Since we're on the topic of housing, I must ask, as I know some of you have children around my age (mid-twenties): Do you truly think they have a shot at homeownership, or is the plan to let them live with you forever?
I take occupancy in March. Maybe then I'll adopt that "I've got mine, screw you" mentality.
Well, I think they do have a shot at home ownership. My step daughter is mid 30's with a spouse, they're successful, both work, combined income probably $300K+, have one kid, bought a starter half duplex, then last year upgraded to a nice and reasonably priced house that suits their needs. I think they'll be fine. My daughter is mid 20's with a serious boyfriend, they both work, he bought a starter apartment/condo and while it's definitely going to be harder (because they live in a less affordable market than the step-daughter does), I think they'll be fine too over the long run. She's lived at home for 2 years after graduating but I get the feeling she's planning to move out in the coming months. No pressure from us, she's just deciding on her own. Her work is only 10 minutes from us, so she really had no real motivation to move out until she got a serious boyfriend.
But the question is, do you just allow historically high immigration to continue when it seriously impacts affordability? While there are more factors than just immigration (airbnbs, foreign absentee ownership, etc), the housing market can only respond so fast. If your bathtub is overflowing, you don't start grabbing buckets and towels first, you shut off the tap first. Maybe if you're 3 years old you don't think of that, but any adult would. We need some adult supervision in the gov't again.
I think most of us would agree that immigration is definitely a good thing for many reasons, and even necessary. But yes, it does seem the numbers are maybe too big
and I have to wonder about the distribution of those numbers. I think some way of ensuring immigrants get equally spread out across all provinces and communities is important too, thus allowing for a more subtle impact on resources.
Technically I'm an immigrant too, but coming from the states I guess you'd say I'm not a visible immigrant and it doesn't really feel like much of a change so that I don't even really feel like an immigrant would. Other than having to show I was married to a Canadian, had a employable degree and enough $$ in the bank to live off of, moving to Canada wasn't otherwise all that different than moving from one state to another.
And here's a thought. I'd like to think that citizenship is a privilege and not a right. There are a lot of lazy crap citizens that only want to abuse society, not contribute or at least peacefully exist within it. I'd LOVE to make a trade for immigrants that
do want to contribute. Unfortunately we can't yank citizenship - but maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if we could! Not sure where we'd send them though, haha. Too bad we can't just send them to Australia like GB once did, lol.
And congrats
@mcm on your new place!!