If you’d said that zoning laws were one factor in keeping rental apartment prices high, I would have agreed with you.
As I said, simplistic answers to complex issues are usually… wrong.
Read the article it’s the biggest factor
It’s a 5 year old editorial from the Globe & Mail, it’s not a peer-reviewed study.
Zoning is a single factor. At the moment, immigration is probably a more significant factor to the housing shortage.
Studies in Australia show it’s causing up to a 40% increase in housing. Canada would likely be similar
Immigration is nothing new, it’s an increase in demand yes, but supply would naturally increase alongside it if the supply wasn’t artificially restricted
I don’t think anyone here is disagreeing with you that zoning is a factor, it’s just not the only one.
Immigration rates in Canada - permanent, temporary foreign workers, and students - are currently among the highest anywhere in the world. They are a significant factor.
Just to clarify, and not disagree, this is a shortage of low/affordable rent. My wife and I are downsizing significantly from a house we owned in Montreal into an apartment in Ottawa. We are very fortunate that our household income is, and will continue to be robust and when we started looking for rentals we were initially very concerned about shortages. Then we discovered that at our price range there is a lot of selection of good places.
So, yes, there is a shortage for those who it will hurt the most. My apologies for a possible hijack and again, it’s not my intent to disagree or correct.
They’re a significant factor if the supply is restricted. If supply is not restricted, or at least less restricted, then basic economics would indicate supply would increase to match demand - and there wouldn’t be significant maintained increases in prices.
The root cause of the problem is fairly simple, supply is not catching up to demand. Demand is not spiky, so we have to say the issue is the supply is too low.
Why is the supply low? Government restrictions on what can be built and where it can be built is the best answer to that.
Supply vs demand is a symptom, it is not a root cause. Root causes include inflation, immigration, zoning, access to capital, available construction workers, etc. There more cranes building high-rises in Toronto then any large city in North America. We can only do so much at once.
Demand is spiky at a macro level, inflation is not at a steady state over a longer baseline and even in ideal conditions new builds take a number of years.
I agree, but generally it’s the populace that is resisting efforts to change those zoning laws. At a high enough level, the public and the government are the same thing. On the ground it’s more nuanced. What seems to be happening though is that the city or regional planning board sees the issue with housing prices, and they propose changes to the zoning code to allow smaller lot sizes, smaller setbacks, more building coverage, and more units, then every pearl-clutching blue-hair comes out of the woodwork to scream about “neighborhood character” and increased traffic. Builders are framed as “evil developers” looking to bulldoze grandma’s neighborhood and replace it with Soviet housing blocs for scary brown people who want to take our jerbs. This is repeated ad nauseam at every city council, neighborhood association, and planning commission meeting in every city large and small.
While all that’s going on, the people who want to move into the city don’t get a seat at the table because, wait for it, they don’t live there yet. The NIMBY’s are trying to close the door to the city after they walked through it. Even people who do live in the neighborhood but who gasp rent instead of own their home are marginalized because “they’re not REAL residents who have a stake in the neighborhood.” So the large-lot single-family homes are protected from any upzoning whatsoever, and redevelopment can only happen on the tiny fraction of already dense multi-family parcels that are too expensive to purchase and demolish for the small increase in density that would be allowed. Then there’s speculators sitting on low-value land waiting for a windfall while paying a pittance in property taxes because they let the property deteriorate to lower its assessment.