Canadas family doctors apparently have the shortest residency in the world.

I am in support of any measures to make the lives of speculators and investors miserable but even the graphic you share endorses increasing housing supply! Singapore is famously super YIMBY and builds tons of public and market housing.

Frankly, whatever else we do, there is NO solution without significantly more supply. Yes, let’s change our tax code to stamp out speculation, but it will take years, if not decades, to catch up on building enough supply even if we make changes now.

Vacancy is pretty much zero across the major Canadian cities. We have the lowest housing per capita in the G7. There is objectively not enough housing in Canada and it’s absolutely delusional to say otherwise. Is this wishful thinking just a form of NIMBYism? Do you own a SFH and you want to “preserve the character” of your neighbourhood or something?

Where are you getting that building more homes will disproportionately help realtors and speculators? Even non-market housing, like co-ops and social housing? How in the world does that even work?? Why would speculators like that? I hate speculators, but your theory makes no sense whatsoever!

There is not a single urban economist, right or left, who agrees with you. With beliefs like this so widespread, it’s no wonder we don’t enact any policies to actually help with the housing crisis.

Could be, but even the best case scenario for this bot is pretty bad. The bot “summarizes” by omission. That’s always going to be limited.

Could be, but even the best case scenario for this bot is pretty bad. The bot “summarizes” by omission. That’s always going to be limited.

Or at least make a distinction between commercial and non-commercial mail. I understand subsidizing a letter to a developing country but this is just extracting rent.

Bad bot. This summary is worse than useless.

I have noticed secondhand stores are getting more expensive. In my area, it’s still way cheaper for adults than new. For children, it’s more of a crapshoot, but it’s still hands down cheaper for more expensive durable items like coats, jackets, etc.

It’s unfortunate that life is increasingly unaffordable, but it’s an absolute win if we as a society shift to buying second hand and reusing things more often. I wish it wouldn’t be considered so shameful. Kids clothes in thrift stores are often in near new condition. We live in such a wasteful consumer society.

The anecdote in the intro makes it sound like Ukrainians are going home for economic reasons, which comports with domestic concerns about cost of living, but further down it turns out almost none cite that as a reason. Most are returning home due to family, friends, homesickness, love of country, etc.

Ok I get the message. I will refrain from cross posting as much as possible in the future. I do think this is not like Reddit and this tendency is a self-own for Lemmy where there is much more balkanization by design.

I agree. I hesitated to cross-post this, but someone suggested I do so on the original post.

But that shows a structural problem with the user incentives on Lemmy. The norm of discouraging cross-posting itself means that we have a system that actively discourages people from connecting with others. And if we’re actively incentivized to unsubscribe from multiple similar communities, that’s even worse! These are the opposite of the sort of incentives we should have in a healthy and viable social network.

Good point. I’m not as familiar with other Activity Pub interfaces so I haven’t thought about the implications for Mastodon, etc.

That’s an interesting proposal. I think I need to understand it better. Could you describe to me in what ways this would be better?

That’s a good point. Maybe subsidized insurance should be available for existing developed areas. But should we subsidize new sprawl in flood plains? It’s also a vicious cycle because the more wet land we pave, the worse flooding risk is for everyone.

I can confirm. It feels like it’s down even less than Reddit when I used to be on there.

They do this in the US. I’m torn though. Doesn’t this just incentivize building in high risk flood areas?

How about publicly owned non-market housing, like they have in Scandinavian countries and Japan, etc.?

Could you expand on that? I would’ve naively thought all jobs are subject to federal labour law.

I’m really strongly against saying “both sides” or “all sides”. It’s not only factually incorrect but it breeds apathy. If you want things to change, you need to notice when the parties are trying to appeal to you.

In the last election, the NDP were the only ones to seriously bring up housing affordability. Singh said he thinks even current homeowners understand that people are suffering and are OK with lower prices, and the debate moderator grilled him for it. She “called him out” for supposedly hurting people who are relying on their home value as their retirement. I was shocked.

Meanwhile, the Liberals and Conservatives explicitly supported high home prices and “free market” solutions (except don’t mention zoning!). That makes sense given that they (especially the conservatives) get their voteshare from older homeowners.