Cost of housing in Canada

[kratz]

Regarding the cost of housing in Canada,

17 May, 2024



View attachment 85265

The average person did not receive a 23.27% salary increase in Nova Scotia. The market will reach a point nobody can afford the asking price because the banks won't approve their mortgage application.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The average person did not receive a 23.27% salary increase in Nova Scotia. The market will reach a point nobody can afford the asking price because the banks won't approve their mortgage application.

There are lots of people with deep pockets, many of them right here in Canada, many of them in control of the way things are run. The average person will just have to learn to rent from politicians and other people in the "protected" class.

 

[YZT580]

There are lots of people with deep pockets, many of them right here in Canada, many of them in control of the way things are run. The average person will just have to learn to rent from politicians and other people in the "protected" class.

with average rent over 3000 mortgages are actually cheaper. More like two or three families will have to learn to live together in the politicians townhouse

 

[Kirkhill]

with average rent over 3000 mortgages are actually cheaper. More like two or three families will have to learn to live together in the politicians townhouse

Or they could make like their ancestors and tell the politicians to flock off and go build their own lives in their own communities.

The models available are First Nations communities and religious communities ie Hutterite colonies. In addition there are Metis communities....

And what, exactly, is a Metis?

The government’s bill on Métis rights has ignited a messy fight with First Nations: Ken Coates in the Globe and Mail | Macdonald-Laurier Institute

The government’s approach has hit a significant speed bump, but the process of recognizing Métis Nations will continue.

macdonaldlaurier.ca

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-identity-fraud-summit-winnipeg-1.7204030

 

[Kirkhill]

Further to the Metis ...

If Canada wants to respect and recognize treaty rights, it must kill Bill C-53​

TANYA TALAGA
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED YESTERDAYUPDATED 6 HOURS AGO
FOR SUBSCRIBERS

Ask any First Nations person how they feel about Bill C-53 (An Act Respecting the Recognition of Certain Métis Governments in Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan), and odds are, they’ll tell you the bill needs to die.

If it passes third reading, the federal bill would recognize the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA) and Métis Nation - Saskatchewan (MNS) as legitimate Indigenous governments, part of the right to self-determination protected by Section 35 of the Constitution. It would also recognize “six historic settlements” that had been recognized by the Ontario government in 2017.

That’s pretty rich, since the province constantly fights First Nations in court, refusing to own up to their longstanding obligations under the Robinson treaties. But that’s in keeping with the bill, which ironically fails at “respecting” or giving “recognition” to First Nations rights in Ontario. The Act would be a major step toward trampling on treaty rights holders in the 133 First Nations in Ontario, as well as Status Indians under the Indian Act – all while First Nations’ protestations have been ignored.

The Assembly of First Nations opposes Bill C-53, calling on Canada to withdraw the bill and honour its obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to meaningfully consult. The Wabun Tribal Council, which represents six First Nations in eastern Ontario, does not recognize the MNO’s Section 35 rights. Nishnawbe Aski Nation said that it would be “an attack on our inherent and treaty rights.” The Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF) also opposes the bill, and the Metis Nation - Saskatchewan has withdrawn its support, criticizing the legislation as “one-size-fits-all” as it pursues its own separate negotiations.

The main concern: what happens when large groups with historic claims, armed with recognized rights to self-government, convince Ottawa and the provinces that they’ve been overlooked on the road to reconciliation, and that they must receive harvesting rights, be written into history books, and ultimately be given control over land and resources? Whose land and resources will be given, in that scenario?

The Métis National Council, which does not include the Manitoba Métis Federation after it broke ties in 2021 over allegations that the MNO had watered down its membership roll, has joined the MNO and MNA in backing Bill C-53. But there has been no consultation. The MNO says that because the bill does not affect First Nations rights, it doesn’t trigger the duty to consult.

At the heart of this conflict is a problem being tackled at the Indigenous Identity Fraud Summit in Winnipeg, hosted by the MMF and the Chiefs of Ontario. The harms of “Pretendians” – the misappropriation of First Nations, Métis and Inuit identities, co-opted by settlers and the sudden appearance of large groups pursuing constitutional rights across the country – have been discussed. On the East Coast, such “Pretendians” often claim to be Métis or Mi’kmaq, explained Dr. Pam Palmater, a lawyer and member of Eel River Bar First Nation in New Brunswick. Examples of such groups are the Acadian-Métis and the Eastern Woodland Métis Nation.

Many groups have been politically organized. “Unlike First Nations who all have uniqueness, this is a unified group with all the same intention,” Fort William First Nation Chief Michele Solomon told me, in regard to the MNO. “They have gained political power.”

In a statement, the MNO said it was disappointed not to have been invited to the summit, and that “historic rights-bearing communities unquestionably exist in Ontario. This was definitively proven by the unanimous Supreme Court of Canada decision, R v. Powley.” That ruling recognized the Section 35 rights of the Métis community in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

But what the MNO seems to forget is that the very thing it is fighting for – recognition and legitimacy against erasure – is not being reciprocated to First Nations and Status Indians in their campaign. You cannot negotiate for recognition if it chips away at our rights and traditional territory – and at the very least, many First Nations people feel that Bill C-53 is an infringement. Without consultation, they are silenced.

I don’t often write about Métis issues because I’m not a community member. The definition of who is Métis, who is not, and who speaks for them is the subject of much debate among Métis themselves; it is not for me to decide. But I do know that until everything is cleared up, we can’t be changing laws and potentially redrawing maps in ways that are not built on Indigenous laws and protocols. If these efforts were clear, after all, we wouldn’t be passing laws in Parliament; we’d be dealing face to face. And that has not happened.

As such, the colonization continues. This time, with help.

Are the Oji-Cree Metis?

The Ojibwe are closely related to the Odawa and Algonquin peoples, and share many traditions with neighbouring Cree people, especially in the north and west of Ontario, and east of Manitoba. Some Cree and Ojibwe peoples have merged to form Oji-Cree communities.

Which were the First First Nations?

Cree? Algonquin? Anishinaabe? Mississauga? Ojibwe? Oji-Cree? Or the Iroquois - the Wendat Hurons and the Neutrals of the 5 or 6 nations that call themselves Haudenosaunee?

Talaga is of mixed heritage, describing her ancestry as being one-fourth Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) and half Polish.

 

[mariomike]

Saw this on Slumlords Canada.

One bedroom apartment.

Three in the hall. Three more in the bedroom.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SlumlordsCanada/comments/1ct0owi/new_record_6_people_sharing_a_1_bedroom_apartment

 

[daftandbarmy]

Meanwhile, good old red tape continues to foil the visionaries

Regulations, 'fragmented' construction sector holding back housing starts: CMHC

Laberge proposes regulatory reform, particularly at the municipal level, as one solution to increasing productivity. He said rules around permit delivery, how many storeys and units a building can contain and development charges stand in the way of further development in many regions.

Regulations, 'fragmented' construction sector holding back housing starts: CMHC

 

[Furniture]

I was wrong to personalize the discussion.

You're not wrong about the effects of the market on the youngsters.

Years ago there was a TV series called Time Team. A bunch of itinerant archaeologists who did three day digs all over Britain. They fascinated me. One site they investigated was an early Arkwright factory. It was a steam driven mill by design but the early Newcomen style engine wasn't as efficient as they hoped so they ended up with a closed circuit water driven mill with the steam pump being used to circulate the water. This was the beginning of the industrial revolution circa 1770 or thereabouts IIRC.

There was a secondary story line. About slums and Karl Marx's commentaries.

The original mill was designed with accommodation for the factory staff. The accommodations were top notch. Separate houses for each worker, with a long enough yard to be able to keep a pig, a few chickens and maintain a garden. The idea was that the place had to be able to attract the best labour from the farms and bring them into the new factories. The early capitalists were utopians.

Fast forward a lifetime, 70 years, to Karl Marx's day and Karl was observing slums.

The Agricultural Revolution meant that there were fewer jobs on farms so there was a surplus of labour for the mills. The mill owners no longer had to compete for labour. Labour was competing for jobs. All of those neat little one family houses were subdivided. The archaeology showed that single family homes became two family homes with a family per home. Then the cellars were rented out. Then the cellars were divided to create two private homes - below grade, with no windows. Where there had been one well off factory worker when the mill opened, 70 years later there were now 8 to 10 mill worker's families living is squalor. The utopians were no more. They were now competing with other mill owners who could undercut them because they didn't have to compete for labour and they were saturating the market place, driving down the price of woolens and everything else that could be manufactured.

Chicken and egg time. Did capitalists create slums or did the workers do it to themselves?

....


We are living in cities that are just over 70 years old, counting from the post-WW2 boom. The houses that were built since then had planned lives of about 25 years. That stock of houses, and the lifestyle for which it was designed, as well as the occupants, is fading into the past.

Europe is full of high density slums converted into modern high density cities. Much of Canada was settled by people that were actively escaping those high density communities, modernized or not. They knew what it was like to live with sewage running down the streets due to inadequate infrastructure, too little water, too few doctors, too few jobs and being besieged by outbreaks of disease. They aspired to a job and a home of their own that they could keep clean and raise healthy kids.

It seems a pity to me that it only takes a lifetime to start replicating the cycle that Karl Marx saw.

...

People do best when they have their own little patch that they can control to their own satisfaction with their own capital. The Tragedy of the Commons is still a real thing.

In the example you provided the mill owners were the baddies.

They took advantage of the surplus of available workers to pay less, and treat people poorly...

People have managed to live and thrive in cities for millennia, so the answer isn't just patches of land, or sprawling megacities. It's finding a reasonable balance of both, at costs that people can actually afford.

A friend of mine on PEI is a somewhat wealthy fisherman. He and his brother-in-law, a contractor, build houses on spec. The skilled trades working to build the homes can't afford the mortgages to buy them... In Montague PEI... You're pretty hard pressed to get less urban/GTA than Montague. The current model is going to break, and the current COA is "hope" that it won't be too bad... Hope is never a valid COA.

 

[Good2Golf]

Meanwhile, good old red tape continues to foil the visionaries

Regulations, 'fragmented' construction sector holding back housing starts: CMHC

Laberge proposes regulatory reform, particularly at the municipal level, as one solution to increasing productivity. He said rules around permit delivery, how many storeys and units a building can contain and development charges stand in the way of further development in many regions.

Regulations, 'fragmented' construction sector holding back housing starts: CMHC

Regulations? In Canada?

Regulatory Costs in Canada and the United States: A Small Business Perspective

This report considers the impact of regulation on businesses in both Canada and the U.S. Unnecessary regulation undermines productivity, lowers wages, and attacks the entrepreneurial spirit.

www.cfib-fcei.ca

Sure, excess regulation is holding Canada back, but who really has the will for change?

Business decries internal-trade barriers, but are also conflicted, as some benefit from local barriers: Kevin Carmichael

financialpost.com

Stagnant regulations impair innovation and economic growth: Senator Colin Deacon

Canada’s investments in innovation are producing lacklustre results, and a stagnant regulatory system is a big part of the problem, writes Senator Colin De

sencanada.ca

Canada is over-governed, overtaxed and overregulated

 

[CBH99]

Regulations? In Canada?

Regulatory Costs in Canada and the United States: A Small Business Perspective

This report considers the impact of regulation on businesses in both Canada and the U.S. Unnecessary regulation undermines productivity, lowers wages, and attacks the entrepreneurial spirit.

www.cfib-fcei.ca

Sure, excess regulation is holding Canada back, but who really has the will for change?

Business decries internal-trade barriers, but are also conflicted, as some benefit from local barriers: Kevin Carmichael

financialpost.com

Stagnant regulations impair innovation and economic growth: Senator Colin Deacon

Canada’s investments in innovation are producing lacklustre results, and a stagnant regulatory system is a big part of the problem, writes Senator Colin De

sencanada.ca

Canada is over-governed, overtaxed and overregulated

Regulate building codes so properties are inherently safe, and are difficult to burn down of have structural problems.

Regulate some basic understanding of what kinds of buildings can be built where. If you have a community that's desirable for families with single family homes, green spaces, dog walking & biking pathways, and a nice feature like a man made pond - don't build a 6 story office park or apartment building that will look out of place & congest the streets with vehicle traffic.

Nobody wants to live in a community that's ugly or appears poorly thought out

Regulate the availability of utilities to those areas to ensure these communities have ample power & sewer services




Otherwise, get the heck out of the way already!

 

[Kirkhill]

In the example you provided the mill owners were the baddies.

They took advantage of the surplus of available workers to pay less, and treat people poorly...

Which mill owners? The ones that built the model factories and supplied clean homes for people that grew up living under the same roof as their cattle and goats? Or the ones that had people begging for work in their factories because there was no work in the fields?

People have managed to live and thrive in cities for millennia, so the answer isn't just patches of land, or sprawling megacities. It's finding a reasonable balance of both, at costs that people can actually afford.

Troy (Turkish: Troya, Greek: Τροία, Hittite: 𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 Truwiša/Taruiša) or Ilion (Greek: Ίλιον, Hittite: 𒌷𒃾𒇻𒊭 Wiluša)[1][2][3][4] was an ancient country located in present-day Hisarlık, Turkey. The place was first settled around 3600 BC and grew into a small fortified city around 3000 BC. During its four thousand years of existence, Troy was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. As a result, the archeological site that has been left is divided into nine layers, each corresponding to a city built on the ruins of the previous.

In archaeology a tell (borrowed into English from Arabic: تَلّ, tall, "mound" or "small hill")[1] is an artificial topographical feature, a mound[a] consisting of the accumulated and stratified debris of a succession of consecutive settlements at the same site, the refuse of generations of people who built and inhabited them and natural sediment.[2][3][4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_(archaeology)#cite_note-paradox-6 When transliterating a Hebrew toponym, the English spelling is tel, as opposed to conversion from Arabic, when the word is written 'tell'.[5]

Archaeology suggests that cities don't survive for millenia. They thrive, die and are resettled. Often the location is a critical site because it is on a communications route - port, rivers or trails.

North American cities are new enough that they are still on their first cycle although many of them have experienced the death of the centre.


---

You set up a winter camp, the first thing you site is the crapper and then the track plan.

These municipalities that are intent on converting single family lots into multi-family lots need to allow for building larger sewers before they allow more people. They need more water. They need more hospitals and doctors. More Supermarkets. More jobs. Otherwise they are creating slums.

They also need to adjust their building and fire codes. The existing codes are based on certain materials being appropriate because there are adequate separations between structures and sufficient fire hydrants. Higher density environments mean less wood and vinyl and more concrete and steel. It also means built in fire suppression systems.

If you don't then you end up with London 1666.

Or Calgary 2002

Residents weep as fire destroys Calgary condos

The Globe and Mail offers the most authoritative news in Canada, featuring national and international news

www.theglobeandmail.com

....

PS Calgary city hall and Stephen's Avenue is built out of local sandstone because the previous downtown of overcrowded wooden structures burnt.

...

A plan that permits every lot to be developed independently risks becoming no plan at all.

 

[Furniture]

They took advantage of the surplus of available workers to pay less, and treat people poorly...

Which mill owners? The ones that built the model factories and supplied clean homes for people that grew up living under the same roof as their cattle and goats? Or the ones that had people begging for work in their factories because there was no work in the fields?








Archaeology suggests that cities don't survive for millenia. They thrive, die and are resettled. Often the location is a critical site because it is on a communications route - port, rivers or trails.

North American cities are new enough that they are still on their first cycle although many of them have experienced the death of the centre.


---

You set up a winter camp, the first thing you site is the crapper and then the track plan.

These municipalities that are intent on converting single family lots into multi-family lots need to allow for building larger sewers before they allow more people. They need more water. They need more hospitals and doctors. More Supermarkets. More jobs. Otherwise they are creating slums.

They also need to adjust their building and fire codes. The existing codes are based on certain materials being appropriate because there are adequate separations between structures and sufficient fire hydrants. Higher density environments mean less wood and vinyl and more concrete and steel. It also means built in fire suppression systems.

If you don't then you end up with London 1666.

Or Calgary 2002

Residents weep as fire destroys Calgary condos

The Globe and Mail offers the most authoritative news in Canada, featuring national and international news

www.theglobeandmail.com

....

PS Calgary city hall and Stephen's Avenue is built out of local sandstone because the previous downtown of overcrowded wooden structures burnt.

...

A plan that permits every lot to be developed independently risks becoming no plan at all.

So, to be clear, you're suggesting we pillage the current system to make a new Troy?

Because that's what you're describing... Only you're describing it thousands of years later, with all the messy bits sanitized.

David Michell covered this already...

 

[Kirkhill]

So, to be clear, you're suggesting we pillage the current system to make a new Troy?

Because that's what you're describing... Only you're describing it thousands of years later, with all the messy bits sanitized.

David Michell covered this already...

No. I'm saying that when conditions get miserable enough people vote with their feet and do the other thing.

18th century Scottish farmhouse. No floors. No windows. No chimneys. One fire. Smoke leaking through the turf roof. Animals at the back end of the building. Everybody, man, woman and child, working the plot, tending the animals, doing chores, fetching water.

Housing in 18th Century Scotland: Part 1

Arkwright model village

Cromford: A Factory Community - Revolutionary Players

Image: Housing in North Street, Cromford, Derbyshire. Richard Arkwright built houses to attract people to work in his factories. North Street contained two parallel rows of substantial dwellings. The school, which was built in 1832, is located at the right-hand edge of the picture. 1...

www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk

Decent housing for Cromford workers

William Blake’s reference to ‘dark satanic mills’ in his Jerusalem poem, conjures up negative connotations of the industrial revolution and the impact it had on the lives of ordinary people. Worker…

pastinthepresent.net

Clean, dry, tight housing. Steady income. Sick pay. Schools, churches, public houses, allotments, sanitary facilities.

 

[YZT580]

Meanwhile, good old red tape continues to foil the visionaries

Regulations, 'fragmented' construction sector holding back housing starts: CMHC

Laberge proposes regulatory reform, particularly at the municipal level, as one solution to increasing productivity. He said rules around permit delivery, how many storeys and units a building can contain and development charges stand in the way of further development in many regions.

Regulations, 'fragmented' construction sector holding back housing starts: CMHC

If the developers weren't always trying to get the town to approve exceptions to the plan they wouldn't have the same problem getting permits. Instead they ask for increased density, increased land coverage, more units per acre, no parks or smaller green spaces. It isn't that they can't afford to build within the regulations and make a decent profit; not at all, they just want more profit. Its back to the greed of the factory owners but in a different context and government as represented by both Ford and Trudeau and most others both accept it and encourage it with their infilling notions

 

[Brad Sallows]

So, to be clear, you're suggesting we pillage the current system to make a new Troy?

Because that's what you're describing... Only you're describing it thousands of years later, with all the messy bits sanitized.

An observation isn't a recommendation.

 

[Furniture]

An observation isn't a recommendation.

An observation is the basis for a solution... So what is/are the the solution(s)?

Telling someone they're on fire isn't particularly useful, even if it makes the observer feel special to say it.

 

[lenaitch]

It will solve the problem for some people. If those people adopt that option then it will tend to relieve the pressure on others that can't, or don't want to live that life.

Another solution that I have encountered along the way is people living the gig lifestyle and prospering. In the oil patch I ran into multiple instances of people, in particular plane loads of Newfoundlanders and Quebecers, that headed to the camps in Alberta for a season and sent their money home to support their family in affordable housing in their home provinces. In the 80s I also ran into people from Lethbridge that commuted to oil rigs in the North Sea for two or three week shifts before returning home for two or three weeks.

In the Bering Sea fishery the factory hands, along with the ship's officers, got crew share. The more they caught and the better the quality them more they took home after 4 to 6 months at sea. The same applied to shore camps in the Aleutians and around Bristol Bay. I knew Americans that commuted from Montana where they maintained their primary residence (and called it a tree farm for tax purposes) and others that lived with their Phillipina wives in the Phillipines.

Remote work can take all sorts of forms.

Not all solutions suit everybody, but there again, they don't have to.

I'm not sure I would call that working arrangement a "gig lifestyle". Workers in remote mines, off-shore oil rigs, etc. who live remotely from their workplace still go back to their same employer. It's more of an extended shift arrangement and long commute. I suppose in some seasonal industries, like fishing, you re-sign with the employer. I don't know if I would call foreign temporary farm workers 'gig employees' but maybe technically they are. Although many do repeatedly return to the same employer, their relationship is severed every cycle.

Whether the generations growing up in urban density are being forced into Industrial-era squalor remains to be seen. For some, the concept of having a detached plot that they have to maintain is something they actively don't want. To them, living in an apartment or condo where you pay other to maintain, ordering in or eating out the one big meal of the day, living on transit and not owning a vehicle, is an active choice. Some of us learned our home-maintenance/DIY skills either through osmosis or at the feet or our parents. With many now, that is completely lost.

Density don't necessarily lead to squalor. It can, but it doesn't have to.

And what, exactly, is a Metis?

Any practical definition I have seen defines it as the offspring of a French (Canadian) father and First Nations mother. I have never heard or seen it applied to a mix of First Nations ancestry.

 

[Brad Sallows]

An observation is the basis for a solution... So what is/are the the solution(s)?

Who knows?

Telling someone they're on fire isn't particularly useful, even if it makes the observer feel special to say it.

Many of them don't even know they're on fire - they feel uncomfortably warm, but don't know what it is, the reasons why it is there, or what part they played in setting current conditions.

 

[mariomike]

For some, the concept of having a detached plot that they have to maintain is something they actively don't want.

Seems to me most ( retired ) people I know love to travel.

They like nothing better than to buy an airline or rail ticket to anywhere - as long as it is far away.

For that reason alone, for some "empty nesters", selling their house and moving into a nice ( some come with amenities ) condo they can lock and walk away from, with convenient access ( VIA / GO train / UP Express ) to Union and Pearson, may be just the "ticket".

 

[Eaglelord17]

There are lots of people with deep pockets, many of them right here in Canada, many of them in control of the way things are run. The average person will just have to learn to rent from politicians and other people in the "protected" class.

Or that could result in social unrest and a potential revolution as the lower class loses housing stability and can’t meet one of the three needs to survive. Rent prices have skyrocketed, apartments I rented a decade ago are 2.5 times more expensive for the same place. This isn’t sustainable.

The French Revolution happened with a much lower wealth inequality than we currently have.

Especially when people wake up to the fact it is our government who has created this crisis by allowing too many people in too short a time for our population to absorb.

It all comes back to the greedy and rich exploiting the rest of the population, at some point people will have had enough.