https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin...
The big problem of course that there are real physical limits to the rate of housing development where people have to touch the process eg. inspections, design, labour limits and so 'just add more supply' isn't really a solution when the limited supply you can build are for-sale condos literally being directly marketed overseas and out of the grasp of locals with mere local incomes (Vancouver has pretty much the lowest median income of major Canadian cities).
Like I said, Vancouver isn't SF. Even with areas of the city untouched by redevelopment, there's still thousands upon thousands of units in the pipeline being developed in the areas the city has up zoned over the last 10 years. That's just the CoV proper, never mind the huge amounts of development next door in all the surrounding cities.
On top of this, Metro Vancouver is still a young enough that there's massive areas of untouched brownfield and greenfield that are being redeveloped as well, such as Jericho, NEFC and the Squamish lands around Vanier Park.
> The Dymaxion House was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times — all of them factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended to be suitable for any site or environment and to use resources efficiently. A key design consideration of the design was ease of shipment and assembly.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house
Nearly a century later... "Prefab housing complex for UC Berkeley students goes up in four days" Aug., 2018 ~ https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-compl...
An interesting detail: "Kennedy notes that the cost of trucking to Berkeley from the port of Oakland was more expensive than the cost of shipping from Hong Kong."
A three story apartment building in my town burned down because the decorative mulch outside caught fire and spread to the building. Making it worse sprinkler systems are not mandatory in Canada for three story apartment buildings. Luckily all 52 seniors living in the apartment building got out there were no deaths.
The fire chief said the building went up fast because of the materials used in the building.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-fire...
Before we go on a building spree, I say we should get a decent handle on the total amount of foreign money in play.
This can really distort things, because it's a lot of foreign capital coming in without the productive industry and income taxes being present. Then later it becomes a social services burden.
Many of those kids do grow up to become awesome Canadians, so that's good though. But some of them choose to move back abroad after getting their citizenship and education, when it becomes time to work...
So yeah immigrants are great, but it has been abundantly clear that the rich persons buying citizenship are doing so just to have a passport of convenience and buy land as a safe investment and the gains for the rest of Canadian society from that are weak.
It was more of visa-for-a-loan program than anything else. Complete bullshit.
Citation?
I mean, presumably there's a citable study out there somewhere.
That immigrants in general pay in more taxes sounds plausible. That refugees are a greater net positive (taxes in minus benefits out) than investors, who are basically all wealthy enough to use minimal government services, seems like a stretch.
> According to CIC, investor immigrants reported average earnings of about $18,000 in their first year and just $28,000 after 15 years. After three years, only 47 per cent of such immigrants reported any income. The Canadian average is 67 per cent.
> Meanwhile, refugees (those who come to Canada under hardship) reported first-year average incomes of $20,000 and after 15 years those incomes rose to $30,000. Two-thirds of refugees reported income by their fifth year, on par with Canada’s average.
> After five years, only 39 per cent reported income, suggesting investor immigrants may leave the country (or declare non-residency) after the citizenship process is complete.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/refugees-reporting-high...
Foreign capital, when invested into a limited, rationed, speculative resource, that is also required for life - like say, housing, is a ----ing nightmare.
This has not stopped housing costs from going through-the-roof. People are buying houses to speculate, new residents (foreign rich, or migrating techies) are buying houses with staggering amounts of money - amounts that existing residents could never hope to save up.
[0] https://komonews.com/news/local/home-prices-dropping-in-the-...
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-ar...
Exporting housing services is a great business and a tremendous opportunity that is too rarely framed as such. https://slate.com/business/2013/05/exporting-housing-service...
"nine of 10 recent Chinese immigrants arrive in Metro Vancouver with enough money to immediately buy homes. But only half hold down jobs during their first five years in Canada, while four of 10 report they’re surviving on low incomes."
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-how...
Ritzy Richmond neighbourhood where many are ‘poor’
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Part+Ritzy+Richmond+nei...
I wonder how long it will be before the government decides to change their data format so immigrant employment numbers can no longer be associated with country of origin, under the guise of "privacy" or something like that.
Thus we're getting some utility out of recouping lost value from the tax, but the disincentive the tax would have represented has come in too late to avoid the huge property value spike, ideally we'll see those inflated values decrease somewhat as real estate as a savings account becomes less attractive and starts depreciating the parked value quicker.
There is also the issue that it's hard to audit residency currently.
That Quebec is the only province that avails itself of the opportunity to attract immigrants to itself rather than relying on the federal government is to its credit. If the Anglophone provinces don’t feel like exercising the powers they and Quebec share that’s their problem, not Quebec’s.
Most every province seems to have some sort of provincial nominee program in place for granting permanent residence. They're just not usually designed for investors.
Example of Ontario: https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-immigrant-nominee-progra...
I went through the program (I'm a PR now).
It takes many years, and then many years again to get citizenship. You have to work, etc. It's not even close to the same as the old "investor" program which was literally buy citizenship if you are rich.
Their website say 1.2M$ ? That’s a pittance ?
- limited country representation to a X% only
- added a law that enforces that immigrants are intending to reside in QC and even now must learn French
- investment amount was raised
Only mentioned as an aside, but for Vancouverites, this has been very painful.
Uniquely Quebec manages its own immigration (let's not get into it) and they have an investor immigration scheme that essentially sells citizenship for a pittance. Of course since persons have freedom of movement there's nothing stopping persons who buy citizenship in Quebec for moving to Vancouver, which almost all of them do.
Accordingly while British Columbia has enacted various foreign investor taxes to try to limit the distortions from foreign money on the real estate market, there remain significant impacts of foreign wealth in Vancouver and BC.
Sadly federal politicians aren't in much of a rush to annoy the Quebec government by playing hardball on this issue as Canada has an election coming up and Quebec has heaps of seats in play.