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I think the root cause is supply, demand, the salaries of buyers, interest rates and multiple of salary for mortgages permitted by law.

which are all influenced at every level by the desire (need?) to keep housing prices high and increasing..

Those are downstream effects of the problem with housing being an investment.

We don't want prices to go down so we don't build enough supply. The policies that make housing a good investment increase demand from speculators and investors above the natural need for housing. There are all sorts of subsidies that exist to give people more money to buy housing instead of trying to make housing actually cheaper. Interest rates are a lever the government uses to support its political goals which includes increasing housing values. It all comes back to the same root cause.

Where are you building these houses in the protected Oak Ridges Moran? Building requires space to begin with.

Canada, famously a country with no free space. Even if the problem was a lack of space, building denser is always an option and none of the big Canadian cities are really overflowing due to population density.

You kid, but 90% of land in Canada is crown land. Nobody is allowed to own it.

Which would still leave more land than exists in France, Germany, UK, Italy, Japan, and numerous other countries with larger populations.

I doubt there is a conspiracy to stop house building, there's just planning laws that prevent and slow down development. The public want to two contradictory things, homes their children can afford and banning anything that could reduce their house price. Hence politicians look for scape goats like foreign Investors. Two conservative governments in the uk have tried to simplify planning law , and failed. We try all sorts of hacks like "affordable housing" legislation. The fact is, we make it hard to build where demand is greatest.

Speculation isn’t great, but let’s not pretend this is some elaborate scheme orchestrated by all the homeowners.

If it’s feasible and profitable to build new homes, then developers will do so.

Everyone loves the simple solution of “build more houses”. Very few actually consider the execution of the master plan. What would it take for you to start building homes? It’s an enormous risk, requires tons of upfront capital, specialized labor and supplies.

When everyone wants to live in the same areas, housing prices go up. Lifting zoning restrictions isn’t some magic bullet that will alleviate that fact.

> What would it take for you to start building homes? It’s an enormous risk, requires tons of upfront capital, specialized labor and supplies.

There's also no incentive to build affordable or well-constructed homes. Many builders will try to maximize profit by investing the bare minimum (i.e., cutting corners) and creating the largest number of dwellings possible. Mattamy Homes is infamous for developing large neighborhoods with pretty homes that practically fall apart in a matter of months if you look at them wrong.

> There's also no incentive to build affordable or well-constructed homes.

This is sort of my point. Who's going to build the "affordable housing"? Why won't the affordable housing get snatched up by the highest bidder?

The federal government already spends way more than it can afford. State/local governments don't have anywhere near enough tax revenue. It would require a multi-trillion dollar operation to increase supply enough to offset shortages.

I never said it was an "elaborate scheme orchestrated by all the homeowners." It is a natural result of people independently acting purely based on their personal incentives.

Homeowners don't need to orchestrate and elaborate scheme, they just vote for the politicians who will prioritize increasing home values because that will help them financially. That politician will enact policies favorable to homeowners because that is what their constituency wants. That will encourage more people to become homeowners because people see homeownership as a financially beneficial endeavor. That will increase the power of homeowners as a constituency which will lead to more politicians courting homeowners with favorable policies making homeownership more attractive. And on and on the cycle goes until it isn't "feasible and profitable to build new homes" because we have made it difficult and expensive through all our pro-homeowner policies.

> Homeowners don't need to orchestrate and elaborate scheme, they just vote for the politicians who will prioritize increasing home values because that will help them financially.

Or y'know...maybe homeowners don't want to have their neighborhood become overcrowded. Not everyone wants to live in a megacity with traffic, air pollution, constant bustle, and restricted personal liberty.

If financial gain is your only motive as a homeowner, you would actually WANT an increase in density. As you cram more people into a smaller space, the land underneath becomes more valuable. Increased density attracts amenities, restaurants, businesses, nightlife...etc, all of which raise the value of your property.

Homeowners care about things other than net worth.

>Or y'know...maybe homeowners don't want to have their neighborhood become overcrowded.

Nothing I said here is specific to neighborhoods. It also applies at the city, state/province, and national level. A homeowner in San Diego likely doesn't care about the density of various neighborhood in San Francisco. But they might still vote for Prop 13 which put harsh limitations on property taxes in the state and in turn increased the value of homeownership and the cost of housing. That decision has nothing to do with personal preferences of what type of neighborhood in which people want to live. It is purely homeowners being powerful enough to vote themselves tax breaks which makes homeownership more attractive which makes homeowners more powerful...

Prop 13 is intended to protect homeowners from being gentrified out of their residence. Even if I think it's backfired, I understand the motivation. I would be livid if I was a lifelong CA resident and suddenly could no longer afford my lax liabilities as a result of demand/speculation.

This is just one piece of the puzzle, and frankly its a bit much to chalk it all up to power/greed. Again, if CA homeowners make up the majority of voters what exactly is the alternative?

If I'm being honest, my opinion on CA housing markets means nothing...but it seems pretty sensible to me that when a shitload of people all want to live in a handful of cities, prices HAVE TO increase. Removing prop 13 and zoning restrictions isn't going to double the housing supply.

On a semi-related note, pretty much everything in CA is more expensive. The residents there vote for expensive public services and legislation. When everything is more expensive, you bet your sweet ass houses will be as well.

> maybe homeowners don't want to have their neighborhood become overcrowded.

Then it’s time to collect your scarcity-generated windfall and move someplace rural you’ll like better! Super-common, and you can even complain self-righteously about the terribly governed crime-ridden hellhole you’re leaving behind.

I live in a duplex the middle of a big city with practically no zoning restrictions. I love it here. You're the one complaining self righteously.

I am quoting my original comment because it seems like you didn't read it:

> Not everyone wants to live in a megacity with traffic, air pollution, constant bustle, and restricted personal liberty.

> If financial gain is your only motive as a homeowner, you would actually WANT an increase in density. As you cram more people into a smaller space, the land underneath becomes more valuable. Increased density attracts amenities, restaurants, businesses, nightlife...etc, all of which raise the value of your property.

Do you have an actual response? Or do you just need to be outraged at something?

> Speculation isn’t great, but let’s not pretend this is some elaborate scheme orchestrated by all the homeowners.

No, but real estate companies wouldn't be able to lower property taxes alone. It's only happening once there is a critical mass of homeowners that is voting themselves a tax cut. Large real estate companies get exactly the same tax cut and since they have more property they benefit more than the average homeowner. One could have a tax cut for owner occupied housing but no, there is no limit to the tax cut. Everyone including billionaires gets it. That's incredibly unfair.

If most voters are homeowners then what exactly do we expect? Of course they're going to push for lower property taxes...maybe homeowners feel that their money already gets taxed 5+ times before they can spend it on their literal shelter. Most folks effectively work for the government 4 months/yr AND owning property requires another annual fee to the tax man.

High property taxes hurt renters too. Rent prices increase to cover the difference.

I almost agree, but I think you've got the causality backwards.

> The end result is we have collectively refused to build enough housing to keep prices stable or decreasing

This is not the result of a hushed down societal decision. The refusal to allow housing construction the cause of the ever increasing prices. As so often, it comes down to basic microeconomics: If you limit supply while demand rises, prices will constantly go up.

I do agree that foreigners, like anyone else, buy homes as speculation because they're guaranteed to increase in value.

>This is not the result of a hushed down societal decision. The refusal to allow housing construction the cause of the ever increasing prices.

And what would you say is the cause for that? I would generally say it is people trying to protect their existing investments in housing.

Sure. The question is why they didn't do that until ~1970, which is when I think that era started.

It sounds crazy today, but the vastly poorer US society of 1960 supplied pretty everyone with an indoor place to sleep and call home.

That isn't true. The housing projects of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society poverty reduction efforts didn't start until mid decade. Before that, you could infer that there was an actual need for it (even though it ultimately failed).

I don't think the people who moved to the housing projects were typically sleeping on the streets.

I think it was more a case of upgrading to modern sanitation standards etc.

That said, I have no real detailed knowledge, and would be happy to learn how wrong I am about this :)

Bottom living standards were a lot lower back then: people could live in shacks without plumbing, flop houses were plentiful. These days none of that is legally allowed, so people would have fallen into that housing 50-80 years ago are homeless today. That being said, poverty reductions between then and now are real, it’s only that our standards keep getting higher (as they should).

I would 100% bring back flop houses. They're much better than sleeping in the street.

The insanity of "we can't let you have a bad X, so you get no X!" is one of my least favorite things in this era...

I agree. I remember the flop house my grandpa ran in Spokane fondly. We cousins called it the empty arms.

On the other hand, flop houses aren’t economical to run anymore, and the drug problems (especially with decriminalization) have gotten much worse. It’s not clear they can work like they did in the past.

>Sure. The question is why they didn't do that until ~1970, which is when I think that era started.

I'm American so I can't speak to the specifics of what happened in Canada, but I imagine it is similar to what happened in the US.

It is all related to the post-war suburbanization of the population. In the early part of the 20th century, homeownership rates in the US were in the 40% range. By the 70s it jumped to roughly 65%. Large swaths of the population went from being lifelong renters in cities to buying single family homes in the suburbs. Owning a home became a symbol of American middle-class life and the government both supported and encouraged this transition. Obviously a constituency that makes up 65% of the population is going to see more political power than one that only makes up 45% of the population.

Actually, Germany ran a very successful public housing program after the 70s. It's pretty recent that the government basically sold their properties for pennies and now everything is getting more expensive because nobody is building anymore.

Population has more than doubled and the proportion of urban population has increased by more than 50%.

  1960:
    Pop: 3,034,949,748
    %Urban:  34%

  2020
    Pop: 7,794,798,739
    % Urban: 56%

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-populat...

>"The prices need to go up. I don't understand why no one is willing to admit this."

No, rather somebody at the top needs to go down.

Policies that forbid landowners from building housing are central planning and the opposite of capitalism.

That aside, this is absolutely correct. It's constantly irritating to hear politicians praise "strong housing markets" when "strong" means "unaffordable if you're not already wealthy".

> Policies that forbid landowners from building housing are central planning and the opposite of capitalism.

You mean opposite of a free market. Property rights, aka the exclusion of other people, is actually an inherent part of capitalism. When you think about it, capitalism isn't actually about physical capital. It's actually about having the rights to be allowed to do things and restricting other people's rights while boosting your own rights is considered perfectly okay under the guise of private property.

When you think about it. We have built a system that tells you whether you get to work or not. This is completely independent of your ability to work or gain skills. It's like a brain cage that tells people they are powerless when they really aren't, they just aren't allowed to help themselves.

A lot of laws that set a minimum living standard basically make it illegal to live. If you are going to demand that everyone must meet that bar, then you must actually do something to let them achieve it. Instead, we just abandon people under the guise of personal responsibility.

> a system that tells you whether you get to work or not. This is completely independent of your ability to work or gain skills.

can you give an example of this? I don't believe the current system prevents anyone from working if they have the skill. The closest policy to what you described is segregation and racism, but i don't think that is what you're referring to.

> A lot of laws that set a minimum living standard

there's no such law. There's minimum wage law, which might cause unintended consequences, if the minimum is inappropriate. But so far, the current minimums don't seem that inappropriate.

acting in a way to get rich off your property is very capitalistic, including manipulating policy to raise the value of your property