I've been thinking about this housing shortage that every where seems to be having. Not sure how this happened in the space of 3 years but it did. Covid hit and house priced skyrocketed and rentals did the same. One reason was people weren't buying homes or selling them. Many people from larger cities wanted to move to small towns and did. This caused the prices to go up as there weren't enough homes to accommodate all the people wanting to move.
Canada welcomed a huge number of immigrants even though we have a housing shortage. One would think if Covid caused so many deaths that would have meant more homes but that didn't seem to be the case.
Another factor is the rise in short term rental properties. Those homes were taken off the market by businesses to do short term rentals. This also increased the housing shortage. In our small town we have a seen a huge increase in people from other areas snapping up inexpensive homes and properties for investments. Add to that a bunch of house flippers trying to make a huge profit flipping homes and we can see that all these things have contributed to the housing shortage and price increases.
The average house price in our small town (we have under 10,000 pop) rose from 250k to 450k. Keep in mind that is the average and many of the newer larger homes are way above that price. Not many new homes are getting built here because we live in a small valley with mountains on either size of the Columbia river. There aren't many areas you can build houses easily or cheaply. Most developers are looking for a quick large profit so they don't want to blast through rock or work on slope stabilization as that cuts into their profit.
How can we slow down people trying to make a profit on housing so we can all have a safe affordable place to live? One way would be for the government to raise the taxes on money made from housing or rentals. Make it less profitable for short term rentals and housing speculation and people will find another way to make money not on housing.
We can't keep allowing the well off to make more and more money at the cost of the lives and well being of so many other people. If our government is there to support and make the lives of the people better then they have to take into account all the people and not just a few who make the most money and large corporations.
I'm not sure how people can feel good about using housing as an income and contributing to the problem when so many people are paying almost all their income just to have a place to live and there are so many homeless people now. How can you feel good about yourself doing that just as I don't see how you can feel good if you are a big oil company contributing to the degradation of the environment. There are so many ways you can make a decent income without harming or contributing to societal problems so choose those. We need to stop chasing money and instead look at quality of life and being being healthy and not the accumulation of things or money. We can't take our money or our things with us when we die but we leave behind what we taught to people, what you have made with your own hands and love (Francois Bourillon). You aren't taking that big house or those expensive cars with you so do something worthwhile with your time and make the world a better place.
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