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The housing affordability crisis isn’t a crisis if you own a home you bought in 1980, and older homeowners vote in much higher numbers.

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>and older homeowners vote in much higher numbers.

Because they're stuck with this fairly illiquid asset and therefore have a very big incentive to exert their inconsequential shred of control over the institutions that more or less unilaterally control their experience owning that asset.

Something I’ve recently started to consider is how an aging population will impact this over time.

Unlike the 60s and 70s the number of people coming of age now and in the years to come is smaller than older people (unless we get liberal with immigration). How will that impact the future direction of society?

In Canada, the working age population is massively subsidizing the older generation already, while getting fucked by them on the cost of shelter, and from every direction on the cost of basic necessities compared to income. There's fewer working age people per old age security and CPP recipient than ever, and it's our federal government's largest line items. An average 30 y.o in a population centre probably makes substantially less then the average retiree would have ever made, pays them more rent they'd ever have imagined, and pays most of their taxes directly into that hypothetical landlord's pocket. It's crazy and idk wth is going to happen because also there's almost no jobs available or clear upward mobility/stability, all of that shit went out the window long ago unless you're in a trade union already with a decade of experience, or just lucky.

[0] https://www.gensqueeze.ca/analysis_2023_federal_budget

This will keep getting worse if birth rates remain low. It’s one of the biggest negative social consequences from a far below replacement rate birth rate. Immigration can make up some of it but there are limits to immigration rate before it causes other problems and provokes a generally very right wing populist backlash.

It's also a circular negative feedback loop until it gets balanced out. Imo, below replacement birthrates can be thought of as "getting worse", but they're skewed by a narrow window of immense prosperity and wealth that was basically fabricated, and could thus be the rebalancing, of governments let them. Less prosperity for a whole generation of people that effectively make up the future market for overvalued static assets, means there is hypothetically a ceiling, likewise if the population is only inflated by economically low-value immigration; if systems are working,(they're not) then there simply won't be enough domestic money flowing around to keep supporting that type of hockey stick growth. That's my theory anyway

>> The housing affordability crisis isn’t a crisis if you own a home you bought in 1980

It isn't a crisis for them now. It was a crisis for them in 1980, someone buying a home in 1980 would have had an interest rate of around 14% on their mortgage.

Yes but that was a temporary response to inflation caused by multiple back to back recessions in that time. Those interest rates eventually cooled off, and salaries caught up.

I met an old timer a few days ago with a beautiful garden, who bought their house in Vancouver, BC for $24,000 in 1972. Checking the tax assessment data now, the land underneath the house is worth $1.6m, while the building is assessed at $40k. Based on recent sales nearby, his property is realistically worth (on the market, maybe with some renos) 100x what he originally borrowed to buy it in absolute dollar amounts, about 20x accounting for inflation, or about 2x a conservative compounding investment. The guy was pleasant to chat with, and sympathized, because he knew his son-in-law who's probably my age won't be able to set up even close to the same sort of shelter without some very high incomes coming in, and he can see the future not looking so great for people in his life.

But that's a modest, old, not that nice detached home. If I were to shoot for a small ~800sq ft 2 bdr condo built in the last 20 years, it would be require $120k down, $20k just in transfer taxes, and $7k a month to service the debt.

Yes, 1980 sucked, money lost a huge amount of value relatively speaking, but what are we talking about here.

Maybe it'll become a crisis as they (or their estates) all go to sell the homes at once :).

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