Talk continues of the potential for a housing bust in Toronto. Through the end of March, house prices had had increased 33 percent in a year. Bank of Canada Governor Steven Poloz noted that "There’s no fundamental story that we could tell to justify that kind of...
Results for "greenbelt"
Airbnb, VRBO: Scapegoats for Failing Government Housing Policies
The tourist-oriented city of Kelowna, British Columbia, has self-destructively voted to prohibit any new short-term rentals in residences. Even the provincial government is not as draconian, giving dispensation to resort and tourist destinations. Nationally, the...
Costly Construction Isn’t the Culprit Behind Unaffordable Housing. Costly Land Is
The latest Demographia report on housing affordability in Canada, which I produce for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, reveals that over half of the 46 Canadian housing markets we assess are severely unaffordable. In fact, Vancouver and Toronto rank as third and...
Urban Containment Policies Driving Up Land Values and Housing Costs
Rising land costs, not construction, to blame for housing unaffordability
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Canadian Property Rights Index 2023
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
Canada’s Property Rights Slipping Behind Global Competitors
Property rights protections deliver prosperity and good jobs for all Canadians.
Strengthening Property Rights Part Of The Answer To Canada’s Housing Crunch
Inadequate safeguards for property rights affecting housing affordability
Solving the Global Housing Crisis
The worldwide lack of affordable housing can only be resolved politically. The global housing crisis across the high-income world, particularly in the Anglosphere, represents perhaps the single biggest challenge to the future of the middle class. From the...
Green Kills
A friend of mine is building four high-rise condo and rental towers in Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia, where I live. It is a charming city, founded in the 1840s, its core an almost classic English village around which a modern city was slowly...
To make housing more affordable the Ontario…
Poll Question: January 26, 2023 to January 31, 2023 To make housing more affordable the Ontario government finalized plans last month to open up 7,400 acres of protected Greenbelt land for development in what it said was a bid to build 50,000 homes. Federal...
Cities Have to Expand for House Prices to Fall
The cost of actually building a house does not vary that much across Canada The Ford government’s plan to expand the land supply available for housing has evoked the usual dog whistles about “urban sprawl” by interests apparently unaware of the strong...
Deteriorating Housing Affordability in Canada
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has released the 2022 edition of Demographia Housing Affordability in Canada. This article includes the Executive Summary, with a link to the entire report. The report is authored by Wendell Cox, a senior fellow with the Frontier...
The Connection: Housing Affordability and Inequality
Canada’s housing affordability crisis is a matter of considerable concern especially for young people trying to buy a house. The worst problems are in the Vancouver and Toronto markets with their excessive land use regulation. Extensive international research...
The GTA’s Housing Affordability Crisis: Inequality is the Issue
A poll by highly respected IPSOS, released by BILD-GTA shows a strong awareness of the GTA’s severely unaffordable housing. In the 15 years from 2004 to the last pre-pandemic year of 2019, the median detached house price rose more than 160% (inflation adjusted), about...