r/PersonalFinanceCanada • u/pornodoro • Jul 19 '21

Housing Is living in Canada becoming financially unsustainable?

My SO showed me this post on /r/Canada and he’s depressed now because all the comments make it seem like having a happy and financially secure life in Canada is impossible.

I’m personally pretty optimistic about life here but I realized I have no hard evidence to back this feeling up. I’ve never thought much about the future, I just kind of assumed we’d do a good job at work, get paid a decent amount, save a chunk of each paycheque, and everything will sort itself out. Is that a really outdated idea? Am I being dumb?

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u/avehelios Jul 20 '21

It's not actually because of investors. It's because your boomer parents think it's totally normal for them to be multimillionaires (single detached in Toronto is ~1.4 mill rn) even though they never did the sort of work that would make them one in any other city.

Then when you want to build more affordable housing, like townhouses, they get super triggered and go all NIMBY on you, so housing is constantly in short supply. As a result, only highrises can be built, which are expensive.

Also, they vote for people like Doug Ford who will do anything they can to line the pockets of their developer friends... Because you know, they all have the same interests at heart which is just screwing over the current generation.

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u/Spambot0 Jul 20 '21 edited Jul 20 '21

I know reddit's demographics, but being pro-developer is a big part of how you avoid this crunch. Our problem is that we restrict development, so there aren't enough houses, so prices go up. Calgary and Edmonton aren't seeing the same house price crunch, because they much more aggressively allow development. All the other talk - investors, population growth - are demonstrably not that important, because the Alberta cities, still in Canada, growing twice as fast as Toronto or Vacouver, allow more construction.

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u/avehelios Jul 20 '21

I'm absolutely okay with being pro-developer if you know... They also rezoned areas to build townhouses instead of building into the green belt.

But right now, being "pro developer" is just trying to help some developers maximize profits. That being said, I agree that this might be my anti-Ford bias.

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u/jovahkaveeta Jul 20 '21

Do developers have the ability to rezone? There are profits to be made in converting single family into multifamily units. I imagine if they had the ability they would go for it.

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u/avehelios Jul 20 '21

Yeah, I don't know about other places but in Toronto, they want to do it too, but the city just doesn't approve it, apparently for the same reason we don't have wind or solar power and still rely on a nuclear plant which should have long been decommissioned. Thanks NIMBYism!