Housing news & insights

Canada’s housing plan must expand beyond building more homes to fix a flaw that has long fuelled unaffordability: Statistics Canada’s underestimation of housing inflation in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

BC allows anyone over age 55 to defer paying municipal property taxes on their principal residence. This program may have made sense when it was created in 1973, but today, most beneficiaries are multi-millionaires. With BC facing record deficits, it's well past time for Finance Minister Bailey to change this outdated and inefficient subsidy.

MP Braedon Clark introduced Private Member’s Bill C-227: An Act to Establish a National Strategy on Housing for Young Canadians. All MPs will have a chance to vote. Join us in urging them to support it!

Build Canada Homes embraces many of the housing affordability solutions Generation Squeeze has been championing for years. Despite these strengths, the strategy sidesteps a critical piece: what is our goal for home values?

Ottawa recently released what it describes as the “most ambitious” housing plan in over 75 years. In many ways, it delivers. But for all its ambition on building homes, the plan is silent on deeper tensions that drive unaffordability – especially the generational dynamics at its core.

Home ownership among young Canadians (under age 35) has recently surged to 44%, the highest level in five decades! 18% of them are mortgage-free. This indicates Canada may be drifting from a meritocracy toward a landed aristocracy, where access to secure housing increasingly depends on being born into the right family.

Canadian politicians are sidestepping the most important – and politically dangerous – question in our housing debate: Should home prices rise, stall or fall? Until we answer it, we can’t fix what’s broken in Canada’s housing system.

With young people facing heavy rents and oversized mortgages for the foreseeable future, compensation is overdue. Millennials and Gen Z deserve a greater share of the $1.5-trillion windfall generated by rising home values since boomers were young adults.

The Liberal election platform recognized that Canada no longer works for all generations. As Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new government appoints Ministers and sets out plans, solutions to this national challenge must be at the forefront of our efforts to protect, build, and unite Canada.

The political bargain we’ve struck in Canada obliges younger people to compromise their standard of living to protect the housing wealth accumulated by homeowners who have come before them. It’s time to acknowledge this – and to compensate young people for their profound expression of intergenerational solidarity.