Housing shortfall, costs and affordability

[MidTowner]

‘I want to be optimistic’: New film by UW prof explores solutions to housing crisis

A free screening of “Thinking Beyond the Market” will take place in Waterloo on Nov. 16.

At the heart of a new documentary film on housing lies a key question: What kind of housing are we building, and for whom?
“If we think of the dual roles that housing has in our society, it is shelter — and a basic human right — but it’s also a speculative commodity from which to make money,” said Brian Doucet, an associate professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo.
“Simply put, it cannot succeed at both.”
Doucet’s new feature-length documentary, “Thinking Beyond the Market,” takes a cross-Canada look at solutions that can put housing in the hands of those who need it the most.

To some extent or another, this is true of all sorts of things. We have a market-driven economy with significant regulation. That means that food (also a human right under the UN Declaration of Human Rights) is mostly produced and distributed by the private sector, by actors motivated by profit. So too clothing (also a human right).

I think it would be fair to say that housing and real estate in many ways have been less market-driven in Canada than those things. Government in Canada has since the second world war been extremely involved in the real estate market, and in recent decades has mostly been interested in propping up prices. I really doubt that the answer is yet less market and more government intervention.