“But we also think that the responsibility for the safety of [low-income people] — and let’s face it, it’s low-income people who have this problem — that’s a responsibility for society at large, for everyone, not just for the people who happen to own the buildings where these people make their homes.”
Perhaps cities, provinces, and/or the federal government could buy up those properties instead of corporate landlords. Then they could charge geared-to-income rent instead of whatever the market will bear.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one stops thinking only in terms of housing as a commodity
This is what needs to happen, not a one-time subsidy for a landlord. This way the province gets something out of its investment and continues to supply proper housing. Handing out cash is just throwing money away.
Who pays for that? The taxpayer, which means a MASSIVE increase in taxes because the average house in Canada is now about 700,000.
Lets say the gov wants to buy 1000 homes in a city, thats 700,000,000. How much do you think taxes would have to go up to spend nearly 3/4 of a billion dollars for 1000 homes in a major city? If they did that in 30 Canadian cities thats 21,000,000,000.
21 TRILLION DOLLARS! Currently Canadas entire national debt (the highest in Canadas history) is 1.4 trillion. So you’d have to make it 15 times bigger to buy those houses. If everyone taxes TRIPLED we couldn’t pay that off.
You think thats workable? Not a chance. And thats just for 1000 homes per city. Vancouver for example currently has about 125,000 rentals, Toronto has 550,000 rentals so 1000 is barely a drop in the bucket.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one doesnt do the math.
I agree! The correct number is 21 billion, not trillion. Don’t worry, you were only off by a factor of 1000!
$21B is about 1/8th of what Carney is proposing to spend annually on defence.
Absolutely doable.
Huh, you are indeed correct. Hoisted by my own petard.