Housing news & insights
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Looking back at 2023
As 2023 wraps up, we decided to pause and take stock of the headway we've made this year. Here are five highlights that leave us feeling proud, grateful and inspired to keep marching down the long, slow, winding road to generational fairness.
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Globe & Mail: Attention older, affluent homeowners: Let’s put our housing wealth to work
Older Canadians worked and lived in an era when blue-collar jobs could pay enough to purchase a home. With the wealth they have since acquired from rising home values, many have ascended to the ranks of the affluent. The financial industry recognizes this. Public opinion does too. It’s time for governments to catch up, by revisiting social-spending priorities and revenue plans to pay for the investments that citizens want.
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Globe & Mail: Past governments didn’t work out how to pay for boomers’ retirement
The deficits announced in Ottawa’s fall economic statement remind us that previous governments never worked out how to pay for the healthy retirement of baby boomers. The personal finances of younger Canadians are collateral damage.
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Parties misdiagnose biggest changes in Fall Economic Statement
Federal parties have misdiagnosed the biggest changes in 2023 Fall Economic Statement. Canada needs a federal task force on generational fairness to correct these misperceptions of federal finances.
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The Globe & Mail: Merit, luck or extraction? Revisiting the stories we tell about our financial status
Nobody likes to be challenged about whether they earned all that they have. Some get defensive when I talk about winning the “lottery of timing” by becoming a homeowner years ago, or when I raise concerns that younger Canadians inherit unaffordability and climate problems in which I’m partly implicated. Breaking through this defensiveness is necessary if Canada is to work once again for young and old alike.
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Intergenerational Fairness Day has arrived
Today, November 16, 2023, is the first global Intergenerational Fairness Day. The urgent need to reverse the deteriorating well-being of younger and future generations stretches beyond Canada. Voices from the US, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Japan, Nigeria, and Australia as well as United Nations Foundation Next Generation Fellows have joined together to call on governments to preserve what is sacred – a healthy childhood, home, and planet – so that we can all be proud of the legacy we leave for those who follow.
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Five reasons Canada needs a Generational Fairness Task Force
We’ll never be able to fix today’s affordability, housing, medical care, and climate crises without understanding and resolving the intergenerational tensions at their core. Here are five impacts a federal Generational Fairness Task Force will have on key decisions made at Cabinet and Treasury tables.
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The Globe & Mail: Trudeau takes first step to break Canada’s addiction to rising home prices
The Prime Minister recently signalled a clarity of purpose for change in our housing system that has not existed in my lifetime. Housing should be for homes first, and investments second.
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The Conservative Housing Plan: Building homes isn’t enough for affordability
The CPC's plan for housing falls victim to ‘silver bullet’ thinking on housing, suggesting that building more homes will solve all of our problems. It’s a nice picture, and it sounds simple enough. The villains are clear — the fault lies with municipal ‘gatekeepers’ who unfairly stand in the way of development, or bureaucrats who line their own pockets while failing to do their jobs well. The rest of us are off the hook. Sadly, the answer just isn’t this easy.
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The Globe & Mail: We need a clear goal for home prices; not just a target for new builds
While strong majority support should incline politicians to be honest about the need for home prices to stop rising, most dodge the topic. This is a big problem, because we can’t fix the housing crisis until we convince politicians it is politically safe for them to stand by this hard truth.
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