[Craic] Profit mongers should have no home in Canada’s housing market

[Allan Baker]

Thanks David.
Allan
> On Jun 19, 2021, at 11:25 AM, David Walsh via craic <craic at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
> 
>  
> Profit mongers should have no home in Canada’s housing market
> LEILANI FARHA AND JULIETA PERUCCA
> CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
> PUBLISHED JUNE 16, 2021
> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-profit-mongers-should-have-no-home-in-canadas-housing-market/?__twitter_impression=true <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-profit-mongers-should-have-no-home-in-canadas-housing-market/?__twitter_impression=true>
> Leilani Farha is a former UN special rapporteur on the right to housing and the global director of the Shift. Julieta Perucca is the deputy director of the Shift.
>             ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Core Development Group Ltd. announced <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-condo-developer-to-buy-1-billion-worth-of-single-family-houses-in/> this week that it intends to spend $1-billion over the next five years to purchase thousands of single-family homes across Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada and British Columbia and offer them as rentals. The Toronto-based company says it is looking to fill what it sees as a hole in the housing market, taking advantage of red-hot real-estate prices that have put homes beyond average family budgets, the competitive rental market and new work-from-home needs.
> Core intends to convert the properties into multiunit dwellings by adding basement apartments. The company asserts this will create 4,000 affordable rental units for families, immigrants and residents who want more space but cannot afford to buy a home.
> Governments are obliged to ensure that companies such as Core concretely contribute to national commitments to the human right to housing <https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/N-11.2/FullText.html>, which entails ending homelessness, prohibiting evictions into homelessness and ensuring access to adequate, affordable housing for the 1.6 million households in core housing need <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/201002/dq201002a-eng.htm>.
> At the end of the day, Core’s plan is yet more proof that Canada’s housing landscape is becoming increasingly dominated by corporate landlords and financial actors seeking only to extract phenomenal returns on investment. It’s hard to view this as a good thing.
> This financialization of housing <https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/FinancializationHousing.aspx> has not had positive results for tenants or marginalized communities here or elsewhere. In Canada, individual landlords with small to medium-sized holdings are increasingly being rivalled by real-estate investment trusts (REITs), <https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/june-2021/the-rise-of-financial-landlords-has-turned-rental-apartments-into-a-vehicle-for-profit/> which raise rents and file evictions at disproportionately higher rates. In the United States, single-family homes have fallen prey to the interests of private-equity investors, who scoop up foreclosed homes at low prices and then, after minor renovations, charge steep rents, turning a class of homeowners into beleaguered renters. The pandemic and its resulting economic downturn have demonstrated the importance of flexibility and compassion for tenants; this is hard to attain with faceless corporate landlords.
> The alarm bells have long been ringing loud and clear. Reports have been issued, documentaries screened, media attention garnered, letters to politicians written. It’s time for Canada’s governments to decide on their vision for the housing sector: Will it be one guided by the interests and profit-making whims of investors and developers, or one that concretely embraces and acts on the knowledge that access to adequate, affordable housing is the key to greater equality and a happier society?
> And see
>  https://www.make-the-shift.org/protection-for-those-living-in-homelessness/ <https://www.make-the-shift.org/protection-for-those-living-in-homelessness/>
> Cristian. Buenos Aires, Argentina. – The Shift #RIGHT2HOUSING (make-the-shift.org) <https://www.make-the-shift.org/cristian-buenos-aires-argentina/>
>  
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