Vancouver — along with Melbourne and Vienna — ranks at or near the top of The Economist and Mercer lists of the world’s most livable cities almost every year. These ratings are of justifiable pride to public officials and residents. It may be less...
Housing Affordability
Canada’s Middle-Income Housing Affordability Crisis
Canada faces a housing affordability crisis. In a number of cities, housing has become so expensive that many middle income households can no longer afford to buy a house. This is not good for people, households or the nation as a whole. Short of rule of law and...
Prairie Metropolitan Areas Drive Canada’s Growth
In Canada, growth is moving west, but not all the way. The big growth now is in the Prairies between central Canada and British Columbia, the Canadian part of the Great Plains. Yet you can’t talk about metropolitan Canada without first mentioning the Toronto region....
Middle-Income Housing Affordability: International Situation
This article was written by Wendell Cox and originally appeared in the Huffington Post. Hong Kong, Sydney, Vancouver and the San Francisco Bay Area have the worst middle-income housing affordability in 9 nations, according to 11th Annual Demographia International...
Featured News
What Exactly Does ‘Climate Justice’ Mean?
It seems like everything is about justice these days. Recently, as I drove home from the store, I saw a sign for the elections here in New York from the local Democratic Party, promising “equity, equality, and justice for all.” Beyond the obvious concerns any sane...
We are Finding the 2800 Missing Children
The “secret graves” and “missing children” narrative had our national flag flying at half-mast for over five months after an obscure indigenous politician made the startling claim that she “knew” that 215 indigenous children had been secretly buried in the “apple...
The American Dream: Alive and Well (Some Places)
Levittown, and the automobile-oriented urban expansion it foreshadowed, resulted in the greatest democratization of prosperity in history. Wherever mass suburbanization occurred – whether in the United States, its first world cousins Canada and Australia, Western Europe or later even Japan – we have seen the unprecedented rise of a mass property-owning class. Generally, where land regulation has remained reasonable, new houses can be purchased for less than three times median household incomes.
Rent Control Is the Real New York Scandal
There is a better way to address the lack of reasonably priced housing in the city. If Rep. Rangel, Gov. Paterson and all the other well-to-do New Yorkers lost their rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartments, there would be a loud public outcry to loosen regulation and allow more new construction.
Affordable Housing No Accident In Houston
Houston’s great strength has been its ability to stop political and commercial elites from capturing control and denying Houstonians the ability to make their own decisions about how and where they wish to live and work. It is indeed “the people’s city.”
The Smart Growth Bailout?
Yet the bottom line remains: Without smart growth’s land rationing policies, the severe escalation in home prices would never have reached such absurd levels. But the disaster in the highly regulated markets will be with us for years. The smart growth spike in housing prices turned what might have been a normal cyclical downturn into the most disastrous financial collapse since 1929. Now the taxpayers are being asked to bail out the mess that smart growth advocates, no doubt inadvertently, have created.
Regulations Are at the Root of U.S. Housing Mess
As Congress and the Fed administer aid to financial institutions that ignored the history of past cycles, policy makers around the country must change regulations that are targeted at aesthetically displeasing urban sprawl, but create harmful price volatility.
Profiling Tenants and Landlords for More Efficient Rental Markets
What do eBay and renting a house have in common?
Efficient Rental Markets
Conventional economics anticipates that because landlords supply rental housing voluntarily, they will react to government-stipulated standards and compliance by either exiting the market or raising prices.
The Housing Bubble
Sadly, it is clear that the planning profession has too often lost its way by allowing itself to become captured by ideologues, less important aesthetic issues and those (both commercial interests and existing home owners) determined to exclude others from their rights to ownership and community participation.
Absolute Princes and the Alberta Human Rights Commission
Another Human Rights Commission has refused to proceed with complaints against a media outlet; such commissions should be stripped of the ability to even investigate opinions in the first place.