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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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You DO realize that if we sold all our properties that millions of people would have no place to live? Just because we put them up for sale doesnt mean a current tenant could afford to buy them. What does that mean? They would likely be snapped up by corporate property management companies. And that means rent would go UP as companies would control all the rentals and can set whatever price they wish. The existence of mom and pop landlords is what keeps prices DOWN especially if they are for basement suites.
Perhaps cities, provinces, and/or the federal government could buy up those properties instead of corporate landlords. Then they could charge geared-to-income rent instead of whatever the market will bear.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one stops thinking only in terms of housing as a commodity
Who pays for that? The taxpayer, which means a MASSIVE increase in taxes because the average house in Canada is now about 700,000.
Lets say the gov wants to buy 1000 homes in a city, thats 700,000,000. How much do you think taxes would have to go up to spend nearly 3/4 of a billion dollars for 1000 homes in a major city? If they did that in 30 Canadian cities thats 21,000,000,000.
21 TRILLION DOLLARS! Currently Canadas entire national debt (the highest in Canadas history) is 1.4 trillion. So you'd have to make it 15 times bigger to buy those houses. If everyone taxes TRIPLED we couldn't pay that off.
You think thats workable? Not a chance. And thats just for 1000 homes per city. Vancouver for example currently has about 125,000 rentals, Toronto has 550,000 rentals so 1000 is barely a drop in the bucket.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one doesnt do the math.
I agree! The correct number is 21 billion, not trillion. Don't worry, you were only off by a factor of 1000!
$21B is about 1/8th of what Carney is proposing to spend annually on defence.
Absolutely doable.
Huh, you are indeed correct. Hoisted by my own petard.
This is what needs to happen, not a one-time subsidy for a landlord. This way the province gets something out of its investment and continues to supply proper housing. Handing out cash is just throwing money away.