Home ownership is a dream fast disappearing from many young families’ horizons. The entire province is struggling with an unprecedented housing crisis that has been a generation in the making and every level of government is playing hot potato as to whose responsibility it is to solve it.
As a quasi capitalist system, the invisible hand of the market should have resolved the matter long before now. Unfortunately, there is much better return to be made in building houses for the upper quintile of the population or in trading apartment buildings and other rental properties than in building “affordable” accommodation.
Governments of all stripes and flavours at the provincial level have consistently failed to invest in social housing—a clear provincial ballpark. The recent builds and acquisitions of the Manitoulin-Sudbury District Service boards in Little Current represent the first such in a quarter century. But those builds are still far from being truly “affordable” for many people.
This shortfall in policy by the provincial government has led to cascading consequences across the province. In fact, provincial legislation has accelerated the crisis in homelessness as tenants in currently affordable units are being evicted under many guises so that the rents can be moved to an ever-escalating “market rent.”
Those now displaced find themselves caught in the spiral, unable to find a roof they can afford, they join the ranks of the homeless.
With a lack of affordable housing for seniors, many who would like to move out of multiple bedroom houses find themselves trapped. The costs of maintaining homes much larger than their needs and straining their ever-shrinking resources is a concern but they have nowhere else to turn. For most Canadians, their homes are their major asset and repository of most of their savings.
The issue is far larger than anything municipalities can shoulder, but thanks to provincial downloading. it is they who are left facing the heavy lifting.
While the province has plainly dropped the hot potato on the housing front (no partisan favourites here—no party has adequately tackled the issue when the potato landed during their watch), the issue has grown bigger than all of us. When it comes to solving the housing crisis, it is time for all hands on deck. And there is plenty to do for everyone—but it is clear where it must start.
The solution must come by tackling the housing continuum at the bottom with a major increase in social housing. Taking pressure off the lower end of the market will help bring back some balance to the equation. The invisible hand of the market needs a little help on that end. The other end is not all that bad.
More senior accessible accommodation that is realistically “affordable” would free up the massive inventory of unused bedrooms in the province, both in major urban centres of southern Ontario and in rural communities here in the North by giving seniors a viable option.
The federal government can play a role, perhaps by moving health transfers closer to the original promise and thereby freeing up provincial resources, or through social housing transfers to the lower tiers.
Many municipalities and not-for-profit organizations have surplus land that can take a bite out of development costs for social housing…the recent land donation by the Northeast Town a case study on how successful that can be.
Fixing the housing crisis will also require the private sector, even if public-private collaborations offend some on the left. We need to remove our blinders on both sides of the ideological divide and start working together to find workable solutions.
The housing crisis hits our economy hard. If you can’t find a place for your staff to live, you cannot recruit staff. That hurts productivity and that, in turn, fuels inflation.
We can solve the housing crisis, we just need to find the will to do so.
