I’m painfully aware of the cost of housing in Canada. I’m currently renting after the divorce, which required selling our house to pay for legal fees and equalization. Furthermore, renting for three teenagers requires more space for all our sanity.

I’ve heard several reasons why the crisis is as it is. Homeowners don’t want more houses built as it will slow the rise in home values, and they represent a substantial voting group. Politicians don’t want to upset them. The second is building affordable housing (30% of pre-tax income is spent on shelter) for those who need it. Housing affordable to less affluent groups isn’t as profitable as for those that are. There are further explanations for Australia that also apply to Canada here.

These aren’t solutions; they are just some ideas that came to mind that might spur actual solutions.

A percentage of housing built be ‘affordable’. I couldn’t find a definitive figure for anything like this, unfortunately.

New housing in an area gathers some of its funding from the community itself, and sales of units provide a return on that investment. This makes new housing an investment opportunity for the entire community.

A rough example could be: 5% of your property taxes go to investing in new housing in the community. The first two sales of each unit built with this investment provide a return to those investing based on the contribution percentage. Two sales as the first is not going to have much margin, but the second is more likely. Furthermore, there is a compelling interest to ensure people stay longer and are happy to prolong when that second sale occurs.

There would be challenging details to work out, such as insurance of the investments, transferring when a contributing homeowner moves (which could be reflected in the sale price), etc.

This could also give communities more leverage to drive further improvements, such as parks, schools, and other services.