Feds Slowing the Building of Housing Contributed to the Housing Crisis

When people view housing as a commodity, there’s a continuous cycle of generating wealth from it. Geordie Dent, the executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations explained this cycle to Local 514.

Dent said with the equity you make off of one house, you can buy another house. "People keep buying, hoarding and capitalizing," he said. "One person is owning rental units and is jacking up the price – Where will people go?"

Dent described this as a hoarding phenomenon. "Property owners are turning one house into five," said Dent.

The housing crisis isn’t something that was created under the pandemic or only in the last few years, but Dent says decades of government policies have led to this.

“In 1993, the construction of housing was privatized. The [federal government] used to have incentives to build housing in Canada, active housing market participation, tax incentives – Housing was lucrative for investors," he said.

"Hundreds of thousands of units were built in the 70's and 80's – the golden age of housing development," said Dent. "But in 1993, rich developers wanted it to stop. If they stop building housing, there’d be a housing crunch and they’d make a ton of money."

Dent says the solution is to increase supply by having the government build more housing. "Treating housing not as a commodity but investment in infrastructure," said Dent.

He said that government programs supporting the building of housing need to be brought back.

Dent said nothing is being done to address people buying and hoarding housing, including real estate trusts flipping housing.

Local 514 reached out to the Office of the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, but we did not receive a response before the publication of this article.