What do CAFers think about housing policy, particularly affordable housing for the working class?

[Socrates92]

I would like to see that argument.

Most social programs tend to breed dependency and ignore secondary effects. I’ll try to offer a more detailed argument when I’m not swamped in assignments. (I have bad habit of starting arguments as a distraction from work… ;/ )

 

[Augustinian]

Interesting. I’ll admit I’m surprised by that

Its understandable why you would be surprised. Many TV programs in the United States and news comes from New York and California, yet the nation is really huge and those states are just a tiny portion of America.

 

[midori]

On a landlord forum I frequent, we’re amazed that anyone would voluntarily be a landlord in some parts of Canada. (I’m looking at you, Ontario.) The government seems to be doing quite a good job of running most of them out of business!

A quick glance online shows that rent control exists, to one degree or another, only in four Canadian provinces-- British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island. So that would be six provinces (and three territories) that don’t have any rent control. But in those four provinces, you have about 20 million out of 36 million of the population living there…

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

I would like to see that argument.

Most social programs tend to breed dependency and ignore secondary effects. I’ll try to offer a more detailed argument when I’m not swamped in assignments. (I have bad habit of starting arguments as a distraction from work… ;/ )

Even accepting your first sentence as true, that does not argue why their would be no need for government involvement. What it does argue is government involvement breeds the need for government involvement (a claim I will dispute, but not now, so let’s just assume for now that it is true.) If true, that would show that some of the need was created by government. But it does not show that all of the need for government involvement was created by government involvement. That is much harder to show, and that is the argument I would like to see.

 

[Socrates92]

Good research. That’s even more surprising. I would have assumed before looking into it myself that Quebec would have controls, but apparently it’s just certain cities (Montreal).