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Profit mongers should have no home in Canada’s housing market

Profit mongers should have no home in Canada’s housing market

Profit mongers should have no home in Canada’s housing market
Jun 16, 2021 1 min, 58 secs

Leilani Farha is a former UN special rapporteur on the right to housing and the global director of the Shift.

The Toronto-based company says it is looking to fill what it sees as a hole in the housing market, taking advantage of red-hot real-estate prices that have put homes beyond average family budgets, the competitive rental market and new work-from-home needs.

But don’t confuse this immense financial opportunity for Core as an altruistic attempt to fill a so-called hole in our housing market.

The project capitalizes on a crisis: Inexorably rising housing prices, unaffordable rentals and low vacancy rates, all part of a housing market that is closed off to a growing segment of our population – first-time home buyers, low-income Canadians and marginalized communities.

The plan is being marketed as an attempt to assist Canada’s undersupplied rental market for families and middle-income households, but in fact it will likely only contribute to the scarcity in the homeownership market for that very cohort, converting their paycheques and monthly rent into Core Development equity.

The company’s entry into the rental market in no way addresses Canada’s housing crisis; in fact, it may fuel it.

To date, the so-called affordable rents set by the corporation in the communities where it is already active are above what the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation tracks as average prices – and, unnervingly, because they are new rentals on the market in Ontario, they can be priced at any level.

Private actors no doubt have a role to play in addressing Canada’s housing crisis.

Governments are obliged to ensure that companies such as Core concretely contribute to national commitments to the human right to housing, which entails ending homelessness, prohibiting evictions into homelessness and ensuring access to adequate, affordable housing for the 1.6 million households in core housing need.

It’s time for Canada’s governments to decide on their vision for the housing sector: Will it be one guided by the interests and profit-making whims of investors and developers, or one that concretely embraces and acts on the knowledge that access to adequate, affordable housing is the key to greater equality and a happier society.

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