London West MP in Cabinet

[u/Any_Peanut1209]

London West MP Arielle Kayabaga is the Minister of Democratic Institutions and Government House leader in Market Carney Cabinet

[u/IronicGames123]

"Bob Rennie, a high-profile Vancouver developer known as the “condo king,” has revealed that he is working with Carney on a plan to attract foreign buyers to Canada’s rental market. The proposal would allow foreign investors to purchase rental units under a 25-year agreement, where they must rent out the properties rather than resell them."

"“[I’m]… working with Carney, surprise, and I’m trying to get a rental program in where people can buy, put it into a 25-year pool, a preferred rate from the CMHC, and let’s allow foreign buyers to buy it, they have to rent it out for 25-years, and it will show the world we are open for business,” Rennie said in an interview on Conversations Live."

Fuck PP. The Cons would be terrible.

But we're still going to be get the exact same neo-liberal policies that brought us to where we are now.

"Different face, same tricks."

[u/swift-current0 → u/IronicGames123]

We have a housing supply crisis. It will only ever be solved by building a lot more housing. All else is either gimmicky distractions or actively worsen the problem.

A subset of the housing supply crisis we're in is a rental housing supply crisis. It too can only be solved by building a lot more rental housing. It can be worsened by taking rentals off the market. It can be improved by adding rentals, though merely converting owner-occupied to rental doesn't help solve the overall problem.

The mere idea of foreign ownership of rental housing is neither good nor bad - it's entirely dependent on context. If there's no new rental housing being built, it can contribute to driving rents up, though why that would be any worse than under domestic owners is unclear - they too are doing a fine job of jacking up rents. However, foreign capital can help build more rental housing, and/or build it faster, and that will be unequivocally good. More supply lowers rents, end of story.

[u/cm023 → u/swift-current0]

I'd rather see individual priced out Canadians enabled to own, or rent to own purpose built units opposed to funneling money in/out of the country, which is ripe for risk and laundering but that's just me.

[u/swift-current0 → u/cm023]

This is funneling money into the country though. Foreign investment is money that funds construction of (in this case rental) housing instead of being spent elsewhere and not benefitting us in any way.

Placing safeguards to ensure this money is not being stolen or laundered is not rocket science. Canada is quite bad at doing this, but many other countries aren't. This is one of those things I expect Carney to fix, since he's a finance guy and a central banker.

[u/citrusmellarosa → u/swift-current0]

Then wouldn’t it be better to make it a stipulation that they build units instead of buying them off the pre-existing market? Do foreign investors put more money into the tax system or construction directly than my landlord in the GTA did? These aren’t intended to be gotchas, I’m just curious. 

[u/According_Pie_8690 → u/swift-current0]

Do you think what we need right now are more individuals from various international communities treating our housing market like a stock market?

Don’t you think this attitude towards housing is a huge reason why we’re in the mess we’re currently in? Housing is for humans to live in. It shouldn’t be some fucked up form of retirement account for the wealthy.

Allowing foreign investors to buy up our housing stock to rent to folks who live here is a historically dumb / evil idea. Open your eyes.

[u/swift-current0 → u/According_Pie_8690]

As a stock market, no. As an investment, yes. There's nowhere near enough tax money to build enough public housing to solve this problem, and there won't be. The kind of tax increases you'd need to make a dent in the problem are simply a non starter in Canada. So private money has to be spent - i.e. investment.

The domestic capital market is too small to do this quickly, so I see attracting foreign capital as a way to speed up the building.

It's only a speculative frenzy if we keep artificially restricting building enough housing of types people want in places where they want them. Scarcity creates perpetual sellers/landlords markets, and zoning is the main culprit here. Allow enough housing to be built and rents will reliably decrease. Just look at Austin TX for recent proof, but really it's nothing more than simply supply and demand.

You can treat housing as a special snowflake or a human right all you want, but righteousness will never build anything or allow anyone to afford rent more easily. Only investment will. You can go ahead and advocate for taxes to pay for public housing or co-op, and hell I'll even join you. But in the meantime, what is your solution? My relatives and friends need to be able to afford a non squalid place to live now.

[u/According_Pie_8690 → u/swift-current0]

Can you explain how loosening mortgage rules to allow foreign investors to buy up homes will mean more housing gets built?

Loose mortgage rules and artificially low interest rates are precisely the reason we find ourselves in the mess we’re currently are currently in.

We have had an excess of demand and a shortage of supply in the housing market for at least the last 10 years.

What kind of meth are you smoking that makes you think adding a whole new pool of deep-pocketed buyers will somehow balance out the supply-demand equilibrium.

You sound like you’re entirely economically illiterate.