Auf wie viele Arten kann Ontario bei der Bewältigung der Immobilienkrise scheitern?

> There are almost as many ways to measure Ontario’s housing crisis as there are to measure inflation. What’s astonishing about this province in late 2024 is that our current policies are failing in nearly every way we can measure — and yet there’s little sense of urgency from the government to make changes commensurate with the crisis.

The only way this government will be sparked into caring is if voters start ascribing some of the L’s to Ford/OPC, as opposed to letting Trudeau/LPC wear all of them.

If Ford actually calls an early election, *THIS* is what needs to be the #1 issue in the campaign. The opposition needs to absolutely eviscerate Fords record on this.

John Michael McGrath teased this piece in the OnPoli podcast last week; I was excited to read it.

I think there is an additional item folks should read when reading this. A [report from TD Economics](https://economics.td.com/ca-productivity-bad-to-worse) on Canadian economic productivity. While there is a lot on that report there are two highlights I want to point out:

> Among industries, construction is the worst of the lot with labour productivity at a near 30-year low.

and

> Construction has generated no productivity growth over the past forty years! It’s not a uniquely Canadian problem, but rather global in nature. For instance, U.S. productivity growth in construction has been worse relative to Canada over the last 30 years and only slightly better since the pandemic. Studies in the U.S. have shown resources moving from higher productivity regions to lower – the opposite of allocative efficiency. The decline in productivity has coincided with an increase in land-use regulations, suggesting that non-economic factors have played a central role.

With those two items, looking at this piece JMM final sentence really just hits it home. Ontario is failing in every metric when it comes to building more housing. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would wonder if Ford doesn’t want to solve the housing problem. However, I know that isn’t the case. The Toronto Board of Trade has identified housing as the second largest problem facing the GTA, and economist have clearly hit the panic button on land use policies creating a significant reversion in our economic productivity.

The TD report highlights that more of investment money is being poured into real estate than over, more productive, sectors of the economy. We need to simplify land use planning (say, create an as-of-right to six units on any residential property) and treat housing less like an investment asset and more like a utility.