• SamuelRJankis@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The abandonment of public housing by the federal government in the 1990s went hand-in-hand with a wider push to financialize the entire sector: rent controls were deregulated, rules were rewritten to make it easier for landlords to purchase buildings then forcibly hike rents.

    Once the Liberal and Conservatives governments pushed us into this era of investor led housing development it was obvious there was going to be a growing group of people that would be very happy that general housing prices were sky rocketing. Imagine how society would have viewed any type a significant bump in housing otherwise, how would anyone view it as anything as a bad thing.

    List of random thoughts for what investor led housing has brought us aside for the prices:

    • Worse quality housing - They’re not living in it so they don’t care how poorly built or designed it is as long as it can be flipped for profit.
    • Worse quality local amenities - Why invest in things like local amenities, transit and anything else when it doesn’t make a difference for you
    • Worse maintained strata housing - Anyone that has been on strata boards know that investors owned units don’t want to maintain the building since they’ll be gone by the time the shit hits the fan and be twice as expensive to fix.