Canada will change how it counts non-permanent residents, the main statistics agency said on Thursday, after an economist said the current methodology may have overlooked about a million foreign students, workers and others.
Canada will change how it counts non-permanent residents, the main statistics agency said on Thursday, after an economist said the current methodology may have overlooked about a million foreign students, workers and others.
I really doubt students and workers are the problem here. Perhaps Canada should look into taxing empty investment homes/condos/etc. and crack down on homes being used as hotels (like AirBnB) instead of residences.
Oh no, that may actually contribute to fixing the issue. We can’t do that.
How much empty housing do you think exists in canada’s largest cities?
Over 2,100 properties were self reported as being vacant in Toronto. No doubt in my mind many people lied and the number of vacant units sits around 3,500. Which isn’t a lot but would definitely help.
In a city with 1.25 million homes, why are we so focused on “taxing empty investment homes” (something that already exists) for a few thousand units instead of building new homes?
Why not both? 🙂
Yeah sure. This is more a response to the top level comment (and the general sentiment) that empty units and financialization cause the scarcity, instead of just addressing the scarcity.
Quite a few
a) this is before Toronto instituted the empty homes tax - less incentive for homeowners to rent out their empty unit
b) this is before the explosion of rental price increases post-covid - even less incentive for homeowners to rent out their unit
c) measuring lights on or off a couple of times a year isn’t a great proxy for assessing empty units