Thread time. And it's a bit of an angry one.

We'll never solve our housing crisis so long as our system is dependent on planning, but the federal and provincial governments refuse to give municipalities the information needed to make those plans.

🧵 Our entire planning system, from housing to infrastructure to schools is underpinned by population forecasts. Project out how the population will grow over 20-25 years, perhaps have a high-medium-low case, and use that to make decisions, particularly municipal ones.

There's a fair bit of merit to the idea of shifting our property tax system to an LVT. But this gets the issue wrong.

An LVT makes it harder to build this kind of infill, not easier. Thread time.

https://twitter.com/CommonWealth_ca/status/1796947007707218227

The theory of change here is that greedy landowners are hoarding all the land. They could build, but it's more profitable not to. But if we taxed the land, their incentives would change and they'd build beautiful buildings like this. And that is a great building!

Thread time! Ontario is growing quickly, but different parts of Ontario are growing for different reasons - some through immigration, some through non-permanent residents, some through people moving there from the GTA. Let's take a look. 🧵 First, let's start by looking where kids are born. To control for population size, we'll do births per 1000 residents.

The places having a baby boom tend to be smaller communities in SW Ontario, which are more affordable to raise a kid. Also... Kenora.

Thread time on 2023 housing starts by province in Canada. Who did well, who didn't do so well, and who builds what type of house? 🧵 CMHC breaks data down into type of home (single/semi-detached, row/townhouse, apartment) and intended market (owner, rental, condo, co-op).

That's 12 different types of housing, though only 5 of them saw more than 2,000 units started across Canada in 2023.

Thread time! Budget 2024 is out. The biggest announcement is an increase to the inclusion rate on capital gains realized annually above $250,000 by individuals and on all capital gains realized by corporations and trusts from one-half to two-thirds. On housing… most of what’s in the Budget was already announced last week. But we do have a costing on the non-infrastructure parts – 8.5 billion over 5 years. But we do have a fair bit more detail on the plans, which is helpful.

Thread time. Not surprisingly, reviews are mixed about yesterday's federal housing plan. My question for both the supporters and skeptics is: "What would you like to see a government do... any government... to address the housing crisis?"

Some ideas below. The one I hear a lot is, "cut population growth". The federal government did that. Our population growth levels, which exceeded 1.2M, are going all the way down to 300K a year, a 75% reduction. This was confirmed this week by the Bank of Canada.

Link: bankofcanada.ca/2024/04/mpr-20…

Looks like the new federal housing plan is out! Will be reviewing over the next half hour or so. Follow this thread.

https://twitter.com/SeanFraserMP/status/1778804400359715100

WOW... this one is *huge* (and nerdy). The federal government is bringing back a 10% Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance for purpose-built rentals.

This was one of the key recommendations of both the National Housing Accord and Blueprint for More and Better Housing.

Thread time! Here's the TL;DR version.

Even if we could build homes for next-to-nothing, we're not going to bring back affordability for middle-class Ontario families unless we tackle high development charges and land costs.

Here's why. In the fall of 2004, @StandingHannah and I bought a home just like this one, on a lot this size, in the Stoney Creek neighbourhood in London, ON's northeast. The cost was $168,000, which is roughly $250,000-$260,000 adjusted for inflation.

Last week, I published a piece, saying that Ontario needed to build 1.7M homes in the next 10 years. A bunch of you asked me to come up with figures for all the provinces. So I did! My answer: Canada needs 3.5M homes in 10 years. A 🧵 and a link institute.smartprosperity.ca/Canadas-Need-f… Here's my piece from last week, on Ontario's need for 1.7M homes from 2021-31 (which, you will note, is higher than the 1.5M target).

Due to recent population growth, we revised upwards our estimates for Peel and Toronto, along with higher-ed towns like Waterloo and London.

Thread time, about affordability, density, and older (pre-WWI) suburban neighbourhoods, based on yesterday's picture that went semi-viral.

TL;DR version - affordability in older suburbs in larger cities requires density.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1772352698743984416

There are 3 listings near that apartment building, two selling for roughly 900K, and one selling for 1M. The final two are on the exact same street as yesterday's new apartments.

New release! The Blueprint for More and Better Housing

It has 10 recommendations across all orders of government, supported by 140 different specific policy actions.

Check it out here:

THREAD TIMEhousingandclimate.ca/blueprint/ A group of 15 of us got together to come up with a blueprint on how Canada can solve our housing crisis.

You'll recognize many of the names below.

Thread time. Ontarians haven't wrapped their head around how many international students the fully public colleges (not private, not PPP, but public-public) bring in each year, and what this means for the new federal cap. In 2024, the Ontario government needs to get undergrad/diploma visa admissions down to 140,000 or so.

In 2022, there were 280,000 higher ed visa admissions (which includes grad school, which are exempt from the new system).

So we need to cut by roughly half.

I wasn't going to weigh into this, but since everyone else is... here goes.

The myth of the "luxury condo", particularly outside of the GTA and GVA, needs to die.

Condos *are* affordable homes. It's non-condos that are luxury housing.

And I can prove it... with data. A 🧵.

https://twitter.com/theJagmeetSingh/status/1747680184558379381

Let's look at this chunk of #ldnont and surrounding towns, including Dorchester. currently has 1,110 sale listings in this area. (I put a minimum price of 50K to eliminate rentals accidentally classified as sales, and 1+ bedroom to filter out empty land) Realtor.ca

Short thread time, with a spoiler. We've got 9 months of population growth data for Canada. Here's how much higher non-permanent resident growth (international students, TFWs, etc.) and, to a lesser extent, immigration is relative to historical averages.

🧵time! A question I get asked a *lot* is, "How much of our recent population growth is simply catching up for the lost years of the pandemic?"

Turns out, some of it was. In 2022.

Time for another housing thread. There's two things I keep hearing over that are demonstrably false:

- Home prices always go up
- Rising home prices necessarily mean that homes become less affordable

Both are demonstrably false. To see why, consider my hometown of #ldnont. I grabbed this data from the London-St. Thomas Association of Realtors, from an October 2011 report. It shows home prices from 1986 to 2010.

Home prices had a peak in 1991, bottomed out in 1996, and were lower in 2002 than in 1991. 11 years, and no net home price growth.

Six Canadian economic problems you *should* worry about.

The boy got up early, so time for a very long thread.

Yesterday, I had a thread on why a "debt bomb" is not a problem Canada should worry about.

But that does not mean all is well...

A 🧵 As always, some background:

- Canada overall is in great shape. Most countries would trade our problems for theirs in a heartbeat.
- This list of 6 isn't about any order of government or party. They're larger. More structural.
- This isn't meant to be exhaustive.

Here we go...

Time for a thread on everyone's favourite subject - Canadian 10-year bond yields! And how bond markets don't think Canada's about to experience a debt bomb.

A 🧵. Some clarification points before we begin:

- I'm using 10 year bonds since that's the data I have on hand.. but there's nothing particularly special about *10*
- Bond markets aren't everything
- Economies can have all kinds of issues beyond "debt bombs".

Thread-time, on Southern Ontario's housing crisis, the province's booming population, and Ontario colleges. Lots of fun data (with sources) in this one. Ontario's population has been booming since 2016 or so, outside of a dip during the pandemic, with a growth spike in the last 18 months or so.

Data source: Statcan Table 17-10-0009-01 www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.…

Time for a thread on why the federal government reintroducing the CMHC catalogue of housing designs could be massively transformative (but only if they're bold about implementation).

This has the potential to be massively beneficial.
globalnews.ca/news/10163033/… There's a whole lot of questions people have about scaling up housing construction, such as:

"We can't get the approvals done now we need... how are we going to do more of them?"

"Where are we going to get the skilled workers we need?"

etc. etc.

When it comes to housing, yesterday's Fall Economic Statement was... not good. I'd grade it a C-.

Of course, this raises the question, "okay, wise guy, what would you have done differently?"

Glad you asked... a thread. First off, I will give myself the same restrictions (real and self-imposed) that the federal government had yesterday. Specifically:

1. Needs to be things in federal jurisdiction
2. Has little-to-no cost until 2025 or later

With those constraints in mind, here goes...

I had a thread yesterday about municipal-level housing targets and how the province has created annual level targets for their Building Faster Fund.

Well, the province gave us some more info yesterday... so here's another 🧵

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1717496235567812658

Here's a short summary:
- The province has given annual housing start targets to 50 municipalities (the initial 29 that received 10 year targets, then an additional 21).
- Housing starts is a bit loosely defined
- Targets are VERY aggressive. Big-hairy audacious goals.