If you can’t afford a home, little else matters. Especially in a country with a climate like Canada’s. Many factors led to Justin Trudeau’s downfall, but the spike in the cost of living really ate away his support. Particularly when it came to housing whether rentals or purchases. Young Canadians have abandoned hope of purchasing a home while many others struggled to keep up with payments.Nobody cares if global temperatures may rise half a degree in 50 years or what the preferred gender pronouns of bureaucrats are when they are fighting to pay the bills for basic needs. People wanted to see leadership from Ottawa as their standard of living declined but instead, they were offered virtue signalling and carbon taxes.While the Trudeau reign feels interminable, it will end and likely soon. A new prime minister will take office and new faces will fill cabinet roles. The housing issue will remain acute and this is where danger lies. Citizens on the ground and government members must understand Canada needs less state involvement in housing rather than more. The temptation to throw more money or regulations into the housing market can be overwhelming for politicians of all stripes. It can feel counterintuitive to them to deal with a problem by leaving it alone yet this is what they must do.Canada has a living, tragic example of how things go when government assumes full control of housing. All anybody must do to see how well that is working out is to visit a First Nations reserve. There are over 3,000 of them to choose from and housing on nearly every one of them is in a terrible state.Federal spending on indigenous affairs is over $30 billion per year. Much of that budget goes into housing. Provinces, municipalities and charities also kick many dollars toward indigenous housing.So, with every level of government funding and managing housing for reserves, it only stands to reason that housing should be plentiful and luxurious right? Instead, it’s a catastrophe.Housing is managed by the chief and council while funding comes from outside. Residents are assigned homes and the process is often based more on who is better connected with the band management than it is on need. The process is rife with corruption.Since the people living in the homes don’t own them and don’t see a benefit to maintaining the homes, the houses quickly fall into disrepair. In fact, if a person pretties up their home too much, it may make it become a target and they could find themselves evicted to make room for a relative of the chief.Canadians were shocked when images of dilapidated houses and children huffing gasoline emerged from the Innu community of Davis Inlet Newfoundland in the 1990s. When the community was investigated, it was found to be in such appalling conditions, the government picked up and moved it to a brand-new location ten kilometers away. Decades later, the same problems plague the new community as homes are destroyed nearly as quickly as they can be built.This issue isn’t unique to indigenous communities. It’s just most acute there because there are no options for private home ownership on reserves for citizens who want to escape dependency. Everywhere the government controls housing, the housing conditions become terrible.Government managed social housing projects in cities almost invariably turns into slums. In the Soviet Union, while everybody was provided a home, it was typically in huge divisions of bland apartment blocks which were poorly built and repairs only came through bribery. The politically connected could escape to dachas in the suburbs but the commoners weren’t allowed to own property.Private home ownership is the best way to ensure housing is maintained and improved. The path to increasing home ownership is for governments to get the hell out of the way.Municipalities are dominated with density obsessed city planners. They work their hardest to hinder outward growth and push populations inward. Their efforts stunt the housing market thus causing shortages and price spikes. These city bureaucrats and elected officials are driven by ideology rather than economic reality. They will never give up on their vision of high-density utopias no matter how solid their failure rate is.The most affordable homes in North America are always in the cities with the least controls and where outward growth is allowed. Phoenix, Houston, and Dallas all have healthy economies and affordable housing while New York and San Francisco are expensive and have growing slums.Canada should have some of the most affordable housing on the planet. It is blessed with an abundance of space, raw resources and skilled workers. The only thing keeping housing from being abundant has been government interference.Things should improve once the Trudeau Liberals are out of power, but there will still be problems with other levels of government. Citizens must purge the zealots from other levels of government too and demand unfettered city growth. The free market will provide but it must be free to do so.Otherwise, Canada will slowly drift into a fully state controlled housing system and we need only look at the nearest First Nations reserve to see how that will end.
