To solve the housing crisis we need to turn away from neoliberal doctrines and look towards solutions that actually work. Our own history, as well as the experiences of our contemporaries abroad, teach us that the only way to restore housing affordability is to create non-market housing alternatives that anchor prices and push the investor class out of the housing system.

The evidence is clear: Canada’s housing crisis is not a simple supply and demand problem. It is a problem of who owns our homes and why. By focusing almost exclusively on expanding supply through the private sector the NHS has given our housing system over to predaceous investors while deeply indebting everyday Canadians.

  • psvrh@lemmy.ca
    28·
    1 month ago

    The problem is that we’re now forty years into neoliberal orthodoxy. There’s been two or three generations of policymakers, politicians and bureaucrats who cannot even conceive of publicly-funded, publicly-run services and solutions. I’ve been in meetings where this gets suggested and people look at you like you’re pants-on-head crazy for suggesting government just do it, soup to nuts.

    Think about it: when was the last, realy, fully-public solution delivered? Not one where the private sector was bribed to do it, not one where the government gave tax breaks, not one where some douchebag got their name on the door.

    You have to go back to the 1970s, at least. Anything good, anything we built, was before 1980.