I don’t see how you think the current system is better. Plenty of people already have “nowhere legal” to go.

When someone who can’t afford a mortgage or rental right now, they really only have two options. Homeless shelters, if there is space that will take them, and then specific public parks at night (as allowed by the Supreme court of Canada when enough shelter space is not available). They can and are regularly locked up temporarily for trespassing on private property.

You act like the government would just start instantly kicking out everyone if they owned the land. Why would they do that? What’s the motive? How do the politicians benefit from such an action? I know and can explain exactly how capitalists benefit from owning the land.

The worst situation you’re going to see is specific people being displaced more easily for development, but that’s literally the point of this. Oh no, grandma and grandpa can’t keep living in a half acre lot 3 minutes from the downtown core anymore, they have to move into a condo or move further out to have a giant house. That’s not a problem, that’s a solution.

You bring up a boogeyman like ICE in the US, but how would that even apply to government ownership of land in Canada? We don’t have a large illegal immigrant population, and even the racial tensions we do have are mild as toast compared to what has existed in the US for a long time. Even if we took the current far-right conservatives, I don’t see any indication that this policy would be used to do… anything.

Explain to me against who, and how, a nazi government would use the government ownership of land in Canada against Canadians, that they couldn’t already do today if they were voted in.

A lot of the problems you are mentioning is because of government cuts. In Montréal, the STM is also facing budget problems leading to strikes and projects taking longer and becoming more costly over time. But that’s because the provincial gouvernent are a bunch of corrupt idiots with no ethics who are giving away are tax dollars to their business friends.

And as for Canada Post, the main ceo guy at Canada Post is also on the board of Purolator, a private courier company. He’s been accused of conflict of interest and probably trying to sabotage Canada Post for his own corporate profits.

So… yeah.

You clearly don’t understand how demand works. If demand drops, it looks like there’s more supply.

If you look at the change in population (it increased) and total units in the province(it increased, but not as much) total units per capita has gone down (a decrease in supply)

I just looked for property in Alberta under 100k, and could only find a handful of places under 100k that were not inside mobile home parks (where you don’t own the land) most of them are court ordered sales and are also mobile homes(on private lots) that essentially need to be replaced entirely.

The only reasonable one I found in the entire province which wasn’t in terrible shape, had it’s own land, and was drivable to what I consider a city was in Elnora, which is about an hour outside red deer. Unfortunately it’s unlikely you could get even a minimum wage job there, because the population is only 288 people and they have only 18 total businesses in the town, and that includes some public places like the post office and library.

The thing to remember about this though, is that it can’t support a larger population choosing this option. A few people could move there, but the moment you get more than a few moving in the prices go way up since there isn’t just a million houses sitting empty in these small towns. There’s maybe hundreds, total in the province.

Yes there arent thousands of them. I had to hunt around and keep my eye open for a good deal for several months to find the ones I bought. But they do exist in centers much bigger than Elnora.

No those supply numbers are hard numbers. There were 402 MORE two bedroom apartments this year than last year, a 38% increase over last year. Calgary’s population has gone up but only about 5%.

Thats an EXCESS SUPPLY of apartments because the number keeps rising. If people were snapping them up as fast as they were coming available that number would be steady or dropping and rents would be rising. They’re NOT rising because there is excess supply and renters can shop around and negotiate on rent prices. which is why rents are 8 to 10% LESS than last year at this time even though there were still 100,000 people moving to Calgary.

Many out of province investors have flooded into Calgary in the last couple of years, which means many more rentals on the market as they snap up any housing they can find and turn them into rentals.

So your last statement is incorrect. Population has increased but rental supply has increased even more than the demand.

I have been a landlord in Calgary for over 40 years now and we’ve been through several excess demand and excess supply cycles because of our variable economy. We are obviously in an excess supply cycle.

But isn’t that the point? If governments would cut public services to feed their own beast now, why wouldn’t they do that if we nationalize these services, so that they can then sell to people something better?

That said, I actually did not know that the CEO at CP is also on the Purolator board. Why the hell was that even allowed in the first place?

Do you not understand percentages? Do you think there are only 1400 total two bedroom apartments in Calgary? The percentage change in available listings for sale does not in any way show you how many new units were created. Those are just how many people are currently trying to sell and don’t reflect net construction at all.

Calgary grew it’s population by 100,179 people in 2024 but it’s total housing completions were only 21,084 total units. Given that the average housing unit doesn’t even come close to having 5 people in it (the average is usually somewhere in the high 2s) that means the total supply per capita went down.

Those stats are from the city itself: https://www.calgary.ca/content/dam/www/cfod/finance/documents/corporate-economics/housing-review/Housing-Review-Q4-2024.pdf

I really don’t know how you’ve managed to get so far in life given how bad you are at understanding math. I suspect you’re just lying to be honest.

So how exactly can they solve the housing crisis?

Alleviate, not necessarily SOLVE the housing crisis. Thats a long term thing thats going to take time and a whole lot of changes.

Your lack of understanding is frustrating, especially since I know exactly what Im talking about.

Calgary rentals are most often NOT from new builds so the number newly built in Calgary is the least significant factor. They are mostly used homes or apartments that are BOUGHT and converted to rentals. That’s where the surplus comes from - when you live in BC and can sell one house there for 1.8 million and come to Calgary and buy THREE 600,000 homes or a small apartment block and rent them out, its a smart financial move.

Im done with the gaslighting my friend. I manage a landlords group, I have 120 landlords in my group we discuss this stuff weekly.

You have fun with your little groupies. Calgary is going to keep getting more expensive, and you too will feel the pain that BC currently has. Just give it about 10 years.

We’re all just following in the footsteps of Japan, which peaked it’s real estate problems in the 90s, and is now solving it by collapsing its population because most people couldn’t afford to have kids.

Same train, just different amounts of the way towards the cliff.