I see someone failed Economics 101.
I see someone missed the
Bank of Canada saying the problem is demand. And other
major financial institutions saying much the same. Plus federal staff
flagging the population growth problem a few years ago. And StatsCan
questioning excessive population growth before covid (key quote: "
Immigration has both negative (added competition for jobs and housing) and positive (larger consumer base and increased businesses) effects).
But I guess the parade's marching out of step with Johnny.
Housing crisis continued during COVID when immigration was paused. Immigration is not the cause of the entire housing crisis, even if it plays a part. Not to mention that while immigration will likely be reduced it will never be stopped as our economy isn't built for stagnant population, it requires growth or it will fail in other ways.
So yes, it is still a supply issue. Economics demands both be reviewed to resolve a problem, supply and demand. The housing crisis being as simple as immigrants or the current governments immigration policy would be potentially great because it would point to a simple solution, but alas, neither myself nor others are convinced this is the sole contributor, nor like 75% of it. As with all problems it's likely a plethora if issues causing it.
Blaming immigration negates that there is internal demand for smaller household sizes, neighbourhood specific demands, and growing income disparity.
Housing prices boomed during covid because of extremely low interest rates. This has been a problem since the 2008 recession. We lowered rates, but never raised them after the economy recovered. This is also a problem of excess demand: too many dollars chasing assets like housing.
Simple math:
Housing starts in 2023: 249,898 (
https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/profess...nthly-housing-starts-construction-data-tables)
Average Canadian Household size: 2.51 people (
https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/average-household-size-in-canada-2096121/#:~:text=2022 Source: GlobalData-,Average Household Size in Canada,the indicator decreased by 3.1%.)
Houses needed for 430,000: 171,314
Net excess houses being built: 78,584
Canadas natural birth rate is regularly lower or on par with it's death rate. So considering Canada is starting more homes than all the immigrants require, it's really not simple math because if it were, we're more than covering our needs. If it were this simple, you or I would be the housing minister.
The Feds brought 430,000 people
per quarter. Both 2022 and 2023 were all time record years for population growth (absolute numbers, not as a percent).
And even if you were right, you just torpedoed the claim that we need more housing. If we're building more than we need, then why is this specific project needed? (as per UrbanOzz's
post). It helps having internal consistency in one's argument and thinking it through. Well and having the facts lol.
Of course it is a supply issue as well. The issue with supply is we're not building enough homes for all of the newcomers. Price go up. Simple math. Sorry, but Chris is off the mark on this one. It's simple data. However, the primary reason why Canadian real estate is so expensive, is because money was cheap for the past decade. Historically low interest rates. That's the primary driver, not immigrants.
Extremely loose monetary policy between 2009 and early 2022 was also a huge problem. Never should have happened.
As for population growth, anyone still denying that it's an issue, or claiming it's not a major contributing factor, is part of the problem.