Comment by preommr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by preommr | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Cars getting stolen non-stop; police literally advising to just leave keys at the front of the house so that it's easier to steal and criminals don't have to resort to violence

> A real estate market that's so stupid that there's no point in investing in other businesses

> Immigration at a level where we're adding the equivalent of our fifth most populous province (we have 13 - so no cherry picking) every year, while also having lots of social services.

> Immigration policies that make no sense. We went from having a strict system to people just gaming the system so that univerities and random industries can have access to cheap labor to keep the economy numbers looking good in the short term. Lots of people that use Canada as a stepping stone to the US or EU.

> Governments at all levels have absolutely no plans for any kind of infrastructure or fixing issues with housing. Local blames federal, federal blames local.

It's pointless to say since everyone does it; but for anyone on the fence, if you get a chance, just jump ship to the US for your co-op or something.

Canada’s problems are almost entirely from their refusal to curb real estate speculation and build housing people can afford. This is also a fairly new problem, so that it’s painted as intractable seems bizarre. I would also add that most of Canada’s problems with real estate speculation have made their way south of the border, where things are only about 30% less bad.

100%. The problem with housing that's so expensive that it's out of reach is that it completely reinforces the idea that "it doesn't matter how hard you work, I'll never be able to afford a decent place to live", and once large swaths of the population give up on the idea that hard work is rewarded, very bad things tend to happen. People lose faith in institutions, they blame everything as "corrupt", and they're not exactly wrong. It becomes a world of haves vs. have-nots where what defines a "have" is that you, or a parent, already owns a home in a semi-desirable area or better.

Thats not really true. We do have a governmwnt regulation problem but it is mostly local. I live in a city that is routinely top 3 for ease of building and even here i am looking at a month or two for the city to get the review process started on my new garage build. The best is a disaster here, the worst is unforgiveable. What we need is provinces stuffing much relaxed regulation down city's throats and forcing service times measured in days and weeks not months and years. Something that would solve this would look like cutting residential zones down to two max and have the lowest approved for anything from single family to six story multifamily and the second being bigger than that. Have automatic amd fast conversion from one to the other at some reasonable amalgamated lot size. Get rid of most parking requiremwnts, get rid of most lot coverage limits, get rid of the dual fire escape stairwells in the lower density zone (one is enough),get rid of minimum house/ suite sizes, have any proposal within the zoning limits approved within a week.

The only way to curb real estate speculation is to make the investment much less attractive. Do this by building like mad, cut down trees and get it done. If you don't like cutting down trees, you don't like immigration.

> Do this by building like mad

By whom? Things aren't quite so bad now that higher interest rates has scared many people away from building, but prior to that contractors were booked up years in advance. There was nobody else to build more than what we were already building.

Sure, the old adage of "just pay the workers more" might work to attract more workers into home construction, but then the cost of housing needs to go up to pay them...

Can't some of the immigration include people that know how to build houses?

If you have the wherewithal to be able to build a house, you can do any job out there. So, without a compelling offer, why work in construction? Everyone and their brother will happily hire you to do something else.

Perhaps the government could be more heavy-handed, only allowing immigrants into the country under force of building houses, but that goes against Canadian culture, not to mention that other industries who rely on immigrant labour would cry fowl and the Canadians working in construction will feel attacked. Not going to happen.

The only real way around it is to see Canada's job market crumble. When building homes is the only work available, then you'll see people begging for those types of jobs (Canadian citizens included). But when there is work elsewhere, most people are going to go elsewhere. Building homes is not exactly compelling work – at least not at the going rate.

>> If you have the wherewithal to be able to build a house, you can do any job out there

I don't think that follows. Framing, drywall, plumbing, electrical work, etc., are distinct trades. I don't see how being skilled in these areas translates to employability in other fields.

Did you miss that we're talking about humans, not purpose-built robots? If you, a human, can handle building houses, you can handle doing anything. We're quite an adaptable species.

Trying applying for a job in a completely new field with no experience in it and see how well you do. While humans are adaptable, there are other humans to choose from in a candidate pool that represent a lower risk. Maybe I would make a great lawyer, but I have no experience or education in the field so I won't get to find out in this lifetime.

> there are other humans to choose from

It seems you've got your tech coloured glasses on again. Yeah, sure, you'll have 100 programmers lined up down the street. Comes with the high salary territory. But not so much in other industries. Try hiring for something like a cook. You are taking the first person that comes along, no questions asked. If you don't, you'll have nobody. And, indeed, cooking in particular attracts a lot of immigrants, not to mention many people looking to escape construction.

And who can blame them? Who wants to suffer the brutally cold Canadian winter hammering nails when you can thrill people with your culinary treats from a warm kitchen? I'm sure at some price point people would be compelled to switch over to construction – everyone has a price – but home buyers by and large aren't willing to pay that much. In fact, they endlessly complain they are already paying too much.

> I have no experience or education in the field

If you can build a house you can gain said education and experience. Still, kind of an obtuse example given the legal encumberments. It's not lack of education or experience that keeps you from becoming a lawyer – it is the supply management system. Not unlike why you aren't becoming a dairy farmer in Canada, even though I'm quite sure you could manage milking a cow just fine, you just legally can't do it without jumping through tremendous hurdles intended to keep you out so that those on the inside can maintain an artificially high income.

I give up. If one can build a house, one can do anything :).

Canada's problem is much bigger than real estate. Adding 3%+ of your population yearly drives down wages and increases housing costs. Canada not building enough housing to support that influx is only part of the problem.

Why do you say "3%+"? Googling "Canada population annual growth rate" brings up a chart that shows an annual growth rate that never exceeds 1.5% over the past 30 years. Canada's growth rate was significantly higher that the US from 2016-2020, but otherwise doesn't really look that different.

This was in the news for a bit: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230927/dq230... (+2.9%).

These immigration statistics make it clear: https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigra...

This started after Trudeau was re-elected for the second time, but he has been consistent in calling for increased immigration. I guess he expected it to be his last term and decided to go all out. Of course, considering the timing (housing crisis and stagflation) that's a bad look.

The US has its own share of problems too, although being a huge and very diverse country, there's a lot of variance between states and even within them.

The US has many of these problems but to a much lesser extent, it seems.

Housing is crazy in the US in many cities but there's a vast interior where it's still somewhat reasonable. There are lots of medium sized cities with sane housing prices and good culture and jobs (if you can't or don't want to go full remote).

The other problems are much less in the US. We have a stupid broken immigration system too but the US is so big the problem is buffered.

Yeah, the medium (and "uncool" large) cities are where it's at in the US. Smaller is very affordable to live, but the lack of jobs is commensurate with the affordability.

I've never lived in Chicago but it seems like a particularly good bet in terms of affordability vs access to jobs and markets. Atlanta, Houston, and Philadelphia also all seem to be more affordable than they should considering their access to jobs and markets.

It's getting worse all the time though. It feels like we have to hurry to buy or be left out. Everywhere is less affordable than it was just a few years ago.

Repping Columbus, OH as a pretty nice "uncool" city. Definitely feel that same hurry you describe though. We bought a place in 2020 and now have an extra kid, and could really use another room for a home office too. Houses in our school district of the size we'd like (nothing crazy, like a 2000 sq ft 4 bed with a basement would be fine) are now pushing into the mid 450s, and it'll probably be worse by the time I'm in position to look at another move.

The one advantage we have (and it's a big advantage!) is that since we've owned a house for a few years now we get to benefit a bit from the crazy rise in prices. Our place was originally 250 and now would probably go for close to 100k more. That amount of equity build up in 4 years is pretty wild!

They're the same underlying problem: the wealth gap has enabled 10% of the population to dictate what goods governments produce for its citizens. This ends up allowing capital to leverage itself just to take a larger slice and buy the political climate to create a vacuum of authority'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com