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Welcome to 2024. Another year as the status quo for low and lower-income people continues unabated, and low and lower-income people continue to suffer greatly.
This ‘housing crisis’ certainly has been preserving the status quo, as it keeps reinforcing the myth and misguided mindset that Canada’s housing system worked well at some point in time in the past, but that something unexpected occurred and caused this crisis, which created widely undesirable outcomes. This is a misguided thought and it certainly is not true at all.
For a very large share of the population, mainly lower- and low-income people in Canada and in Ontario, the housing system never has worked for them as they have suffered terribly and continue to do so.
The current state and the past many years have made many landlords and developers very, very rich. It continues to do so, and politicians develop policies that have greatly assisted landlords and developers to become rich off the backsides of tenant families, who are the cash cows at the mercy of landlords and politicians all across Canada. Tenant families continue to suffer the financial loss and severe consequences of politicians’ and governments’ misguided policies at all levels.
We don’t really have a ‘housing crisis’ at all as it has been this way for well over a century and it is working exactly the way all levels of governments and politicians want it to work, as governments and politicians designed and developed the housing system in Canada. Otherwise, governments and politicians would have changed the misguided policies they developed and enacted decades ago.
Still, the housing debate continues on. Years come and years go. Consultations continue on and on and on, which leads to more so-called staff and expert reports that call for more public consultations. However, nothing ever improves for the tenant families. They have continued to suffer these past many decades.
This is nothing more than a political and constant merry-go-round governments have created to continue the status quo, and all it really has ever done over the past century is conceal the almighty political and government powers that exist behind housing.
Housing or real estate assets increase all the time, and when landlords hold onto empty rental units, they continue to make money, although not as much at the time the unit is empty, but when a landlord rents the empty units out to new tenant families, it pays off very well for the landlords. In a very short time, they are making lots of money, as the new tenant is paying at least market rent and likely more for a long period of time, until the landlord decides to evict that sitting tenant to get another new tenant so they can again jack up the rent on a new family.
Tenant families have never had housing security. We have only ever had housing insecurity and suffered great financial losses and continue to do so due to the great lack of any political will, and homelessness will continue to get worse.
Doug Abernethy
Gravenhurst
