double Canada’s rate of residential construction housing over the next decade to nearly 500,000 new homes per year.

So it sounds like the goal is 500k houses a year at the end of a decade. I assume that means 230k-ish this year, slowly ramping to 500k in 2035. It only needs to be an extra 27k/year to make that goal.

CMHC says we need ~3.5 million houses by 2030 to get housing costs back to reasonable levels. I really want this proposal to be good, but it doesn’t seem like it will be enough.

Is it better than nothing? That depends on who controls the final prices, and how much gets built.

The plan announced today by the Liberals would create a new federal housing entity that the party says would oversee affordable housing construction, speed up construction and provide financing to homebuilders.

Carney says the new agency, Build Canada Homes, would act as a developer to build affordable housing at scale, including on public lands, and develop and manage projects.

I really want to see the details on this one.

The second paragraph suggests BCH would do the building, while the first paragraph’s “oversee” suggests existing developers would do the work. If BCH will finance construction, control where/what gets built, and control the final cost to buyers, then this has the potential to sell decent housing at below-market prices. That could start diffusing the housing crisis (although other reforms are necessary to improve costs in the near term).

That would be very different from what the Liberals and CPC have been proposing so far, which is to ask developers to pwetty pwease lower sale costs by making it easier and cheaper to build. It’s hard to be optimistic given their track record.

The fact that they’re creating a crown corporation to build homes on public and private land is huge. This includes prefab and modular homes too. They’re even committing to using Canadian lumber.

We cannot contunue to rely on capitulating to and deregulating private developers and expecting them to act in any way other than own self-interest. They have no incentive to bring down the cost of homes. It is now crystal clear that the neo-liberal solution does not work.

A crown corporation that exists to create housing rather than maximize shareholder value is a massive step in the right direction. Frankly, I’m surprised Carney is doing this but happy about it all the same.

I expect Carney to get pushback from Doug Ford who is firmly in the pocket of private real estate investors.

Force the rich to sell their multiple houses too. Tax their wealth and they won’t have a choice. 3rd homes should get taxed at 10% of their value or more. Let’s stop kidding around. That’ll force them to divest fast as fuck.