Temporarily affordable housing.

A March 27, 2024, CBC news article, "Federal government promising a 'renters' bill of rights' in upcoming budget," illustrates that the Trudeau government, as well as CBC news, continue to labour under the delusion that increasing housing "supply" will magically reduce housing prices.

Admissions by for-profit developers that they are incapable of building affordable housing abound, but no one in government or mass media dares to tell FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) sector actors to stop preying on Canadians' fundamental human need for housing and, instead of extracting wealth from the productive economy, to start creating it by investing in manufacturing 21st-century products people everywhere want, need, and would be delighted to purchase from Canadian companies.

The CBC article above states: "The NDP is calling on the government to invest more in affordable housing while temporarily preventing for-profit firms from buying designated affordable-housing spaces."

This is a ridiculous proposal – one more instance of politicians and media cowering in the face of banks, pension funds, REITs, sell-side brokerages, and legions more financial predators who are terrified of investing in manufacturing actual products and prey instead on Canadians by driving the price of housing beyond the stratosphere into outer space.

A June 29, 2022, Guardian article, "From Thatcher to Johnson: how right to buy has fuelled a 40-year housing crisis," blows the theory to smithereens that there is any redeemable social value in allowing "for-profit firms" to buy "designated affordable-housing" at any time, now or in the future.

The Guardian article states: "When right to buy was launched as part of the Housing Act 1980, 55% of householders were homeowners. The figure peaked at 72% in the early 00s but currently stands at 65%. Meanwhile, council housing has decreased, too. In 1979, there were 6.5m council homes; now there are 2.2m, while 4.4m households rent privately, twice as many as 15 years ago."

Particular individuals, namely early buyers, did benefit from right buy, but in the words of the Guardian article: "While an older generation of working- and lower-middle-class people gained their first big asset upon buying council homes in the 80s, millions of mostly younger people have now been forced into insecure, grotty, privately rented accommodation."

Not only did right to buy eliminate rentable council houses, but some early buyers "sold up," a certain number of these homes winding up in the hands of rentiers. In the end, right to buy hurt far more people than the few it initially helped because selling off purpose-built affordable housing reduces its availability and enables financial predators to appropriate and charge a king's ransom to live in it.

There is a fact that no one actually in a position to influence housing policy in Canada dares to admit is a fact, and that fact is this: the only way to build affordable housing is to build affordable housing. And the only way to build it is to definancialize housing, meaning finance construction with low- or no-interest government loans to not-for-profit entities to manage building it, and rent or sell the result in perpetuity for what it costs to build and maintain it.

Developing a coherent industrial policy – like China did in the 1990s, the U.S. did in the 1890s, and Japan did in the 1980s – and excluding private capital from Canada's housing sector would not only house everyone affordably, but steer investment into creating real wealth in the productive economy rather than draining unearned income out of it.

This is not rocket science. It is economics. And economics, contrary to what financial sector scammers hire think tanks to tell you, is not "supply and demand." It is the activities a population engages in to continue as a biologically viable entity on planet Earth.