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Canada in particular has a very strange housing affordability issue... artificial growth!

Our population is currently increasing by over 1 million people each year and it is 98% immigration.

I think an odd effect of very very high immigration is that everyone who arrives is presumably of working age and needs to be housed outside of a family unit. This puts immense pressure on a housing supply that is already decades behind where it should be and as a result prices are exploding.

Canada as a country has a population of about ~40 million people. The main country we are getting our immigration from is India with a population of nearly 2 billion. There is no possible world in which Canada can construct enough housing for the nearly infinite supply of people that it seems to be importing

A recent study showed it currently takes on average 10 years to go from acquiring a piece of land to building an apartment. This is clearly problematic but there is a physical limitation on how fast housing can be constructed.




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