Wendell Cox, December 13, 2016 The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has issued a “red warning” for the entire housing market in Canada.” Red warnings for overvaluation were issued for the Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton, and Québec housing markets (census...
Canada has a serious middle-income housing affordability crisis. Canada’s house prices have grown nearly three times that of household income since 2000. This contrasts with the stability between growth in house prices and household income during the previous three...
Runaway house price increases have become the rule across Canada. Since 2000, house prices across the country rose more than incomes in all of 35 larger markets, while prices rose more than four times incomes in Toronto and Vancouver. This is in stark contrast to the...
Bill 202, which has passed second reading, is officially titled the Alberta Affordable Housing Review Committee Act. Under this bill, the government will establish a committee of no fewer than three members to report on five areas. Four of the five areas listed in the...
Canada is struggling economically. From inflation and deficits to investment and employment, everything that should be up is down, and everything that should be down is up. One striking symptom of economic rot is household debt, which is rising faster than incomes....
Largely unique among state-owned enterprises, ‘SEOs’, worldwide, Canadian Crown corporations have two key advantages over current and future private sector competitors: non-taxable status and access to low-cost public sector borrowing rates. Other implicit edges...
“As housing officials work toward the city’s ambitious plan to obliterate homelessness in Lethbridge in five years, philosophies must change and traditional community planning models be tossed aside.”
The 6th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey covers 265 markets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Despite the recession, Canada’s housing became slightly less affordable in the past year.
Canada’s homeless population is primarily a symptom of a restrained housing supply, and government initiatives will continue to fail while the underlying cause is not addressed.
The policy responses to homelessness, while numerous, have not addressed the primary cause: the restrained supply of private housing, which for the last two decades has been a significant reason the homeless proportion of the population has grown so rapidly.
Canada’s homeless population is primarily a symptom of a restrained housing supply, and government initiatives will continue to fail while the underlying cause is not addressed.
The World Economic Forum’s International Competitiveness Report ranks Australia’s banks as 3rd most sound out of 133 nations. However, Australia has a serious housing affordability problem.
A survey that included housing affordability, per capita income, tax rates (central and local), and average drive-time to work, would almost certainly generate quite different rankings. Perhaps what has been missing is this acknowledgement that different factors motivate different kinds of people.
“Decisions about the growth of communities should be made by local governments closest to the people living and working in these areas. Local governments can already adopt “smart growth” policies based on the desires of the community without a state-led effort that endorses such planning. This legislation would promote a one-size-fits-all approach to land use and planning that would not work across a state as large and diverse as Texas.”