Supply? Demand? Housing as a public utility.

A Jan. 23, 2025, CBC video, "Why is rent falling in Canada's most expensive cities? | About That,". attributes intertenancy rents in a few cities notorious for their sky-high costs of living falling by around $100 per month to an increase in "supply" of housing, the construction of which started several years ago and was completed in recent months.

This is taken by whoever produced the video as evidence that housing, a natural monopoly, is appropriately managed as a for-profit industry because, "See? Increasing supply really does bring down price."

The obvious question, leaving aside the confirmation bias of the producers, which is contradicted by the CMHC in its Fall 2024 Rental Market Report, is compared to what?

Rents in continuing tenancies were not reduced according to the video; if they were, at least, this certainly was not mentioned.

Private-sector rents are set at the maximum an anticipated household in need of shelter is able to pay. If this maximum falls, as the CMHC report seems to suggest, then holders of private-sector rental properties are forced to demand less, again with reference only to intertenancy rents:

Changing migration patterns and a weakening job market contributed to lower demand in Metro Vancouver. While immigration to British Columbia was still significant, it was relatively lower in recent quarters.

Unemployment trended higher in the region while the labour force was relatively unchanged compared to last year. Except for the COVID period, the current unemployment rate was last seen in 2016. Higher youth unemployment was a major driver in recent labour-market changes. Some young people will find it more difficult to move out on their own and this will reduce rental demand.

As I have explained previously, there is no way that a financialized housing sector can house Canada's population affordably.

In light of U.S. President Donald Trump's recent threats to cripple Canada's economy with punishing tariffs, this is an appropriate moment to revisit the question of whether basing our economy on repurposing housing from structures in which people dwell to vehicles for extracting and concentrating wealth in the hands of the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) sectors, rather than to invest in creating wealth in the form of innovative materials, new technologies, industrial machinery, and consumer products – not to mention beggaring Canada's healthcare system and other vital public services, which I have discussed in detail elsewhere – is as brilliant an idea as sharpies adept at gouging other people for a roof over their heads congratulate themselves as being.

Structuring Canada's economy as a branch plant of the U.S.; building a financial house of cards made of fictitious capital; maximizing instead of minimizing Canadians' cost of living; and above all eschewing investment in productive economic activity that would support a diversified roster of global trading partners, in favor of exploiting housing to shovel an ever increasing number of dollars into an ever dwindling number of hands, has served a tiny minority very well at the expense of Canada's economy as a whole.

My recommendation to the CBC is, rather than to continue pushing the neoliberal line that increasing the "supply" of for-profit housing will make housing affordable, now is to the time to argue for managing housing as a public utility and steering investment dollars to industry where they belong.

Two charts:
BC GDP by Industry 2021
China GDP by Industry 2023