The shortcomings of the First-Time Home Buyer’s Incentive

By: Alexi Guindon-Riopel Residential housing prices in Canada have been increasing sharply over the last 10 years. To solve this problem, the Trudeau government created the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive (FTHBI) which aims to do two things; ease the burden of the high initial cost to break into the housing market and reduce monthly mortgage…

Addressing Toronto’s loss of dwelling rooms in rooming houses

By: Ruolan Ma As the epicentre of Ontario’s housing crisis, Toronto has a rental market with an extremely limited housing stock and one of the lowest vacancy rates in Canada at 0.5%. As a result, rental prices remain high with the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto reaching 2,250 in 2022, a 22%…

What Budget 2017 means for young Canadians

Natalie Brunet & Caleb Holden Last March, a careful listener might have been able to pick out the collective sigh of Canadian youth as they realized that the Trudeau Government’s first budget – touted as his chance to deliver on the many promises in the Liberal platform directed at 18-24 year olds – had come…

Building Singapore: An Exploration of Public Housing

Haris Khan By most measures, Singapore is an extremely wealthy country: It ranks third in GDP per capita (PPP), 3.5 percent of its population are Dollar millionaires, and living here for four months has vastly expanded my ability to name supercars on sight. Given this enormous wealth, I was surprised to learn that 82 percent…

A Primer on Inclusive Zoning

Alyssa Wali Earlier this month, the government of Ontario announced its intention to give municipalities the ability to increase affordable housing units for lower to middle income households. Through the newly released inclusionary zoning measures, municipalities will have the option to mandate that developers include a percentage of affordable housing in new residential developments. Inclusionary…