waterlooman

The solution is so simple, our population growth rate is too high relative to housing production, so the quickest, most immediate and obvious solution is to reduce immigration significantly. Within a couple years you will see housing demand fall and with it, prices! This isn't rocket science. And our economy must be able to sustain itself on a steady state population or we have a serious structural problem. You can still have immigration, but it must not be detrimental to the people living here.

Look you can use whatever mental gymnastics you like to insist why we should all be content living in tiny condos and literal commie blocks but as I stated nobody wants to live in that because we have better standards. People want affordable single homes to raise a family. The solution is so absurdly simple yet you grasp at straws to avoid it.

Population growth is too high to meet demand for proper housing. Therefor, the solution is you cut back immigration, within a couple years demand for housing will fall dramatically. But no, you don't want to see prices fall, or you have something to gain with the immigration rate being high.

It is not a contradiction and it is not wrong for immigrants themselves to want to lobby for strict new limits on immigration numbers. The rest of your question/argument sounds like an appeal to emotion or guilt.

Toronto is not a world class city like NYC, as much as it wishes it was. Toronto buckling under the weight of immigration numbers is due to the artificial population growth the government has mandated every year since 1988.

I am blaming our immigration policy, not the "newcomers" as you say. Newcomers are obviously just doing what is best for them personally. Also, more than half of Germany's population rents housing. Most Canadians would not be satisfied with that.

You are resting your pov on the assumption that more people = more and better jobs. This isn't necessarily true if there is an oversupply of workers to employers.

Keep in mind that your numbers do not include international students as an immigration pathway and the number of people here on 10 year residency which can include "temporary" foreign workers. For example in 2019 there were 640k international students in the country, a significant percentage of them will also choose to stay here or are here on 10 year visas and they are not counted in the stats you gathered. There are an additional 550,000 TFWs here, many on long term visas. Again, not counted in your stats, nor are illegals.

The government also obfuscates the number of foreign buyers of housing because it only takes 6 months to gain permanent residency, and those with permanent residency are not counted as foreign buyers.

Saying "we just don't really know", and "its a hard problem" is troubling to me, its basically saying that we shouldn't bother getting to the root of the issue because you'd rather we didn't. So far with your stats that you googled, the one possible cause you offer is that elderly people might be holding onto their homes. Really?? Not, for example, speculators who can capitalize on the fact that we have guaranteed, consistent, artificial, foreign population growth since the 1980's? And why was this done? The conservative party ramped up immigration to gain favor of the immigrant voting block, and all other parties adopted the same approach.

I am not sure what you are showing other than that you believe our population growth from mass immigration needs to continue despite the negative outcomes.

In 1985 our population was 25 million, and today it is now 38 million. Most of that population growth can be attributed to mass immigration. But we have no new cities or towns. We are simply crowding ourselves out of the minimal amount of cities and arable land along a southern strip that we can inhabit.

Also I don't think Japan is a negative example of population decline. They are an example of a country being able to maintain its standard of living, productivity, and its economy despite a stagnant population.

I strongly believe that if population growth through mass immigration continues (and mostly likely will), standards will continue to worsen across most of the country.

I would guess because most of the land in this country is not arable (fertile) or hospitable, so even though we have lots of land, only the southern strip is worth populating.

We airdrop a population the size of Waterloo region (500-600k) of people into the country every year. They need somewhere to live. I don't think I need to say much more. I am aware that there can be other factors, but this is the (as I said) elephant no one wants to discuss publicly.

And if 28% population growth over 25 years results in insane housing affordability for younger generations, why are you still fine with that? I really don't understand this argument. You value total population growth and total economic growth over standard of living? Because with current trends it should be obscenely obvious that this approach isn't working.

Population growth (at a much lower more sustainable rate) can be incentivized by literally paying people more money to have Children. And did it occur to you that perhaps our low birthrate has something to do with the increasing lack of opportunity to improve in this country?

Finally, I am actually against the concept that the country must have constant population growth. Population growth comes in natural waves where some decades it will be high, and in others it will be low. The drop in birthrates many believe will cause a "sky to fall" scenario, which simply isn't true. It is parasitic to expect and demand constant population growth, especially at the cost of people's standard of living.

Yes, this is extremely high. It is an exponential growth curve, not linear. What would that growth be after 25 years of constant 1% growth/year?

>If a new grad wants a starter property in the city then perhaps start with the purchase of a studio/1-bed.

This lacks the history on what people used to be able to purchase, not just in Toronto but in all of Southern Ontario, and now even as far away as the Maritimes.

The purchasing power for the average Canadian to afford things that actually mater (like housing), is dropping like crazy.

Allow me to give you my own anecdote. 12 years ago, I purchased a "starter home" in Waterloo for $249,000 in the neighborhood I grew up in. Detached with a single car garage, on my "new community college grad" salary of 47k/year with 25k of savings that I had.

Today, with say a 60k/year salary, a new grad in my city could afford to live in a small "starter condo", a huge downgrade to ones expectations who wants to raise a family. The standard of living and affordability has objectively dropped for young people today.

Last week a house on my street that is actually smaller than mine just sold for $780,000. I wonder what their mortgage is like?

But according to some people, hey you can still get into the market! Just buy a condo!

Now lets get to the meat of the issue. Why is this happening (and in many Western countries)?. Economic crashes are literally a built in guaranteed feature of our money system, but our government has found a way to kick the can down the road through mass immigration. As long as they can bring in half a million people in every year willing to take on debt, they think they can avoid a market correction, and they aren't wrong, they have avoided a correction for 12 years now thanks to the people they bring in on a daily basis in Canada. But this was not without a great cost, even if they can continue this nonsense for another 10 years, they have destroyed the purchasing power of your average Canadian to afford things that actually matter, like housing.

I would argue that they found a way to avoid a crash by substituting that with a gradual decline of our standard of living. They stole from the young to pay for their pensions and nest eggs to avoid facing the music.

Unfortunately, in many forums you can't bring up the elephant in the room if you are against mass immigration for its many downsides (including wage stagnation), you get denounced as a racist, or you get attacked by people who want this ponzy scheme to continue because after all, the economy now depends on it! They would rather you blamed the city for not building more condos (that noone wants to live in), and NIMBY's. But don't you dare bring up mass immigration.