Just allocating these for unhoused people would make Vancouver have no unhoused people. https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/homeless-count.aspx#%3A%7E%3Atext=Results%3A%2C605+unsheltered fuck for profit housing.
this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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I'm just picturing a couple families in a Coal Harbour building meeting their new neighbours, including that guy I watched punch a brick wall while yelling about the "shit Panic fucks" before I had to nope the fuck out of there (I'm dark enough that I get tagged with almost non Caucasian ethnicity.)
Kind of ironic that as a Coal Harbour resident, the scariest person of the neighbourhood is a bald white dude that harasses any visibly vulnerable that passes by, also random people at times but he's a bully so he prefers harassing the homeless, delivery drivers and random minorities. He lives at the building right in front of mine and I'd trade him for getting as new neighbours 10 currently unhoused citizens undergoing treatment, because this bald fuck surely isn't treating whatever he has going on. Fucking "concerned citizens", much worse than whoever makes them clutch pearls.
I can imagine that being scary. But I'd also say that wellness checks should be made to struggling families for them to succeed.
Captalist democracy is not real democracy
Can you really have 'true democracy' in a species that has such a strong herd mentality as humans do? True democracy depends on 'free will', 'independent thought', and 'knowledge'. When the population in general can be so easily swayed to go along with one person's dogma or another, willfully ignorant and politically unintelligent, what is the meaning of 'democracy' except that it is about 'best at intimidating, charming, or marketing'? In a herd species, the 'election' is all about 'who do you want to be the dictator?'
We have the technology to switch from representative democracy to direct democracy. There would also need to be major changes to educate everyone on the topics being voted on. That would be a huge improvement if we can keep that education less corrupted by monied interests.
A true democracy would be incredibly easy to implement.
Our government could literally just make an app that sends us everything to individually vote on instead of our reps getting to vote.
That still leads to the 'herd mentality' problem. The impressionable voter is still too easily persuaded to vote 'dogma/cult' than 'informed decision'. Human adults, unfortunately, by and large prefer someone else to make their decisions for them, and they tend to vote in alignment with the decisions made by these 'influencers'. Look no further than the last Canadian election - the Catholic bishops in Canada (under the direction of a foreign power - the Pope) all told the Canadian Catholics how to vote (in the last weeks of the election), and it almost swayed the election to PP.
Steve Jobs famously had it absolutely dead-on when he said, about consumer input into his Apple products: 'Consumers have absolutely no idea of what they like and want until I tell them'.
There is no herd mentality problem, this is propaganda from those who seek to rule.
You either have tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the minority
Democracy is tyranny of the majority
It has been pretty much ascertained, even at the neurological level, that humans are a herd animal. For instance:
https://academic.oup.com/book/11486/chapter-abstract/160205905?login=false
The fact is, those who completely understand this, and have learned how to manipulate it, will be the ones who rule.
I'm saying it's not something we should sacrifice individual influence for
We have learned that even in representative democracies the representatives often ignore the people who they are supposed to represent, and that is far more damaging.
It really comes down to: do the citizens want a collective socially responsible leadership or an individual rights dictates all leadership. Socialism or Libertarianism. You cannot have a system that continuously waffles from one to the other, like the Americans are trying to do. The problem with 'democracy' as it is practiced in American society is that they insist on using a two-party (socialism vs libertarianism) adversarial system that keeps battling back and forth, winner take all. In that system, the 'election' only determines which side gets to tyrannize the other side. No matter who wins, the other side feels threatened by 'terrorism from the other side's dogma'.
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Condos are stupid. The worst of both worlds between apartment renting and home mortgage.
As a former homeowner and former renter, now living in a condo, its also the best of those. We are building equity rather than losing rent money monthly, and when things break somebody else fixes it.
We are building equity rather than losing rent money monthly
This meme has to die, there's so much knowledge out there on how to properly do the math on this
Yes I did math, our mortgage at 2% interest is $1700, to rent this condo from a landlord would be $3500. In 5 years the property value has gone up $200K. So our equity is now close to $300k after 5 years. I could sell this year and have 300k cash. What would you have at 3500 a month to a landlord?
I'll have to trust you that you live in a place with bizarre market dynamics where mortgage is cheaper than rent for the same unit, or maybe you're the king of real estate deals or got lucky with a panic seller. Even in that situation, there's a whole lot of numbers missing from that calculation. Property taxes, maintenance, opportunity cost of investing the downpayment, insurance, whether your investments would be taxable or tax sheltered, expected RE growth, a time horizon of 20 to 60 years etc. You will be better off using a proper calculator made by a CFP.
Mortgages are less than rent in most markets.
If you’re talking about a mortgage that was signed years ago, that’s definitely feasible. If you’re talking about a mortgage that would be starting right now, that would be abnormal. I don't know what "most markets" mean to you but I doubt you can show the numbers for any major Canadian city.
A property costing ~ 1MM starting on todays 4.5% rate means a monthly mortgage above 4.8k but will go for rent for about 3.7k
I do understand. Our property tax is cheap here, mine is $100 a month. Insurance is $50. Ontario and British Columbia have very high real estate market, people get stuck renting because the 5% down payment is hard to save (for some) a 1 bedroom basement suite can be $1500-$1800 to rent. My friend pays $1200 to rent a single room in somebody's house.
Mortgage is the way to go if you can have enough income to qualify for it and have the down payment. However back in early 2000 before Toronto prices spread to rest of Southern Ontario my mortgage was around $800 a month and the same house across the street was being rented for $400 a month. I agree in that scenario it would make sense to rent...but only for a time...eventually you have to retire and don't want to be paying rent that has increased year over year. I.e. here rent can go up 3-4% y over year.
Mortgage is the way to go if you can have enough income to qualify for it and have the down payment.
This is simply not true in the general case, and stating something simplistic like this is a disservice to people's financial literacy. The highest variable in this accounting isn't even market dynamics, it's the investment habits of the counterfactual renter.
There are situations in which buying is more appropriate than renting, due to personal circumstances and specific market conditions of where a person wants to live. But it's not at all a clearcut decision without those specific conditions.
I agree in that scenario it would make sense to rent…but only for a time…eventually you have to retire and don’t want to be paying rent that has increased year over year. I.e. here rent can go up 3-4% y over year.
No, it's not "only for a time". Mortgage is leverage at a low rate, so as soon as it's done, the cost of ownership for the home makes ownership worser in comparison to renting. The reason this isn't obvious is that you're not doing the comparison to the counterfactual renter investing the downpayment amount plus the cashflow surplus during the entire lifecycle of the mortgage.
There is no cash flow surplus in BC and Ontario though, housing market is too high, rent is way too high, that people spend majority of income on housing. The person working and paying the amounts I quoted you is working to live. The old days of cheap rent where the metric make sense are gone out here.
There is no cash flow surplus in BC and Ontario
So you’re saying that in BC and Ontario the monthly mortgage payment is lower than the cost of rent for a comparable unit? Maybe you misunderstood what I meant with cash flow because that’s wildly out of base. My rent is $1000 less than the monthly mortgage for the same unit
Not sure where you live but as I mentioned my friend pays $1200 for a room in a house. A another lady pays $2200 for a coach house above a garage. My place could rent for $3500 While a mortgage is way less.
Out here at least landlords charge way more than their mortgage coat plus maintenance because they are income properties and the scarcity.
My place could rent for $3500 While a mortgage is way less.
If you're talking about a mortgage that was signed years ago, that's definitely feasible. If you're talking about a mortgage that would be starting right now, that would be abnormal. A property costing ~ 1MM starting on todays 4.5% rate means a monthly mortgage above 4.8k but will go for rent for about 3.7k
I think you may have cherry picked one where landlord wants to lose money? Landlords typically price the units so it is self supporting and covers all fees etc.
I had counter examples but figured its not worth the back and forth. Ive run the calculators and here the mortgage including fees ends up way less than rental over 25 year period, and at end of 25 years I stop paying a mortgage, and a renter keeps paying till they die. You mentioned a smart renter would invest, but honestly I couldn't afford to live in this place if it was rental, it would be over half my income. I'm better off owning and putting the difference from what it would rent for compared to my mortgage and fee, into an investment
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It's fun when people allude to having knowledge they don't display or share. Makes them look like they're feeling smugly superior while also contributing absolutely nothing to anyone.
It's the daddy's money of social media.
There’s a certain threshold at which I won’t bother. Saying that renting is loosing money instead of equity building is the real estate equivalent of being a flat earther.
That threshold is apparently "reality and facts"
Even if you assume the price of the property doesn't change, it comes down to whether the interest on the mortgage plus property taxes and other fees is more or less than the rental amount (plus any other fees).
Though if the price goes up, even that might not matter. That said, I do hope the housing situation improves, which would realistically involve prices going down instead of up.
it comes down to whether the interest on the mortgage plus property taxes and other fees is more or less than the rental amount (plus any other fees)
Not it doesn't. Debt (and its associated interest) is not the bad part of the mortgage, it's the good part. The bad part is tying your financial future to land speculation and a depreciating asset on top of it. It comes down a bunch of things, including the opportunity cost of the cashflow difference plus the subpar expected returns on real estate equity, and the investment profile of the person to which this advice is being given. Maybe the average person should buy? I guess that can be true, because the average person apparently can't use an online calculator and stick to a long term investment strategy.
All I know about condos are that condo fees are quite high. It's like $800 / month for the ones I've seen in Toronto. A lot of people see that as reasonable but it feels like a lot to me.
Fees vary here in Vancouver Metro area. Some at $300, ours went up to $500. Part of the problem is your fees are supposed to build a contingency fund this cover prescribed maintenance, and emergency repairs, however you vote yearly to approve the budgets. Most owners don't want higher fees so vote to keep the fee low. This means the operating budget suffers and preventative work may be delayed or skipped. This turns into higher emergency repairs, or higher cost as delayed projects deal with vendor inflation. So at some point fees sky rocket to catch up.
The condo insurance premiums are going into the strata-sphere as well.
I think a lot of them also have HOAs, too. At least in the USA, dunno about CA.
And at least with a house mortgage you usually get a lawn...
Bit different. The condo is a legal company ,collects fees
To operate the building maintenance and repair, insurance, snow removal, etc.
All owners vote yearly on changes to bylaws, or projects to be done.
I.e.hypothetically there could be laws about no blue patio furniture, however if majority of owners vote for allowing blue, then it gets changed.
Its an owner run corporation.
I see. Definitely sounds slightly better. HOAs were supposed to be like that at one time here, but then they became miniature dictatorships.
Yeah HOA in USA often seems like the current HOA owns the property sale rights, and can block a sale. Strata has no say in the sale, it is an owner to owner deal.
A lot of people complain about strata being restrictive, but guess who doesn't show up to vote at the meetings; Same people who don't want to join council when the new one is voted in each year.
BC has strata corporations, which are kiiiiind of the same thing based on my shitty surface-level understanding of HOAs.
And basically all multi-family housing has a strata.
Yep, sounds like the same thing
Stratas in BC are very highly regulated.
you usually get a lawn…
Fish don't need bicycles, and we don't need to hoard greenspace when it can be consolidated very well into something useful by so many more people.
At larger scale, consolidating greenspace surrounding clusters of effective dense mixed-use residential cuts land-use tremendously, re-wilds a lot of other space or returns it to agriculture, and achieves the density required for better transit and savings on infrastructure costs. The housing has to be effective, and I think the new "mixed-use consolidated over a transit stop" configuration is a definite winner ... as long as it's not wood (aka Fire's Favourite Food).
We have a similar problem in some downtown places here - Investors / rich-folk buy them up for reasons, and then when they are done (or 'disused') they sit empty for ever, driving prices up.
I believe I saw a motion (but no action) to tax empty condos at a higher rate than fully-occupied ones.
Carney was actually just asked about the housing crisis, here it is at 20:30 into the video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q_C9a5BWiTE&pp=ygUQY2FybmV5IHF1ZXN0aW9ucw%3D%3D&start=1227
Carney must be the first PM that I can remember, who actually fleshes out answers, rather than avoiding them. Impressive, to say the least, as it shows a clear understanding of the subjects he's being asked about.
He's still skirting around the real issue which is allowing property owners to keep increasing rents and buying up housing with no oversight.
That's one part of a many part problem.
Housing (including rent) isn't solely the responsibility of the federal government, but I'm glad to see that they are getting more involved.
Provinces and municipal/regional governments play a much greater role, so we need to pressure all levels of government to step up their efforts.
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Same problem in Montréal, thousands of empty condos, they are small and expensive. And condo fee kill the deal compared to owning a house...
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