You’re being downvoted because this is the attitude that got us into, and is keeping us in, this mess. Let us be precise with terms: housing is not a speculative investment. You don’t buy a house because you presume it will appreciate 100-1000% by the time you sell it. That attitude leads to the paradox that the government is unable to stop: you either build/allow affordable housing, lowering prices and crashing people’s speculative investment, or you restrict new home building through restrictive zoning and NIMBYism run wild, letting houses appreciate to the point of unaffordability.
You buy a house to live in long term: to buy it back from the bank and own it all to yourself. You have right to sell it for an equal or roughly price tracking rate with inflation. That’s a good investment. Every Canadian has the right to buy affordable housing. Saying affordable housing is affordable renting is not only reductive but downright prejudicial: people don’t rent because they’re poor. They rent because they want the freedom to move without selling a house. They rent because they are building lives as students or young families or their careers. They rent because they choose to invest their money in something other than house equity. And all the real, concrete policies which help new homeowners (ie building more housing) help renters: these two groups are not at odds with each other.
You’re being downvoted because this is the attitude that got us into, and is keeping us in, this mess. Let us be precise with terms: housing is not a speculative investment. You don’t buy a house because you presume it will appreciate 100-1000% by the time you sell it. That attitude leads to the paradox that the government is unable to stop: you either build/allow affordable housing, lowering prices and crashing people’s speculative investment, or you restrict new home building through restrictive zoning and NIMBYism run wild, letting houses appreciate to the point of unaffordability.
You buy a house to live in long term: to buy it back from the bank and own it all to yourself. You have right to sell it for an equal or roughly price tracking rate with inflation. That’s a good investment. Every Canadian has the right to buy affordable housing. Saying affordable housing is affordable renting is not only reductive but downright prejudicial: people don’t rent because they’re poor. They rent because they want the freedom to move without selling a house. They rent because they are building lives as students or young families or their careers. They rent because they choose to invest their money in something other than house equity. And all the real, concrete policies which help new homeowners (ie building more housing) help renters: these two groups are not at odds with each other.