Housing Crisis: Cutting the Gordian knot
Housing Crisis in Canada leaves people in a flabbergast all around the world. We’re the second-largest country in the world with 6.1% of the world’s landmass and just 0.5% of the total population of the world and still, it takes approximately 25 years to buy a house in Canada! According to some reports, the average home prices in Canada jumped more than 30 % in just a year of Covid! The government of Canada aims to welcome 400,000 permanent residents in the coming year and we haven’t counted International students yet! Something needs to be done!
Every year the new homes are being built by the government, but is this really helping enough!? And hence the title! We need a different a more focused approach. Here are some basic and most relevant things that need to be done for getting out of this mess!
1. Putting City’s surplus property to good use
Each city declares some surplus property every year; this property should be used for building government-funded homes and rental units. Especially in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. If the government starts offering affordable houses each year in the city where the prices have sky-rocketed, the private owners will be forced to rent and sell at lower rates. This is the most clutter-free way where the government could enter the market without taking hold of it and the market will balance itself.
2. Special Economic Zones (SEZs)
Since Ontario has become the economic hub of Canada more and more people move to Ontario every year and hence suffocating cities. Since Canada owns an astronomical size of the land why don’t we use it to its full potential? Provincial governments should zone out and reserve empty land spaces for incentivizing Industries and MNCs, that is the companies opening up manufacturing units or company headquarters in the government allocated special ones should be given monetary benefits and governmental aids. This will have a drastic effect and will lead to new markets and jobs in each state and will further contribute to the development of each state, this will automatically push many people out of the big cities hence reducing demand.
3. Do we really need so many parks?
Let’s address the elephant in the room — Toronto! Toronto has around 1500 parks! : In a city where the housing crisis has always reached its summit. City administration in coordination with the provincial government should chalk out how many parks are actually needed. Yes, parks are good in every sense but for a city with such an overflowing population, some compromises need to be made and we’ll still be good with 1200 or maybe a 1000, If the government acquires some of the parks in the city, it could be parks which are nothing but green open lawns with fewer trees, especially in the busiest localities, and builds affordable residential towers with hundreds of units, it would lead to a remarkable change in favour of the cause.
4. Exclusive, targeted, and restricted housing projects
The government should remember while building homes that, who’re they doing this for? Are they building homes for the rich so that they can buy and rent them again? Or are they looking towards the first-time home buyers and people who’re struggling in paying high rents?
The new housing projects should be only for the people who have been living in the specific/concerned city or close vicinity and should be offered at affordable prices with government-regulated rental rates (if someone chooses to rent them further) keeping in mind that the homes government build should be as good as other homes in the city or else it would for sure build a negative brand image for itself and the project won’t be as successful as it should be if it doesn’t fail completely.
5. Building New Cities
Government should acquire large empty fields and landmasses near big cities and invest heavily in them for ensuring better connectivity with the big cities by building high-speed expressways, bullet trains, rapid bus transit systems, more and more flyovers, and other facilities that make those no less than the big cities. This will lead to an automatic shift of markets, industries and people to these new cities without having to worry about survival and will reduce the crowdedness in the big cities to great extent. The government could also start leasing out lands to big corporations for setting up in the new cities.
6. A complete ban on blind bidding
Blind bidding has become a curse and it’s a never-ending game people tend to own a property for a lesser period of time and are more eager to sell it in greed to earn effortlessly while selling it! The new immigrants are trapped in this the most! It could be fixed in several ways like in Australia bidding is done but it is done in open just in front of the house, the potential buyers are notified of the date of bidding, they all arrive at the venue and bid openly for the home, this reduces the problem to a certain extent at least all the potential buyers get to know the market price and get saved from bidding unnecessarily high. Also, online platforms could be developed for buying and selling properties, such initiative has already taken place but if the government does it, it would be a much bigger success.
7. Government guidelines regarding prices of property
Government should analyse and set prices and publish guidelines on what the price of a property should be according to the market and all the dealings in real estate should be made conforming to those guidelines. This will have a phenomenal effect and the housing market will change completely for the greater good.