Housing shortfall, costs and affordability

[kzurell]

I’ve read your post several times and I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Fair enough.

Building public or co-op housing will always be an uphill battle because the "rules"--at the deepest, most obscure levels--are slanted in favour of private, for-profit, speculative, share capital practices.

If we build public or co-op housing, the next conservative government will sell it off to their friends. No amount of legal protection is enough: just days past we watched Ford et al. launch trial balloons about weakening tenant protections to see what they can get away with.

We might build huge blocks of public flats, we might tinker superficially with taxes or funding for public or co-op housing, we might even give people free rent money. None of it will work in the long run if the money itself has, at the deepest, most obscure levels, leaks in value. Leaks that don't isolate people who want to profit and people who don't from one another.

The media does not call renters "losers", but it doesn't have to when it amplifies renters' vulnerability.