‘Build, baby, build’

This is getting old.

“Canadians are in a housing crisis,” said the prime minister, Mark Carney, as he stood before a bunch of guys in hard hats last weekend in a soulless suburb. He was announcing his new role as saviour.

Actually, Justin Trudeau said the same thing. So did the wretched souls punished as housing ministers. Everybody mouths the same few words, yet the crisis continues. Billions for nothing.

Will this be different? What, exactly, is Carney going to do in order that moany Gen Zs can buy a home and sprout little Alphas?

The plan is called Build Canada Homes.

The rhetoric, as usual, is grandish:

“It will build deeply affordable and community housing for low-income households, and partner with private market developers to build affordable homes for the Canadian middle class. Build Canada Homes will transform public-private collaboration and deploy modern methods of construction, as it catalyzes the creation of an entirely new Canadian housing industry. It will leverage public lands, offer flexible financial incentives, attract private capital, facilitate large portfolio projects, and support modern manufacturers to build the homes that Canadians need.”

This is going to cost us $36 billion.

Financing will be available to builders putting up ‘deeply affordable’ units. It also appears funds will go to cities so development charges can he halved for the next five years (that would carve $40,000 from a two-bed T.O. condo).

Carney wants to double the scale and speed of new construction. He wants pre-fab and printed building materials to hurry up the process and be greener (reduce costs 20%, put up houses 50% faster). GST on new-builds will be toast. Combined with the drop in DC charges, maybe $200,000 can be shaved off the $1.5 million cost of an urban low-rise SFH. There will be factory- built, prefab and mass timber housing encouraged. Canadian materials will be dominant. And the feds, he says, will make land available that the government already owns, surplus to its needs.

The first projects aim to throw up 4,000 housing units in six cities – Dartmouth, Longueuil, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. There’s a billion to be spent on shelters for the unhoused. Another $1.5 billion will go into a ‘rental protection’ fund designed to buy up existing apartment buildings so they don’t turn into more hulking, desperate condo towers.

It’s a salad of stuff. Results unknown. Without a doubt many families will benefit from the erection of low-rent social housing, much-needed units in Nunavut, shelter spaces for the homeless and special projects with indigenous partners. That’s all worthy stuff.

But will this make real estate more affordable?

And what is ‘affordable’?

The definition is simple: housing that costs 30% or less of your pre-tax income, whether it’s as a tenant for lease payments or an owner to cover the mortgage, taxes and utilities. These days we’re averaging 55% across Canada. In Toronto housing costs 68% of what households earn, and in sad Vancouver it’s about 93%.

Yeah, things are better now after a price melt and rate reduction, but we’re no nearer that 30% mark (outside of affordable but icky places like St. John’s, Fort Erie or Regina).

Source: RBC

Build Homes Canada is probably a legitimate attempt to get government back into social housing, give a hand to vulnerable populations and streamline the cost of construction on its projects. But it won’t make houses cost less in Toronto, Ottawa, Victoria or Vancouver. Building 500,000 housing units in the next few years won’t have an impact, either. Already we’re swimming in inventory and prices have now stabilized at roughly a quarter below 2022 levels.

Carney went to Ottawa and fell into the same black bureaucratic hole that swallowed Trudeau, his entire cabinet and the Leader of the opposition. Now we have yet another federal agency created, staffed and funded – and in five years there will still be “a housing crisis.”

Hopefully your expectations were low. We all know what needs to be done.

About the picture: “Hi Garth. Here’s a doggie pic for the blog,” writes Derek. “This is my Sis ….baby sitting “Schooner” while his owner is away. Apparently he likes to “watch the road” while riding in the car……”

To be in touch or send a picture of your beast, email to ‘garth@garth.ca’.

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2025/09/17/build-baby-build/