How affordable is housing in your City? There has long been concern about deteriorating housing affordability in Canada. The OECD has expressed concerns about the decline of the middle-class in Canada and the substantial role of house price increases. Two of the 10...
"Although the housing boom and bust has national repercussions its origins tended to be concentrated in particular places. Most of the adventurous financing was concentrated in places like coastal areas like California, Phoenix, Florida, which was where the great bulk...
The federal Liberal government’s proposed budget includes an innovative plan to improve housing affordability through “shared equity” mortgages. First-time homebuyers could qualify for a 10-per-cent “shared equity” mortgage on Canadian Mortgage and Housing...
Frontier Senior Fellow Wendell Cox discusses the 15th Demographia International Housing Affordability Index with Geoff Currier on CJOB Winnipeg. Exploring why houses are more or less expensive in different Canadian markets. (14 minutes)
In this essay, I explain that young people should come to university to be educated, and not to become credentialed; the public should support universities because universities educate young people, not because they produce credentialled workers. Why should a...
During the whole of recorded history, the empire has been the most constant and common form of political organization. A basic, self-evident feature of all empire-building has been the successful occupation of the lands of the local, Indigenous inhabitants by outside...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Download the Full Report as a PDF here Rating Housing Affordability The 9th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey covers 337 metropolitan markets in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and...
Rent control reduces the incentive for construction of rental housing, and causes landlords to underinvest in maintenance since they aren’t able to recover their costs otherwise. To mitigate this, Manitoba’s rent controls exempt units priced under $1400 from controls, and grants a 20 years exemption from controls for new units. While less damaging than full blown rent control, this compromise still has a number of negative unintended consequences.
Within the last couple of years, the population of the world has become more than one half urban for the first time in history. By 2025, the world’s urban areas are expected to account for 58% of the world population, rising further to two-thirds in 2050. This represents a huge increase from the 29% that was urban in 1950, or estimates of approximately 10% (or less) in 1800.
Planet of Cities looks at the urbanization trend from various dimensions. A sample of 30 urban areas was used to gauge urban expansion and density changes from 1800 to 2000.
The Economist recently ranked Vancouver the third most liveable city on earth. While it certainly is a lovely city with many nearby amenities, it is also the second least affordable city in the English speaking world (surpassed only by Hong Kong). Vancouver is a very liveable city–if you’re wealthy. But for the middle class, it is a completely different story.
The newly announced mortgage rules by the federal government will do little to advance housing affordability in Canada.
Call them the screwed generation, the victims of expansive welfare states and the massive structural debt charged by their parents. In virtually every developed country, and increasingly in developing ones, they include not only the usual victims, the undereducated and recent immigrants, but also the college-educated.
An interesting concept of establishing an investment market for social enterprises is being established in Singapore. This should be a welcome development for people who like small government. It is somewhat comparable to Cameron's concept of Big Society in the UK.
A landmark public consultation about property rights in Alberta should not end the debate, as the wider issues of why governments expropriate land and how to best protect property need to be explored further.