[mitthrowaway2]

It's worse than my example because the reality would be like if baking a pizza had a three-year lead time.

Even if the authorization was permitted to construct an entire new city capable of housing 3 million people, no reviews or permits, and assigned the highest priority and a blank-cheque budget to rush construction, it would take at least ten years to build. Vancouver's massive Oakridge redevelopment alone broke ground in 2019 and is expected to take until 2027 to complete. (The rezoning was approved in 2014.)

And that is what we should do! Yes! The country should be building brand new cities and linking them up with high-speed rail. But, even if that plan were shovel-ready today -- which it definitely, definitely isn't! -- it would still take years before it contributed to the solution, and all the while, the demand is continuing to grow!

The seeds of the supply solution to today's housing crisis needed to be planted at least ten years ago. But it wasn't, so we can plant those seeds now, but they'll take time to come to fruition. In the meantime, the only fast-acting measures are demand-side measures. And having to deploy demand-side measures is a very tragic consequence of not having taken timely action on the supply side. And that's even assuming we can plant those seeds today: if the city council squabbling about setbacks and floor-space-ratios continues today, then those seeds still aren't being planted, the demand-side measures will unfortunately need to last even longer, and the vitality of the country will suffer for it.