[hello_popppet]

We all know that on an intuitive level, housing can never be affordable again in the West. At least in the areas that are currently out of reach for most people. The outlands, maybe, remain inhabitable but far removed from major cities. There’s no policy out there that will, by the time you wake up tomorrow, bridge the twenty-fold gap between what majority of people in the country make and what an apartment (never mind a house) costs.

This isn’t a matter of supply and demand, of investors taking 80% of all new houses, of foreigners laundering money, or of NIMBYs. These are all red herrings. These are all secondary effects of a bigger problem. These are all ways to ignore the real problem.

No amount of policy will slash house prices in Toronto by half, and no policy will double your income to match the increasing prices.

I suggest you stop looking for policies, because by the time any of them take effect and reverb through society, long enough time would have passed that you’d spend your whole life renting and paying off someone else’s mortgage anyway.

Now ask yourself if that’s the future you want, and act accordingly.

[joshlemer]

Nonsense. It is simple supply and demand. If we build on a scale not seen for generations, and eliminate tax benefits to owning (the principal residence tax exemption), then prices will come down.

[hello_popppet]

That’s not going to happen. We have had this discussion on HN for a decade now. People are misled by “it’s simple, solve for X.”

[ryeights]

> These are all ways to ignore the real problem.

> I suggest you stop looking for policies […] you’d spend your whole life renting and paying off someone else’s mortgage anyway.

> Now ask yourself if that’s the future you want, and act accordingly.

Sorry? I don’t speak in vagueries.

[timbit42]

Pressure will go down as the baby boomers die off.