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Opinion: It’s not that we have too many people. It’s that we have too few houses
(www.theglobeandmail.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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No, it's also too many people.
Our highways systems and medical systems are also overwhelmed, it's not just housing. Build more houses, bring more people, and we just make all the other problems worse if we don't change something and start to fix/redesign those systems as well.
Are those problems not due to a lack of transit and healthcare investment and program improvements, moreso than a too many people problem? Bc having or taking in fewer people doesn't address either of those.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. We definitely need to build more houses, but if we don't fix those other areas at the same time it will be a nightmare.
Just building houses won't fix our problems, which means that lack of housing isn't the main issue it's too much people. Too many people for our housing supply, too many people for our roads, and too many people for our medical care.
If we build more houses, get more doctors and nurses, and fund public transportation, than we no longer have too many people because we are better built to serve and house more people.
The chart here: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/population-growth-rate shows a steady growth rate over the past 70 years. Like you said, that's not a sustainable model for anything, including housing.
People really need to quit with the 'single family home with a white picket fence' bullshit and get more comfortable with medium/high density housing.
Our highway systems have been overwhelmed for over a decade, and they should stay overwhelmed. Stop driving. We should be building more transit instead. But transit is only viable in high density areas, and we don't have enough of those. So let's keep bringing in people, and fire all the folks at City Hall telling developers that those people can't have homes.
But then isn't needed because everything is right there. We used to have transit to every little small town. We eventually shut down the lines because the people moved to high density areas which didn't need transit – people could walk everywhere.