Watching the Liberals very slowly ratchet up housing efforts as the housing temperature rises reminds me of how long it takes to see good and bad housing consequences land. It was 94/95 when the federal government bailed out of social housing.
I'd say that it took about a decade for anyone but housing advocates to start seeing some consequences -- rising homelessness, increasing concerns about renter evictions and rental shortages. Mostly people acted like the system would keep functioning okay
The heat really started to turn up around 10 years ago, as housing prices started going nuts. (When people can't get secure rentals, it affects all the other parts of the housing market.)
It became clear that the market that everyone relied on to more or less serve the population was increasingly dysfunctional and not able to do anything for ever larger groups at the lower and then the middle parts of the income spectrum
So, now, the pressure is great enough that feds have to get back in the game. But it's at a dribble. Still not the kind of housing-incentive programs that were around in the 1970s. Still no GST exemption for apartment buildings. Still not much in direct funding for social, co-ops
Afaict, there's still some kind of desperate faith that things can go back to kinda-okay without too much intervention, that place in the '90s, early '00s where younger people could buy a condo without extreme pain (and parental fortunes) and then work up the equity ladder
@fabulavancouver In the 70s, housing had not yet become a cash cow for 3 levels of govt. No GST, provincial Property Transfer Tax, municipal permit fees based on cost of construction, etc. The purpose was to create homes, not fill govt coffers.
@fabulavancouver The additional property transfer tax for rental apartment buildings is dumb