a debate tactic?

https://energynow.ca/2020/10/be-inf...t-affect-consumers-business-deidra-garyk/?amp

 

[avenue94]

I mean is this the first you're hearing about over regulation or are you just being disingenuous as a debate tactic?

https://energynow.ca/2020/10/be-inf...t-affect-consumers-business-deidra-garyk/?amp

No, I'm asking you to be specific about what regulations you want them to not have to deal with. Cutting regulation is like cutting taxes. Great soundbite but the devil is in the details.

Which part of this regulation do you want pulled? Because parts of it are benefits for certain energy sectors. That's also setting side again, the externalities that come with energy industries.

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

No, I'm asking you to be specific about what regulations you want them to not have to deal with. Cutting regulation is like cutting taxes. Great soundbite but the devil is in the details.

Which part of this regulation do you want pulled? Because parts of it are benefits for certain energy sectors. That's also setting side again, the externalities that come with energy industries.

Everything since the Paris agreement. (And including it.)

And it's a little rich asking for specifics when the people doing the regulating are purposefully vague:

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/e...nge/climate-plan/net-zero-emissions-2050.html

 

[panamaican]

We're a ten minute drive from a natural gas plant. Seems to work. We need more resource extraction and processing in Canada

That's not helpful. Not everyone works in natural gas and I doubt that your natural ga plant has enough additional hiring capacity to significantly affect employment in the larger metropolitan area.

 

[panamaican]

I was being a little young in cheek, but your point is a good one.

it’s been a minute since my peers were graduating med school. Do we really have a problem of qualified med school grads with no residencies??

Yes, that isn’t good if we are trying to contain costs.

Yes and no. Like anything it kind of depends on what you're measuring. There are enough positions for all US graduates but not enough for all applicants, including international applicants. That means that approximately 5% of residency applicants go without a residency spot annually.

But even that kind of hides the numbers. Medical schools admissions numbers are essentially tied to how many residency spots are available since schools won't expand seats if there won't be anywhere to send those kids. Can we imagine the blowback if kids graduated from medical school with all that debt and couldn't practice because there weren't enough residency spots for them? So the number of medical school seats stay relatively capped by the limited number of funded residency spots, even though we could certainly admit and train way more qualified students into medical schools.

It's essentially an artificial cap set by Congress's Medicare funding for residents. And the surprising part of it is that it arises from a concern in the 1980s that we were producing too many doctors.

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

That's not helpful. Not everyone works in natural gas and I doubt that your natural ga plant has enough additional hiring capacity to significantly affect employment in the larger metropolitan area.

Oil and gas are our biggest industries and once you have resource extraction going, those people need stores and services.

That's how mining towns have always worked.

 

[panamaican]

Oil and gas are our biggest industries and once you have resource extraction going, those people need stores and services.

That's how mining towns have always worked.

But my point isn't that the industry lacks value. My point is that the plant doesn't provide enough jobs to meaningfully impact housing supply decisions.