Hacker News Reader

Comment by hestefisk | Hacker News Reader

Good symbolic act, but as the fine article states, it’s unlikely to have material effect on housing affordability for the average person until supply is increased.

View on HN

Just because a policy does not solve a problem outright does not make it symbolic. The article discusses other measures that have already been implemented and points out that current housing prices are way off their peak from a year ago. If this policy further reduces demand even a little, that will have an impact on the trajectory of housing prices. That's not symbolism.

It is symbolism when everyone who is paid to think in this space considers it not to be a solution to the root of the problem, which is a lack of housing supply to keep up with job growth. You've banned foreign investors, great, there are still domestic investors who will fill the void in the market like gas in a small room. If you want there to not be investors, then housing shouldn't be such a great speculative asset to invest in, and it only is such an asset because local governments have opted to constrain supply and support investors rather than the workers they represent in their constituency.

"local governments have opted to constrain supply and support investors rather than the workers they represent in their constituency."

The local governments zoning laws might benefit investors but that may not have been goal of the government. What should they do to support workers?

>What should they do to support workers?

Zone for more housing.

It doesn't move the needle. It's symbolic.

That's true. Will this policy not have any impact?

> current housing prices are way off their peak from a year ago

The only policy that impacted this was the Bank of Canada’s interest rate policy. Houses were rocketing up right until the moment rates started increasing.

Improving something is a multi-step process that takes time.

I'm happy they've taken a step in the right direction, an I'm hopeful they'll take more.

Its really not a step in the right direction. Imo its even a bit into the wrong direction because they are opting to sidestep the vastly easier step that would actually solve this problem for good: updating the zoning to keep up with job growth. Blaming foreign investors for today's home prices is like blaming the boogyman, because its zoning that explains everything about today's home prices and its the zoning creating a supply crisis that attracts investors in the first place (foreign and domestic lest we think this investor problem poofs into thin air with this).

Update zoning? Humans are breeding creatures. Like all animals, they will reproduce to fill their available habitat and back pressure is needed to keep the population from strangling this planet.

No one looks up the zoning code before having kids. Zoning is also not related to the carrying capacity of an environment, usually its decided by busybodies who actively ignore the literature on the subject in favor of perpetuating a status quo.

My understanding is that it's been proven over and over, the world over, the way to slow population growth is to educate, especially women, and provide easy access to family planning / birth control.

its zoning that explains everything about today's home prices

Not really. Vancouver, one of the worst places in Canada for foreign investment driving up prices, has been adding new high density housing as fast as it can for 20 years now. One of the primary constraints is the construction trade that can't keep up with demand.

Not enough of Vancouver is zoned for middle density housing. If you opened up the zoning for Vancouver, you'd see the construction trade in Vancouver expand and more middle density constructed throughout the city, instead of limited patches of high density that can only be constructed by a limited set of developers able to get financing for such a huge project.

Here is the zoning map of Vancouver, 80% of it is zoned for low density development and this is the root of the problem: https://i.redd.it/xy30s6tayvo91.png

Exactly. This is only attracting foreign interest due to th artificially constrained supply. If they were serious about the issue, they would increase supply.

Imagine if the government of Canada used just 1% of the 89% of crown land it owns out of all the land in Canada to give to people for housing.

There's no shortage of land in Canadian cities or really any western city in a housing crisis today. The problem is that this land is squandered on lower density development that is illegal to improve into higher density development thanks to zoning mandating low density. Zoning must keep up with job growth or else you end up with the situations we see today: wealthy people entering bidding wars on an 80 year old originally working class home.

> no shortage of land in Canadian cities or really any western city in a housing crisis today

Adding to this: various parts of America still homestead [1].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2010/11/16/7-Towns-Where-Land-is-Free.h...

Crown land is controlled by the provinces. The feds only control national parks, military bases and areas covered under Indigenous title.

The provinces hand over crown land to municipalities for development all the time.

Land isn't the problem. The lack of density within desired metropolitan areas is the problem.

Sorry, is Canada lacking in empty land? You are using percentages but what's the percentage of total land?

Would anyone live on that 1% of land ? Should the government build houses there ? And give them away for free, or sell them (at what price) ?

I'm not sure what your suggestion would solve.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com