Well-Versed: Your words on housing affordability and its relation to the federal election

Hey! It’s Samantha and Jack, the editors of Well-Versed. We’ll be with you right up until the federal election. This week, we got you well-versed on housing affordability − in case you missed that edition, you can find it here.

We’ll be rounding up the most thoughtful reader opinions every week and featuring them in Thursday’s newsletter. Confused about something we covered in our Sunday edition? You can send in your questions and we’ll answer the most frequently asked ones.

If you’d like to be part of the conversation, e-mail wellversed@globeandmail.com − include your first name, age and city, if you’re comfortable with sharing.

Reader responses may be edited for length and clarity.

Well-Versed is The Globe and Mail’s twice-weekly newsletter that aims to jump-start your conversations about the 2019 federal election. Write to us about which issues you want to hear about and express your opinion on the policies and people we’ve examined.

Here’s what you had to say this week

We suggested that there was no single, simple solution to the affordable-housing issues facing many Canadians. Some Globe readers disagreed, such as user Booflette, who commented that the solution is to “declare all rental income where the person has been renting for more than 6 months to be free of income tax, with a guarantee in the law that the deal cannot be cut short without 10 years notice.”

“This makes the income for landlords much higher, while asking no more money from tenants,” Booflette argued. “Long-term rentals will be an attractive investment again, so people will enter the rental business, and companies will build rental buildings. This would also change all those Airbnb rentals back to regular long-term rentals.”

User RonsterG put it down to a simple economic supply and demand issue: “The prices are going up because there is a lack of supply and frankly the returns to build low-cost housing are unacceptable when the fees and taxes are added in,” RonsterG said.

“We need more supply at all price points and that means government needs to ease off all regulations that slow or drive up the price to build.”

Questions of how immigration policy – and the implied influx of renters into the market – influences housing demand also seeped into your debates on housing affordability. “Adding hundreds of thousands of people each year must be having an effect,” wrote user ws8. User Ric_hard wrote that immigration played “very little” of a role on balance because “housing policy is sold as a way to provide middle-class home ownership but is really geared to benefit the home builders. You cannot lower home-ownership costs without increasing demand and therefore prices. This is fundamental economics.”

A used called sanctimonious returned the conversation to affordability, writing that “the only means by which ‘affordable’ housing can be achieved is by subsidy.”

“If someone cannot afford to pay the price of something, the only options are forgoing the purchase or having someone else pay for part or all of it. The question is just how much people who can afford housing are willing to pay for those who can’t.

“It sounds simple,” sanctimonious wrote. “But it certainly isn’t.”

Globe voices, community responses

Here’s a roundup of what writers at The Globe have been saying about housing policy as it relates to this election, paired with reader reactions from social media and our comments section.

Bill Karsten: The next prime minister can solve Canada’s housing crisis by working with municipal leaders

The president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities wrote earlier this month, “Ahead of this fall’s federal election, all parties should promote housing affordability across Canada with measures to support and improve aging, low-cost market rental housing.

"Through federal tax incentives and grants, such a program would preserve existing privately owned older market rental housing stock and avoid the deterioration, ‘renovictions’ or conversions of tens of thousands of existing units that would further reduce the rental supply.”

A common sticking point of housing discussions is this question: who should be responsible for new policies on housing affordability? Is it strictly a local matter, subject to regional nuance or is the issue of a magnitude that needs sweeping federal rules?

User Vangel commented, “Housing is a local issue that has nothing to do with the federal government. If municipalities make it difficult to build affordable housing due to restrictive regulations, that is a local problem that needs local action by voters, not more power to the federal government.”

But another user disagrees. “The municipalities have shown they are incapable of dealing with this crisis,” Ric_hard wrote.

Other readers, such as JC12345, agree with the idea of federal legislation. They wrote, “The next government could fix the problem with a stroke of the pen by banning foreign ownership, direct or beneficial, of Canadian real estate. Only a self-destructive country allows pieces of itself to be sold off to non-citizens.”

Jennifer Keesmaat: To create affordable housing, let’s banish the hoary myths of home ownership

The CEO of the Keesmaat Group and the former chief planner of Toronto wrote in July that pervasive myths create and reinforce national misunderstandings about housing.

“We need more housing in Canada, and we could easily have more high-quality, affordable rental homes – but the way our cities are planned strongly suggests we simply don’t want more. We haven’t valued renting as a housing choice, and so governments have under-built rental housing in Canada through policy frameworks that both echo and reinforce our belief that housing ownership is better than rental housing.”

Readers were largely displeased with Jennifer’s key take-aways − many felt that they hadn’t fallen victim to the myths she described.

“Home ownership is and always will be a wealth builder and a source of stability for people with the desire and ability to save for a down payment and a steady job … It’s good to have debates about rent/own scenario but let’s face it, no one wants to rent for their entire life,” user Beatlefan1963 wrote.

Again, many commented on immigration as a contributing factor. “Immigration increases demand. Decrease immigration and you'll decrease demand. And falling demand will mean housing will become more affordable,” user pioneer27 commented.

“You conveniently omit the flip side of the free-market equation: increase supply and prices drop,” user Spixy Garage replied. “The government pretty much stopped building affordable housing 30 years ago. That’s a strong reason why rents are sky-high.”

Tim Ross: Canada needs a rebirth of co-op housing

The executive director of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada wrote in July that Canada needs a rebirth of co-op housing as other options look increasingly bleak.

“Canadians are looking for a place to call home that is affordable, attainable and sustainable,” Ross wrote. “Often, we consider only two options: renting or buying. But there is another choice … Housing co-ops are owned and controlled by the people who live there, and the rents are set by the members to cover the costs of maintaining the co-op today and for future generations.”

Readers found the idea interesting, but not entirely palatable.

“Co-op housing is no cheaper to build that for-profit housing, except by cutting out some luxuries,” user Btg argued. “The construction cost has usually been higher than middle- or low-income rents can justify … Then there is horizontal equity – why should a few lottery winners get a break others don’t?”

User Bob.McK was a bit more amenable to the idea. “Co-op housing can provide part of the solution but the bigger problem is that housing has become an investment commodity,” he wrote.

If you’re still hankering for a different angle on all this, Globe health-care columnist and reporter André Picard writes that affordable housing is a crucial addition to smart health-care policy.

Headliners

• Two photos and one video of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wearing brownface and blackface have surfaced. On Wednesday night, Time magazine published a yearbook photograph showing Mr. Trudeau in brownface when he was 29, which Mr. Trudeau says he did as his “makeup” for an Arabian Nights-themed gala at West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver, where he was a teacher at the time. During an apology aboard the Liberal campaign plane last night, Mr. Trudeau confessed to also having worn skin-darkening makeup during a high-school talent show while performing as Harry Belafonte. These were the only two incidences Mr. Trudeau admitted to. “I’m asking Canadians to forgive me for what I did,” Mr. Trudeau said last night. “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have known better but I didn’t and I’m really sorry.” Just hours later, Global News released a short video of Mr. Trudeau in blackface in which he appeared sticking out his tongue and raising his arms above his head. A Liberal spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the video and dated it from the early 1990s.
• The recent images of Mr. Trudeau eclipsed the parties’ campaign strategies from earlier in the week. The Liberal and Conservative parties had been focusing their messaging on families and promised policies they hope will catch the attention of mothers, according to pollster Nik Nanos.
• Maxime Bernier of the People’s Party of Canada is being invited to take part in the official English- and French-language leaders’ debates during the election campaign. The invitation, made on Monday by the independent Leaders’ Debate Commission, was extended after a review of Mr. Bernier’s party and its chances of winning more than one seat in the Oct. 21 election, according to a release from the commission.
• The Finance Department closed the books on the 2018-19 fiscal year Tuesday, reporting that the federal government ran a $14-billion deficit. The official figure for the year that ended March 31 is a slight improvement over the government’s estimated deficit figure of $14.9-billion.

If you’re a Globe subscriber, be sure to also sign up for our regular Politics Briefing newsletter, written every weekday by deputy politics editor Chris Hannay. He will be ramping up his election coverage of all the big headlines and campaign trail news to keep you informed.