Imposed from above during an economic emergency, rent control played a significant role both in curbing out-of-control inflation and solving the housing crisis Canada was experiencing at the time. A combination of robust rent control and concurrent investments in public housing saw housing prices fall by as much as 30 percent in real terms between 1975 and 1978.
Isn’t that period exactly when developers stopped building new dedicated rental housing and put us into this hole we’re currently in?
The article states that CMHC saw no difference between rent controlled and non-rent controlled markets in rental starts, but ignores the fact that overall rental starts dropped.
Short term gains, for long term pain.
What we need is Land Value Taxes, short term pain for long term gain. Unfortunately there just aren’t enough people willing to vote away the current system.
We also need to fix our zoning laws. They prevent many different types of developments that could result in more units available and better revenue for our cities, so they stop getting bankrupted
See strongtowns.org and not just bikes comments on this issue like in this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
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.