Well, the cities are ultimately subject to the provinces, so if we can get enough support for this kind of stuff on the provincial level it can be used to overrule the NIMBYism that tends to dominate municipal politics. Of course, the problem with that is that most of the current slate of provincial governments would most definitely not be on board with this sort of thing. But hope springs eternal, I suppose.

That's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario; people don't want to live out in the boonies in the middle of nowhere, they like amenities like "restaurants" and "clothing stores". Maybe even a super market that can stock a few international ingredients from home.

Who is going to build all that infrastructure to prop up a new town before the residents move in?

Free crown land costs you nothing because just trying to live there means you'll be doing some of the developing.

Affordable housing isn't even an immigration problem, it also gets tied to birth rates as a population spike.

This is just a failure of the free market to address the needs of the populace, and is evidence that housing either needs to be provided by the government like any other see public service, or a public competitor needs to exist to drive prices down.

Airbnb but also speculative and for-profit ownership. Homes shouldn't be bought to rent.

doesn't that mean that 2/3 units are rented for less than 90 days? that means they should be utilizing capacity that would otherwise be sitting empty (i.e. because the owner is living in it for most of the year)?

I'm not sure why cities keep wanting to build suburban single family development, we know it costs a tonne to support in the long-term. If we would build medium density instead on a large scale it would go a long way to fixing the housing crisis.

What did you change?

The fundamentality of cost is a means to manage scarcity. If something is running thin, meaning there is less of a thing than those who wish to have that thing, then cost must rise such that enough people lose interest in having that thing (i.e. it becomes unaffordable), yielding to those who still do want the thing.

The addition of 'unaffordable' changes nothing. It is already encoded in the original statement.

Thank you very much. Right now I am on the unseeded lands of the Haudenosaunee and treaty peoples. I wish every blessing for you and yours.

Thank you!

There's plenty of housing. Just not affordable housing. Each of these McMansions in the suburbs can probably host 3 families.