“But we also think that the responsibility for the safety of [low-income people] — and let’s face it, it’s low-income people who have this problem — that’s a responsibility for society at large, for everyone, not just for the people who happen to own the buildings where these people make their homes.”
if a landlord can’t afford to install air conditioning where air conditioning is required, they should be forced to sell any and all properties that don’t comply.
actually, hold on, let me fix that for me:
landlords should be forced to sell any and all properties except the one they live in. period.
The media loves to have us hate on private landlords, blaming them for the housing bubble and supply issue while it’s partly true it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the scummy rental corporations who have been buying up single family homes and renting them out en masse.
The small landlord that has 1 or 2 rental properties will eventually die and their properties will be liquidated, the companies however will hold onto these properties forever.
America is not the only place in the world. In places without mass corporate landlords, private landlords happily fill that void and are absolutely still the problem.
Show me a landlord that genuinely finds efficiencies that arent just ‘hire a cheaper contractor than they would hire for their own home’.
This is about Ontario Canada.
Then youre miss informed about where our housing supply is going and who’s driving up rent. Here it is predominantly private landlords.
Absolutely correct, same principle applies to lots of other areas too. Such as food supply.
You DO realize that if we sold all our properties that millions of people would have no place to live? Just because we put them up for sale doesnt mean a current tenant could afford to buy them. What does that mean? They would likely be snapped up by corporate property management companies. And that means rent would go UP as companies would control all the rentals and can set whatever price they wish. The existence of mom and pop landlords is what keeps prices DOWN especially if they are for basement suites.
Just make it illegal for corporate ownership. Mass housing for sale will drop prices
I agree however the problem becomes ‘what is corporate ownership’? I have some LL friends who own three houses who have formed a corporation but its just a single owner. I have some that own a rental however they manage them through a broker who does all the management and maintenance for a share of the rent and any capital gains. Then there are the guys who form a corporation with a few other guys so they can buy an apartment block but without those three friends pooling their money it would likely be owned by an international company.
I think the delineation is that single family homes should not be owned by corporations that have more than 4 shareholders with a set financial limit. If you want to buy a 16 unit apartment with three friends, go for it. But if you’re Blackrock with billions of dollars and 155 million shares then you have no business buying ANY residential housing.
Since we have a terrible housing crisis, my belief is a residential home should be owned by a family and not corporations or international invovlement. Apartments can be like our Strata Condo we live in, the strata is a legal corporation but only owners of the units belong to it. We had a no rental clause. But our Canadian government overrules that during the pandemic.
Perhaps cities, provinces, and/or the federal government could buy up those properties instead of corporate landlords. Then they could charge geared-to-income rent instead of whatever the market will bear.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one stops thinking only in terms of housing as a commodity
This is what needs to happen, not a one-time subsidy for a landlord. This way the province gets something out of its investment and continues to supply proper housing. Handing out cash is just throwing money away.
Who pays for that? The taxpayer, which means a MASSIVE increase in taxes because the average house in Canada is now about 700,000.
Lets say the gov wants to buy 1000 homes in a city, thats 700,000,000. How much do you think taxes would have to go up to spend nearly 3/4 of a billion dollars for 1000 homes in a major city? If they did that in 30 Canadian cities thats 21,000,000,000.
21 TRILLION DOLLARS! Currently Canadas entire national debt (the highest in Canadas history) is 1.4 trillion. So you’d have to make it 15 times bigger to buy those houses. If everyone taxes TRIPLED we couldn’t pay that off.
You think thats workable? Not a chance. And thats just for 1000 homes per city. Vancouver for example currently has about 125,000 rentals, Toronto has 550,000 rentals so 1000 is barely a drop in the bucket.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one doesnt do the math.
I agree! The correct number is 21 billion, not trillion. Don’t worry, you were only off by a factor of 1000!
$21B is about 1/8th of what Carney is proposing to spend annually on defence.
Absolutely doable.
Huh, you are indeed correct. Hoisted by my own petard.