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Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

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Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#91

Post by dmix »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #69
frostwarrior wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the free market alone, letting everyone get a home sounds like a terrible decision. There's a finite number of people that need a home and by the point everyone gets their own home, your business is doomed. On the other side, letting housing to be crazy expensive, with few people capable of getting a new house, will always be profitable.

>By the free market alone, letting everyone get a home sounds like a terrible decision Ah, but that's the thing about the free market. It doesn't care, for better or worse. If the barriers to building new houses are low and demand is high, new houses will get built and prices will drop until an equilibrium is reached. >On the other side, letting housing to be crazy expensive, with few people capable of getting a new…

Notably housing shortages are a new phenomenon, we weren't having this problem earlier in the century. The only difference between now and then is we have far, far more regulations and zoning rules in the way.

Technically houses are cheaper to build than in the past, knowledge and building materials are more plentiful, and capital markets are more efficient with more banks offering mortgages. So by multiple measures housing should be less of a problem, not worse.

This is the reality we've built by choice, people act like they don't know how we got here. If you go on Reddit they think if we all just became unionized and have more $$ we'd go back to the 1960s and all have houses again. But that problem with housing supply won't go away until we fix the root cause, throwing more wages (or gov money) at it without expanding supply will just increase prices further.

Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#92

Post by op00to »

olivermarks wrote: post #84

The western world seems to be gripped by a death cult - drug overdoses, assisted suicide, suicide, victim culture - despite having 'the highest standard of living on the planet. What's happened, is it the incredible pressure to perform and get ahead? Very rich school kids are topping themselves in the heart of silicon valley despite having probably some of the best prospects of anyone anywhere. https://www.theatlanti…

What planet are you on? Vast transient encampments?

Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#93

Post by nine_k »

com2kid wrote: post #51
twblalock wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with encouraging builders to go hard with few restrictions is you end up with a low-density urban sprawl that introduces a ton of its own issues. You only end up with that if that is what sells, i.e. that is what homebuyers want. If the average Canadian didn't want that, the developers would build something else. Your real problem here is with the preferences of the people who buy new homes, and you are…

Ban commuter cars from cities and watch the demand for high density urban housing explode. Basically replicate the pre-car environment that the world's greatest cities were designed and developed during.

Many large city centers in Europe already restrict or outright ban commuter cars.

Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#94

Post by joe_the_user »

olivermarks wrote: post #84

The western world seems to be gripped by a death cult - drug overdoses, assisted suicide, suicide, victim culture - despite having 'the highest standard of living on the planet. What's happened, is it the incredible pressure to perform and get ahead? Very rich school kids are topping themselves in the heart of silicon valley despite having probably some of the best prospects of anyone anywhere. https://www.theatlanti…

We have vast transient encampments across north America, particularly the west that are riddled with violent and petty crimes, substance abuse and serious mental illness.

Oh, that's what you call ... poverty. Being homeless gives you a strong incentive to do drugs 'cause they dull the misery. The homeless often wind-up mentally ill because they're systematically prevented from getting sufficient sleep as well miserable and isolated.

Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#96

Post by joe_the_user »

op00to wrote: post #92
olivermarks wrote: post #84

The western world seems to be gripped by a death cult - drug overdoses, assisted suicide, suicide, victim culture - despite having 'the highest standard of living on the planet. What's happened, is it the incredible pressure to perform and get ahead? Very rich school kids are topping themselves in the heart of silicon valley despite having probably some of the best prospects of anyone anywhere. https://www.theatlanti…

What planet are you on? Vast transient encampments?

You have vast transient encampments some places (Fresno, the desert, etc) because the homeless are moved from one place to another and sometimes an encampment gets established and so takes a lot of people a lot of place - but usually the homeless are invisible, yes.

Edit: not that the alienation of modern society isn't also a factor but people unable to meet their costs of living (especially rent) is factor that should always be mentioned with any description of the mood of today. Plenty of people don't want to die but being pushed into death by circumstances - the subject of the article, in fact.

Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#97

Post by diego_moita »

Two (2) cases of people with a very rare and badly understood disease (severe reaction to pollution) chose assisted suicide because couldn't find a place to accommodate their very special needs.

Hence, "Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death"...

This click baiting is just grotesque.

Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#98

Post by brailsafe »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #63
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada, exclusionary zoning rules prohibited the construction of mid-rise housing in most cities. Developers would build it if the system wasn’t set up to stop them from doing so. They want to sell more units of housing per acre of land.

As I asked another user - so you belief that the suburban sprawl would be high density housing instead? We'd have giant apartment buildings on the edge of the city?

Actually we already see apartments going up at the edges of some cities, because of a combo of these factors making it tough to do otherwise. However, I also found that in Winnipeg, condo owners pay the same property taxes as a detached homeowner in a brand new cul-de-sac. For a $330k cad condo (probably not going to get much higher in price later) you pay $4k in annual property taxes on top of your condo fees and mortgage. That's an entire month of food if you ate out every single day. Meanwhile in Vancouver, the same type of place literally costs $1m in a less desirable area, but you pay only ~2k in property taxes, which contributes to fund 58% of the city's operating budget, and the city is able to improve over time.

Same zoning problems though

Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#99

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #63
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada, exclusionary zoning rules prohibited the construction of mid-rise housing in most cities. Developers would build it if the system wasn’t set up to stop them from doing so. They want to sell more units of housing per acre of land.

As I asked another user - so you belief that the suburban sprawl would be high density housing instead? We'd have giant apartment buildings on the edge of the city?

Yes, this is a common sight outside many major cities. You end up with mid rise or high rise buildings randomly dotted around the burbs. It’s good that this housing exists, but because it’s not concentrated in the core, it doesn’t lead to the best possible outcomes. It’s hard to make the transit system work when housing and jobs are scattered around. You end up with lower-income workers commuting from an apartment over an hour away.

Re: Canadians Unable to Afford Safe Housing Are Turning to Medically-Assisted Death

#100

Post by glitchc »

antiverse wrote: post #87
glitchc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This deeply cynical and distrustful view of govt. is very US-centric. Perhaps it's driven by the fact that govt. frankly stopped working for the average US citizen a long time ago. It doesn't hold true elsewhere in the world. Edited: OP is not the top-voted comment any more, thank goodness.

I've lived in Canada and abroad; I've vacationed a few times in the US so I'm amused my commentary is US-centric. The US and Canadian governments are far, far better in terms of hiding corruption than a lot of other ones. But corruption still exists. There's way more cynicism out there than my commentary. And it would be close to the truth of things. Edit: you probably haven't heard about the bodies they recently exh…

Sure. And yet I believe social media is contributing to your mistrust, as many of these events occurred in the past. If you are indeed Canadian, then I suggest you read David McLaughlin's article in the Globe today and reflect on his thinking.

Link: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-trust-th...

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