At last, someone from the world of politics is being honest about a pervasive and harmful trade-off. When home prices rise faster than earnings, owners like me gain wealth, while non-owners lose because their incomes fall further behind housing costs.
Honesty is saying that home prices have to fall. But this is progress.
The Generation Squeeze folks have recommendations.
You deal with that by flattening the upward trend (or even reversing it a little) by adding more inventory. Corporate ownership of residential housing is a big thing, as is owning second and third homes as investment properties. My upstairs neighbour with a middle-management job and a stay at home wife owns the largest suite in my building, plus two rental condos. It’s way, way more common than you think.
Corporate/multi-unit ownership isn’t higher today than it was 20 years ago, it’s actually 5-6% lower than it was 50 years ago. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-014-x/2011002/c-g/c-g01-eng.cfm
People love easy scapegoats they can point at instead of themselves, it’s so nice to point out the evil corporations and multi-home owners and don’t get me wrong they aren’t helping, but they are not the driving force behind our problems.
Go check AirBnB for your nearest large city. Every one of those could be a home for someone.
What does that have to do with anything I said? Airbnb is a small fraction of all units and counted in my ownership as not owner occupied. We build more new units per year than airbnb units exist in total.