Totally fair. I think it’s just terribly unlikely to ever happen, and the ramifications aren’t really understood.

It amounts to wealth redistribution at the end of the day. Tax the land at a really high rate and redistribute the tax to everyone equally. This is precisely why it won’t take hold. Too many people have invested in land speculation (which is where most real estate investment profits come from) and it would tank a lot of peoples savings and retirement plans - but so would anything that delivers on affordable housing at scale.

So I at least don’t think it is a silver bullet. The obvious downside is that a lot of retirees who were counting on using the proceeds of selling their house to fund their retirement or end of life care would be absolutely fucked by it. Retirement homes are really expensive. It’s a choice though. We either decide to hurt the retirees who can’t work anymore, or put the pressure onto the youth and others starting out who have the ability to dig out of this mess.

When I bought my house I paid $330k for everything. Now the land alone is worth more than that. We’ll never see affordable houses again until the cost of land goes down, and Georgism is the only path to that I’ve heard of. I am not sure if this is something we should do or not.

Let’s be very clear here: HOUSING IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PROVINCES.

As well, PROPERTY TAX (TAX ON LAND) IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PROVINCES.

So if by “this government” you mean the Carney Liberals you’re right in the sense they won’t do anything about this — but the reason for that is they can’t. That’s not their Constitutional role, and the levers they can pull in this regard are minimal (and mostly revolve around either mortgage insurance, regulating the financial sector, and dolling money out to Provinces).

If you’re upset about housing, you should be upset at your Provincial Government, not the Feds.

I’ve heard them say it, but then quickly walk it back with phrases like how of course they are for affordable housing.

Note that this isn’t a liberal, conservative or even NDP or PPC thing. I haven’t heard ANY of them propose anything that would actually make housing affordable at scale.

If you’re heard any different please point me to it.

That won't hurt, but it won't fix the issue. There are places with little to no zoning that have gone up in value just as fast as everywhere else.

Japan has practically zero zoning, and yet Tokyo is still more expensive per square foot than any Canadian city in terms of the core area and that's with a population that's in decline. They built tiny to keep things barely affordable, but theres no reason why Canada should need to go anywhere near that level of density with the amount of land we have even in just the reasonable parts of Canada.

• San Francisco
• New York
• Literally any other city with rent control

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/

New research examining how rent control affects tenants and housing markets offers insight into how rent control affects markets. While rent control appears to help current tenants in the short run, in the long run it decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative spillovers on the surrounding neighborhood.

Over the long term, rent control has never seen more positive benefits than negative ones, regardless of city.

Rent controlled properties create substantial negative externalities on the nearby housing market, lowering the amenity value of these neighborhoods and making them less desirable places to live.

https://iea.org.uk/media/rent-controls-do-far-more-harm-than-good-comprehensive-review-finds/

• However, 14 out of 17 studies found that rent control leads to higher rents in the uncontrolled sector.
• 12 out of 16 studies found negative effects on housing supply, while 11 out of 16 studies found negative impacts on new construction.
• 15 out of 20 studies found rent control leads to reduced housing quality and maintenance.
• 25 out of 26 studies found rent control reduces residential mobility.
• All 14 studies examining the issue found rent control leads to misallocation of housing.

https://financialpost.com/real-estate/rent-controls-hurt-rental-supply

We reviewed the studies cited by the author and found they all unequivocally demonstrated that rent controls contribute to a slowdown in rental supply, thus hurting the very people that rental advocates intend to help.

[…]

We were again surprised to discover that the IJHP paper painted a completely different picture. The authors said “more restrictive rental market legislation generally has a negative impact on both new housing construction and residential investment.” They concluded that the “received wisdom among economists of a negative construction and investment effect of rent controls seems to hold.”

https://capx.co/rent-controls-never-never-work

The issue with rent controls is not that they are novel or radical. The issue with them is just that every time they are tried, the results are exactly what the Economics 101 textbook would predict. They lead to a decline in the supply of rental properties, a decline in housebuilding rates, a slowdown in tenant mobility, a misallocation of existing properties, and a decline in the quality of rental housing.

https://www.economicsobservatory.com/does-rent-control-work

This study also sheds light on an important behavioural response to rent control by owners of rental properties: landlords substituted to other types of real estate (such as properties exempt from rent control). This lowered the housing supply and shifted it towards less affordable types of housing, leading to rents rising at an even higher rate.

This finding is largely consistent with the predictions of basic microeconomic models: rent controls lower the price of housing and at this lower price less housing is offered (Glaeser and Luttmer, 2003). Housing quality is also reduced as landlords can no longer make up losses from renovating properties by raising rents (Sims, 2007).

Reality doesn’t give two shits about ideology, it cares only about facts.

I also love that someone downvoted you for pointing put how this has worked out for others. "Boo this person and their flagrant use of facts! That's not nice!"