http://okayfail.com/atom.xmlThis is a default title.2021-11-22T00:00:00ZPhillip Mendonça-Vieirahttp://okayfail.com/2021/good-news-we-can-fix-traffic-safety.html2021-11-22T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:16ZGood News: We Can Fix Taffic Safety!<figure id="fref:fig1">
<a href="/2021/good-news-we-can-fix-traffic-safety/files/conversion-st-paul.png"><img src="/2021/good-news-we-can-fix-traffic-safety/files/conversion-st-paul.png" title="Ontario Housing Starts by Intended Market 1969-1986" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>
<i>The Conversion of Saint Paul</i> by Palma il Giovane, 1595.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="8:1-8:147">We suffer from many hard collective action problems whose solution requires coordination across local, regional, national and international actors.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="10:1-10:64">For example, there is no individual person I can yell at to fix:</p>
<ul data-sourcepos="12:1-16:0">
<li data-sourcepos="12:1-12:16">climate change</li>
<li data-sourcepos="13:1-13:28">income & wealth inequality</li>
<li data-sourcepos="14:1-14:23">daylight savings time</li>
<li data-sourcepos="15:1-16:0">to say nothing of public transit, affordable housing, police brutality, truth and reconciliation, and so on.</li>
</ul>
<p data-sourcepos="17:1-17:241">No individual elected representative of mine can take a single vote, on a singular legislative item, that will meaningfully address any of these problems in one fell swoop. Life is hard. Working on these problems is many lifetimes of effort.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="19:1-19:73">That said, I have <strong>extremely good news</strong> I would like to share with you.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="21:1-21:369">There is <strong>one problem</strong> that we suffer from, a problem that stares us in the face every day. A problem that kills people all the time. A problem that horrifically maims innocent children on a near-daily basis. And, it is a problem which, in fact, an individual elected representative of mine could meaningfully address, in a single vote on a singular legislative item.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="23:1-23:35">That problem is <strong>traffic safety</strong>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="25:1-25:347">Unlike housing or wealth inequality or climate change, traffic safety is actually almost entirely in control of my local municipality. My city councillor doesn’t have jurisdiction over air pollution, or carbon taxes, or whether we roll back the clocks. But the city of Toronto does have jurisdiction over how my local roads are designed and built.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="27:1-27:66">A single dinner party’s worth of people could, with a single vote:</p>
<ul data-sourcepos="28:1-31:0">
<li data-sourcepos="28:1-28:163">create a new, default, standard for road and street design which prioritizes pedestrian safety, and which is applied to all new future road works across the city</li>
<li data-sourcepos="29:1-29:143">immediately begin adding new bike lanes, reducing road widths, adding speed bumps, and even close roads off to cars altogether where possible</li>
<li data-sourcepos="30:1-31:0">dramatically make new and substantial progress and change the city for the better, for decades to come.</li>
</ul>
<p data-sourcepos="32:1-32:319">It would barely cost any money up front, and it would save tons of money in the long run. It would save scores of lives, whether killed outright or forever altered by terrible injuries. It would reduce pollution. It would improve the quality of our lives. It would make a small dent towards ameliorating climate change.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="34:1-34:194">So, why can’t we make progress on that front? What could we change? What if we took this challenge seriously? City council recently got cut down to 26 people. You only need 14 people to say yes.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="36:1-36:221">I think the reason is we’ve forgotten how to ask. I think we’ve forgotten how to make some noise. I think we’ve forgotten how to get real fucking inconvenient. I think we’ve forgotten how to imagine the future we deserve.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="38:1-38:191">I think if we talk to our neighbours, if we get a little organized, if we start blocking streets during rush hour, if we make a big fucking fuss about it, I think we could make some progress.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="40:1-40:172">All in all, I feel optimistic. This is <em>great</em> news. There is a terrible problem that you can help improve dramatically if you yell at a single person, over and over again.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="42:1-42:43">In this day and age, how wonderful is that?</p>http://okayfail.com/2021/british-columbia-more-yimby-california.html2021-11-17T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:16ZBritish Columbia is YIMBYer than California<h3 data-sourcepos="1:1-1:120">
<a id="comparing-new-dwelling-building-permits-per-capita-per-year-between-select-us-states-and-select-canadian-provinces" class="anchor" href="#comparing-new-dwelling-building-permits-per-capita-per-year-between-select-us-states-and-select-canadian-provinces" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Comparing new dwelling building permits per capita per year between select U.S. states and select Canadian provinces</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="3:1-3:230">Canada is downstream of American culture, and Canadian housing discourse is no different. In the great, fiery, online fights about housing, Californians in particular are over-represented and tend to drive the terms of the debate.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="5:1-5:330">And so, when it comes to our own online twitter housing discourse, many Canadians have noticeably “Californian” terms of reference. Namely, folks tend to adopt a semi-reductive fixation on the supply of private market housing, which is being severely stifled by excessive deference to the interests of incumbent, NIMBY homeowners.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="7:1-7:147">This is fine as far as stylized causal narratives go. But if we’ve adopted the same causal narratives, how do our housing markets actually compare?</p>
<p data-sourcepos="9:1-9:62">In other words, how bad are <em>our</em> NIMBYs, relatively speaking?</p>
<p data-sourcepos="11:1-11:203">On close examination, using new dwelling building permits as a proxy for new housing construction, I find that on average Canadian provinces produce way more housing than California or New York state do:</p>
<p data-sourcepos="13:1-13:174"><a href="/2021/british-columbia-more-yimby-california/files/average-bldg-permits-2011-2020.png" target="_blank"><img src="/2021/british-columbia-more-yimby-california/files/average-bldg-permits-2011-2020.png" alt="Average building permits for new dwellings per year per 1,000 residents in 2011-2020" style="max-width:100%;"></a></p>
<p data-sourcepos="15:1-15:172">(Click <a href="/2021/british-columbia-more-yimby-california/files/comparing-building-permits-per-capita-between-america-canada.phillmv.xlsx">here for a copy of the spreadsheets</a>.)</p>
<p data-sourcepos="17:1-17:191">For the average California YIMBY, the status quo in British Columbia is a <em>success condition</em>: BC on average issues three times more building permits per capita per year than California does.</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="19:1-19:13">
<a id="motivation" class="anchor" href="#motivation" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Motivation</h2>
<p data-sourcepos="21:1-21:489">In 2017, I became somewhat familiar with Canadian housing statistics and academic literature, and one thing I learned while <a href="http://okayfail.com/2018/rent-control-great-security-of-tenure.html">writing about rent control</a> is that every jurisdiction manages to do things differently. As I continued to see American commentators cite Toronto and Vancouver as positive examples worth emulating, I developed a vibe that our housing crisis must have some important qualitative differences, too.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="23:1-23:308">In particular, I was fairly confident that Canadian cities produce a lot more housing, relatively speaking, than their American counterparts. The other day I got into a twitter conversation with <a href="https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/">Jens von Bergmann</a>, and it occurred to me that I could try to sketch this out.</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="25:1-25:13">
<a id="hypothesis" class="anchor" href="#hypothesis" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Hypothesis</h2>
<p data-sourcepos="27:1-27:163">If Canadian cities produce more housing, relatively speaking, than similar American cities, then this should stand out if we compare their construction statistics.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="29:1-29:424">Housing regulations are highly localized and so ideally we’d compare individual cities directly. But when making international comparisons definitions like “what is a city?” can get pretty flimsy. Also, we’re just interested in the general picture. These kinds of differences ought to show up at the sub-regional level, and entities like provinces or U.S. states tend to have more stable definitions than metropolitan areas.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="31:1-31:339">Because provinces and states have different sizes, comparing absolute numbers isn’t particularly meaningful. We’ll need to normalize housing unit construction statistics by each area’s respective population. Also, housing construction rates can vary a lot on any given year, so we’ll have to average our statistics across a bunch of years.</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="33:1-33:14">
<a id="methodology" class="anchor" href="#methodology" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Methodology</h2>
<p data-sourcepos="35:1-35:131">An important caveat is I had to time box this analysis to two hours, which is all the time I had while the baby slept.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-time-spent" id="fnref-time-spent" data-footnote-ref>1</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="37:1-37:264">OK! Let’s find some data. We are interested in the regulatory bottleneck to new housing, so I figured we could use new housing starts, which are easy to get from the CMHC website. All I had to do now was to find a source of new housing starts data for U.S. states.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="39:1-39:498">I searched for variants on “california housing starts statistics” for a good half an hour without finding anything useful. I was surprised there’s no equivalent to our reasonably decent StatCan website. There’s a <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST">FRED table</a> but seemingly no way to break it down by state. There’s the <a href="https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/index.html">New Residential Construction</a> data release, but the only available breakdowns are by region and not by state. Weird!</p>
<p data-sourcepos="41:1-41:432">Surely I’m missing something? American researchers seem to have access to all sorts of interesting surveys and data series on rental prices and residential construction that we lack. Maybe data is only aggregated on a state by state level; maybe you need to know a guy to get it. Either way, I couldn’t find any one-stop-shop portals with historical data on housing starts or completions with state-level (or MSA-level) granularity.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="43:1-43:427">What I did find was the <a href="https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/">Building Permits Survey</a>, which should be a rough proxy for actual building starts.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-building-starts" id="fnref-building-starts" data-footnote-ref>2</a></sup> Poking thru StatCan yielded <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=3410006601">Table 34-10-0066-01 Building permits, by type of structure and type of work (x 1,000)</a> whose definition seems to be roughly equivalent to the American one. Great!</p>
<p data-sourcepos="45:1-45:243">I filtered the StatCan table down to ‘Total residential’ and ‘Number of dwelling units-created’. The Canadian building permits table only went back to 2011, so I arbitrarily decided that 2011-2020 was a good enough time period to average over.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="47:1-47:256">On a whim, I decided to compare the four largest Canadian provinces (Ontario, Québec, British Columbia, Alberta) with the four largest U.S. states (California, Texas, Florida, New York) plus Washington which is sort of like, a mirror-universe BC, why not.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="49:1-49:477">I then got population estimates from <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=1710000501">Table 17-10-0005-01 Population estimates on July 1st, by age and sex</a> and the <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=NYPOP,CAPOP,TXPOP,WAPOP,FLPOP">{NY,CA,TX,WA,FL}POP data series from FRED</a>. By using population figures for each individual year for each given state/province should allow us to account for differences in population growth across different state/provinces.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="51:1-51:403">Finally, I dumped all of these tables into Excel, chopped things around, divided the number of issued permits by the number of people in each state or province, multiplied that number by one thousand, and then finally averaged every year together. You can find <a href="/2021/british-columbia-more-yimby-california/files/comparing-building-permits-per-capita-between-america-canada.phillmv.xlsx">the data here</a>.</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="53:1-53:34">
<a id="concluding-thoughts--questions" class="anchor" href="#concluding-thoughts--questions" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Concluding thoughts & questions</h2>
<h3 data-sourcepos="54:1-54:61">
<a id="are-building-permits-one-to-one-with-newly-built-housing" class="anchor" href="#are-building-permits-one-to-one-with-newly-built-housing" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Are building permits one-to-one with newly built housing?</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="56:1-56:214">No. Not every building permit turns into a housing start, and not every housing start turns into a housing completion. Actual finished housing units are some large fraction of the number of issued building permits.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="58:1-58:144">It’s entirely possible that for ex. jurisdiction A approves a lot more housing than jurisdiction B but actually builds a smaller fraction of it.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="60:1-60:50">
<a id="what-does-this-say-about-the-housing-shortage" class="anchor" href="#what-does-this-say-about-the-housing-shortage" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>What does this say about the housing shortage?</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="62:1-62:131">The only concrete observation we can make here is that Canadian provinces tend to issue more building permits than American states.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="64:1-64:231">British Columbia may issue three times the permits per capita that California does, but as long as the demand for housing is higher in British Columbia than it is in California, then prices will continue to be out of whack.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-weird" id="fnref-weird" data-footnote-ref>3</a></sup></p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="66:1-66:38">
<a id="what-does-this-say-about-nimbyism" class="anchor" href="#what-does-this-say-about-nimbyism" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>What does this say about NIMBYism?</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="68:1-68:255">That said, I think we can also note that while Canadian jurisdictions may have a NIMBY problem, whatever we do experience here is <em>very different</em> from what our American friends are experiencing. Their situation seems to be a lot worse!<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-familiar-refrain" id="fnref-familiar-refrain" data-footnote-ref>4</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="70:1-70:147">Thanks for reading! You can ping me at phillmv at okayfail.com or <a href="https://twitter.com/phillmv">@phillmv</a> with questions, comments, or corrections.</p>
<section class="footnotes" data-footnotes>
<ol>
<li id="fn-time-spent">
<p data-sourcepos="78:16-78:161">For what it’s worth, I spent two hours gathering the data, two hours making the graph look pretty, and another three hours writing this blog post. <a href="#fnref-time-spent" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-building-starts">
<p data-sourcepos="72:21-72:144">In fact, I later learned that the CMHC’s building starts data builds upon the building permits data. So, it’s all connected. <a href="#fnref-building-starts" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-weird">
<p data-sourcepos="76:11-76:87">That’s kind of weird, though, right? No shade on BC but California is <em>nice</em>. <a href="#fnref-weird" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-familiar-refrain">
<p data-sourcepos="74:22-74:124">Canadians will recognize the familiar refrain; sure, we got problems, but at least we’re not <em>America</em>. <a href="#fnref-familiar-refrain" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>http://okayfail.com/2021/diptheria-tetanus-pertussis-polio-haemophilus-influenza.html2021-10-30T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:16ZDiphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, and Haemophilus influenza<p data-sourcepos="1:1-1:45">The moment had arrived, the needle was ready.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="3:1-3:309">We’d come late to our appointment, and so for a half hour we cooled our heels in an empty examination room. We carefully inspected every article of furniture, peeked inside drawers, and batted at the battered posters hanging from the walls. All the while muffled sobs wafted in from the room adjacent to ours.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="5:1-5:201">Finally, the door swung open, and the doctor, shock of white hair, long past retirement age, enveloped in a breathing helmet, came in. I scooped the boy up, and placed him standing on the padded table.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="7:1-7:281">The doctor briskly, but gently, poked, and prodded, and patted, and measured, and weighed the boy, who protested uselessly as we wiggled him out of his clothes, and held him down against his will. Formalities dispensed with, I held the boy and soothed him, pressing him against me.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="9:1-9:83">Now, I told the boy, as he choked back tears, now, the doctor is going to hurt you.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="11:1-11:257">I extended my finger, and jabbed his meaty, fleshy thigh. The doctor is going to hurt you right <em>here</em>, because he has to give you medicine. You need this medicine to be healthy. It’s not going to hurt for very long, okay? And I will be right here with you.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="13:1-13:23">Then, I counted to ten.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="15:1-15:315">And I thought to myself: to have children is to hurt them. To bring a child into this unkind, uncaring world is an act of violence. First we birth them, then we boss them around, we set boundaries, we deny them their wants, and we give them vaccines. We keep hurting them, well into adulthood, because we love them.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="17:1-17:41">Most of the time, it works out OK though.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="19:1-19:206">As we headed out the door, the receptionist produced from under her desk a vast cache of stickers, shiny and sparkly, strategically held back for this purpose, and briefly he was very happy that we visited.</p>http://okayfail.com/2020/remote-work-gentrification.html2020-10-26T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:16ZRemote Work Isn't Gentrification<p data-sourcepos="1:1-1:316">Before the pandemic, fully remote work was rare. Now, many large tech companies are embracing remote work — and in tandem announcing that <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/facebook-workers-get-remote-work-option-but-it-could-come-with-a-pay-cut/">compensation will be scaled by geographic location</a>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="3:1-3:279">This can be a bit awkward. Typically, workers in the SF Bay or NY metro region are able to command large wage premiums but now everyone works from home. Intuitively, it seems odd that equivalently experienced or productive workers are paid (sometimes, substantially) differently.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="5:1-5:232">Should tech workers be paid the same across locations? Not everyone thinks so. One disagreement I have seen emerge a few times is centered on the impact of remote work on local housing markets. The argument goes something like this:</p>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="7:1-7:152">
<p data-sourcepos="7:3-7:152">In San Francisco it is common to see well-heeled tech workers buy up houses, drive up markets, and displace people from their historic neighbourhoods.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="9:1-9:155">
<p data-sourcepos="9:3-9:155">As more and more companies take up remote work, more and more people will be earning tech worker wages while living in regions with lower median incomes.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="11:1-11:132">
<p data-sourcepos="11:3-11:132">I feel like these workers will inevitably compete with lower-paid locals for housing, and therefore accelerate their displacement.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="13:1-13:90">
<p data-sourcepos="13:3-13:90">Doesn’t this mean that paying remote workers roughly the same everywhere can be harmful?</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p data-sourcepos="17:1-17:39">Let’s unpack this a little.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-on-a-lark" id="fnref-on-a-lark" data-footnote-ref>1</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="19:1-19:236">In the micro-sense, this is often what gentrification looks like up close. High-income people outcompete low-income people for the same housing units, and thereby displace them to other neighbourhoods, or out of their cities altogether.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="21:1-21:105">But in the macro-sense, the causal mechanism underpinning gentrification is driven by three broad trends:</p>
<ol data-sourcepos="23:1-28:0">
<li data-sourcepos="23:1-24:0">
<p data-sourcepos="23:4-23:147">Higher productivity returns to “superstar” regions due to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration">agglomeration effects</a>.</p>
</li>
<li data-sourcepos="25:1-26:0">
<p data-sourcepos="25:4-25:148">Inadequate regional <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-use_planning">land-use policies</a> and investment patterns for absorbing population growth.</p>
</li>
<li data-sourcepos="27:1-28:0">
<p data-sourcepos="27:4-27:147">Growing global wealth inequality fueling <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/FinancializationHousing.aspx">housing financialization</a>.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p data-sourcepos="29:1-29:271">The first trend is why so many people want to live in nice big cities, since there is so much more opportunity. People are paid more to work in San Francisco et al not because it has a higher cost of living, but because it’s so much easier to hop between comparable jobs.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="31:1-31:348">The second trend is zoning bylaws restricting density, thereby forcing high-income people to compete with low-income people. But it’s simultaneously also a huge underinvestment in public transportation and other public goods, i.e. everyone wants to live near a BART or Caltrain station, or near nice schools, etc, but we don’t build more of them.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="33:1-33:368">Finally, the third trend is that, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/business/economy/a-relentless-rise-in-unequal-wealth.html">in the Piketty sense</a>, Capital’s share of Income is growing faster than Labour’s share of Income, which leads to flush credit markets encouraging over-leveraged investments and private equity firms flush with cash chasing returns, etc.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="35:1-35:461">While individual high-income households sometimes compete directly with low-income households, it’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/single-family-landlords-wall-street/582394/">private equity firms that are buying houses by the thousands</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07352166.2019.1705846">entire apartment buildings by the handful</a> with the express purpose of renovating them and squeezing out low-income tenants.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="37:1-37:150">To bring this back to tech companies and tech workers, your personal impact on your local housing market really will vary according to where you live.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="39:1-39:377">If you live in an economically depressed area – i.e. Pittsburgh, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, and so on, all cities that today have far fewer residents than they used to, and lots of vacant housing to show for it – it’s a net positive for you to earn more and spend more in your local economy as opposed to just competing for the same scarce resources in the SF Bay Area.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="41:1-41:311">Or, you might just live in an area that has OK housing policy and or is able to grow at a rate capable of equitably accommodating the demand they face. In either case, you’re not displacing anyone. Paying people who live in those regions more is a kind of income-redistribution away from the superstar region.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="43:1-43:259">More broadly, however, is the impact that “being paid less” also has. Whenever a worker is underpaid relative to the value they produce for the organization, that surplus value doesn’t disappear: it’s ultimately captured instead by their shareholders.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="45:1-45:247">For many companies, and this is true for every company in the S&P500, their largest shareholders are institutional investors. This extra capital doesn’t sit still: it’s then reinvested and often used to finance real estate trusts and acquisitions.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="47:1-47:196">So in a very real if indirect sense, it is the act of underpaying workers relative to the value they produce that ends up giving firms the excess cash to then go and gentrify their neighbourhoods.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="49:1-49:17">Food for thought!</p>
<section class="footnotes" data-footnotes>
<ol>
<li id="fn-on-a-lark">
<p data-sourcepos="51:15-51:384">In 2017, on a lark, I spent three months researching and writing a <a href="/2018/rent-control-great-security-of-tenure.html">~40 page paper on the nature of rent control</a>. This doesn’t make me an expert, but I think I’ve spent more time reading about land use and real estate development patterns and economics than the average bear. Bears, for one, can hardly read at all. <a href="#fnref-on-a-lark" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>http://okayfail.com/2020/bailout-landlords-social-housing.html2020-04-09T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:16ZBailout Landlords, Get Social Housing<p data-sourcepos="1:1-1:145"><em>A version of this article was published in <a href="https://readpassage.com/protect-tenants-from-covid-19-by-nationalizing-landlords-assets/">Passage</a>.</em></p>
<p data-sourcepos="3:1-3:229">With the economy grinding to a halt due to the social distancing measures and emergency lockdowns imposed in order to fight COVID-19, more than a million of Canadians have lost their jobs and are filing for employment insurance.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="5:1-5:294">This poses a unique danger to tenants. A half century of housing and tax policies that discriminate against tenants has highly stratified who rents and who owns their accommodations by income — as of 2016, the average household income of Canadian homeowners was nearly double that of renters.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="7:1-7:372">Many tenants are now, or soon will be, having to choose between buying groceries and paying rent, as the government’s support programs exclude a great deal of people. Moreover, while many homeowners are being allowed to defer their mortgage payments, tenants have yet to receive any targeted support, other than formal evictions being put on hold in much of the country.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="9:1-9:413">A pause on formal evictions, however, isn’t good enough. Many evictions happen informally, through harassment, intimidation or a simple desire on the tenant’s part to move on and not get into a protracted fight. Landlords as a class aren’t renowned for their charity, and we’ve already begun to hear about tenants being threatened and locked out, including a nurse working 15-hour days to fight COVID-19.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="11:1-11:450">Many people are at real risk of finding themselves homeless during this crisis. This matters even more than usual because, due to decades of inaction, our homeless population is in greater danger due to COVID-19. Our homeless shelters are chronically overcrowded, and it’s impossible to effectively maintain social distancing. As more homeless people test positive for COVID-19, it’s even crueler than usual to be pushing people onto the streets.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="13:1-13:834">This brings us back to landlords. As the rent strike spreads from the residential to the commercial and retail sector, and as the Airbnb short-term rental market has effectively been destroyed by travel restrictions, many landlords are also seeing their income evaporate overnight. Given that in the past few years real estate investors were strongly incentivized to load up on debt and hold over-leveraged bets, many landlords will soon find themselves insolvent and unable to make good on their mortgage payments. Before long, a sufficiently drawn-out rent strike will cascade through the economy and turn into a widespread consumer and commercial debt default. In other words, if things get bad enough for enough people, a short time from now we’ll have a real estate market crash and a financial crisis to compound our trouble.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="15:1-15:662">Those of us watching the overheated real estate markets in Vancouver or Toronto may feel a twinge of schadenfreude. Short-term rental platforms have removed thousands of units from our rental markets, and we’re better off without them. There’s not a lot of sympathy to go around for the Airbnb speculator. Regardless, these are real problems that will prompt the government to act: Eventually, someone is going to end up getting a bailout. The issue for those of us on the left is who, exactly, will be on the receiving end, as modern real estate financing depends on a long chain that stretches from a tenant all the way down to mortgage securities markets.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="17:1-17:495">This crisis presents a unique opportunity. If and when the time to bailout the real estate market comes, we will be presented with a choice in how to use public funding. The default choice is to prop up the mortgage securities market — as we’ve already begun to do — let smaller landlords hang out to dry, and sit back and watch as large, well-capitalized, corporations buy up their properties on the cheap. We’ll indirectly bailout the financial system and allow inequality to worsen.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="19:1-19:59">Instead, we should nationalize landlords’ housing units.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="21:1-21:683">The bailout could work like this: any residential property owner can sell their units in exchange for their accumulated equity plus inflation. The provincial or federal government would assume their debts, and continue housing their tenants, if any. Existing tenants would avoid being evicted during this crisis, and units that are currently empty can be provided to tenants on social housing waiting lists. This would also guarantee the financial system, and allow scores of landlords to avoid fire-sales of their assets. More importantly, this could add thousands of sorely needed affordable social housing units to our housing mix, and begin to correct decades of policy mistakes.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="23:1-23:310">Social housing is an essential part of our social welfare system. Being homeless causes so much instability that it effectively locks you out of both the formal economy and many government services, as well as the labour market income needed to access the vast majority of housing in Canada, which is private.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="25:1-25:247">The government used to understand this conundrum, and in the post-war era we began to significantly invest in the construction of social housing: From the mid-1960s to the mid-90s, social housing accounted for about 10 per cent of all new housing.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="27:1-27:314">That changed in the early-to-mid 1990s with governments at the federal and provincial levels, which rapidly divested and ceased building and supporting social housing. For the last 25 years we’ve been starving the social housing sector, and watched as waiting lists lengthened and rates of homelessness exploded.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="29:1-29:590">Tenants need to be protected from eviction, and to prevent them from going bankrupt by extension we must also help their landlords. But public money ought not go to private profit. By nationalizing the assets of soon-to-be insolvent landlords and Airbnb real estate speculators, we can ameliorate a costly market crash, prevent economic inequality from rapidly worsening, prevent more tenants from becoming homeless, take currently homeless people off the streets by housing them in now-empty short-term rental properties, and restore a crucially needed sector of our social welfare system.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="31:1-31:72">The time to act might come sooner than you think. We should be prepared.</p>http://okayfail.com/2018/rent-control-great-security-of-tenure.html2018-09-26T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:16ZActually, Rent Control is Great: Revisiting Ontario’s Experience, the Supply of Housing, and Security of Tenure<p data-sourcepos="1:1-1:80">This paper is also <a href="/assets/rent-control-great-2018.pdf">available in pdf form</a>.</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="3:1-3:11">
<a id="abstract" class="anchor" href="#abstract" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Abstract</h2>
<p data-sourcepos="5:1-5:702">Rent controls are criticized for acting as a severe disincentive to new and existing rental construction. From 1992 to 2017, the province of Ontario exempted all new buildings from its rent control regime. What was the effect on rental construction in Ontario during that time period? Finding that rental construction continues to be depressed, this paper documents contemporary Canadian housing policy initiatives and investigates the theoretical and empirical record of rent controls in other jurisdictions. This paper then argues that rent controls’ most important aspect is their regulation of the provision of security of tenure – which should be seen as a right of tenants as well as homeowners.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="7:1-7:70"><em>Keywords:</em> rent control, security of tenure, housing, Ontario, Canada</p>
<p data-sourcepos="9:1-9:171">This research was conducted independently during the fall of 2017 and was funded by the author’s personal savings. The author can be reached at phillmv -at- okayfail.com</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="12:1-12:11">
<a id="contents" class="anchor" href="#contents" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Contents</h2>
<ul data-sourcepos="14:1-38:0">
<li data-sourcepos="14:1-14:31"><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="15:1-16:61">
<a href="#rent-control-in-ontario">Rent control in Ontario</a>
<ul data-sourcepos="16:3-16:61">
<li data-sourcepos="16:3-16:61"><a href="#during-the-1970s-and-1980s">During the 1970s and 1980s</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li data-sourcepos="17:1-21:27">
<a href="#revisiting-ontario-s-experience">Revisiting Ontario’s experience</a>
<ul data-sourcepos="18:3-21:27">
<li data-sourcepos="18:3-18:61"><a href="#during-the-1990s-and-2000s">During the 1990s and 2000s</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="19:3-19:63"><a href="#the-rise-of-the-condominium">The rise of the condominium</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="20:3-20:79"><a href="#the-end-of-real-estate-tax-shelters">The end of real estate tax shelters</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="21:3-21:27"><a href="#in-review">In review</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li data-sourcepos="22:1-28:29">
<a href="#a-theoretical-overview">A theoretical overview</a>
<ul data-sourcepos="23:3-28:29">
<li data-sourcepos="23:3-23:61"><a href="#the-many-types-of-controls">The many types of controls</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="24:3-24:125"><a href="#in-a-competitive-market--prices-don-t-increase-arbitrarily">In a competitive market, prices don’t increase arbitrarily</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="25:3-25:95"><a href="#evidence-on-supply-from-other-jurisdictions">Evidence on supply from other jurisdictions</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="26:3-26:121"><a href="#controls-probably-incentivize-tenure-conversions--though">Controls probably incentivize tenure conversions, though</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="27:3-27:71"><a href="#affordability-is-about-the-land">Affordability is about the land</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="28:3-28:29"><a href="#in-review-1">In review</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li data-sourcepos="29:1-34:91">
<a href="#the-role-of-security-of-tenure">The role of security of tenure</a>
<ul data-sourcepos="30:3-34:91">
<li data-sourcepos="30:3-30:97"><a href="#rent-control-and-the-prevention-of-precarity">Rent control and the prevention of precarity</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="31:3-31:81"><a href="#a-brief-history-of-housing-in-canada">A brief history of housing in Canada</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="32:3-32:55"><a href="#tenants-have-rights-too">Tenants have rights too</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="33:3-33:79"><a href="#security-of-tenure-is-a-public-good">Security of tenure is a public good</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="34:3-34:91"><a href="#security-of-tenure-is-good-for-the-public">Security of tenure is good for the public</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li data-sourcepos="35:1-35:29"><a href="#conclusions">Conclusions</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="36:1-36:19"><a href="#tables">Tables</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="37:1-38:0"><a href="#references-and-footnotes">References and footnotes</a></li>
</ul>
<h2 data-sourcepos="39:1-39:15">
<a id="introduction" class="anchor" href="#introduction" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Introduction</h2>
<p data-sourcepos="41:1-41:172">In April 2017, the government of Ontario decided to extend rent control to every rental unit in the province, as opposed to just those in buildings constructed before 1991.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="43:1-43:492">Different jurisdictions have overlapping definitions of “rent control”. What Ontario engages in is described by some academics and regions as a tenancy rent control, or as rent stabilization. It works like this: once a year, a landlord can raise the monthly rent by a provincial guideline pegged to inflation, or inflation plus 3% if their costs have spiked or they made improvements to the unit. Between tenants, landlords are free to price rents at whatever the market will bear.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-ltb-2017" id="fnref-ltb-2017" data-footnote-ref>1</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="45:1-45:163">This prompted a lot of commentary, ranging from benign skepticism<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-mcgrath-skepticism" id="fnref-mcgrath-skepticism" data-footnote-ref>2</a></sup> to vigorous condemnation.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-mcfarland-vigorous" id="fnref-mcfarland-vigorous" data-footnote-ref>3</a></sup> The chorus sounded like this:</p>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="47:1-47:850">
<p data-sourcepos="47:3-47:850">Against all common sense, the province is handing its cities a poisoned chalice: it is textbook economics that price controls sharply reduce the value of new construction.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-gee-2017" id="fnref-gee-2017" data-footnote-ref>4</a></sup> Under rent control, the quantity and quality of available rental units will fall as developers are less incentivized to build or invest in rental properties — all of which exacerbates any price crunch.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-tal-2017" id="fnref-tal-2017" data-footnote-ref>5</a></sup> The fact is, rent control would largely help high-end renters in a high-end market, since most units built after the rent control exemption are condominiums. It’s tough to see how rent control would accomplish much except transferring money from unit owners to their tenants.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-selley" id="fnref-selley" data-footnote-ref>6</a></sup> Instead, the province should be tackling the root of the problem: the supply of new housing units in Toronto and elsewhere is not keeping up with demand.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-thesun" id="fnref-thesun" data-footnote-ref>7</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>
<p data-sourcepos="49:1-49:520">As a casual observer and experienced tenant, these claims seemed a little counter-intuitive. Toronto is currently in the grips of a housing crisis. A speculative real estate bubble has priced out ownership for low- and middle-income people,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-cbc-squeeze" id="fnref-cbc-squeeze" data-footnote-ref>8</a></sup> and it’s easy to find stories about sitting tenants seeing their rents jump by hundreds of dollars.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-cbc-martin" id="fnref-cbc-martin" data-footnote-ref>9</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-tgam-jaafari" id="fnref-tgam-jaafari" data-footnote-ref>10</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-mercer-2017" id="fnref-mercer-2017" data-footnote-ref>11</a></sup> Every time I have looked for housing, the uncertainty of living in an uncontrolled apartment weighed heavily on my mind.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="51:1-51:579">When demand for rental units is high and vacancy rates are low, landlords have a lot of power over their tenants — and all the more if they can increase rents at will. The absence of controls allows the unscrupulous to evict tenants exercising their rights, and the eager to extract more for the same service they provided before. It seemed strange for so many critics to ignore what felt like the real problem at hand: the lack of security of tenure. Could rent controls really be that counterproductive? For that reason, I decided to learn as much as I could about the topic.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="53:1-53:577">This paper explores the mechanics and outcomes of rent control policies. First, I examine the empirical evidence of rent control’s impact on rental housing construction in Toronto and the province of Ontario over the past forty years. Then, I review the economics literature and explore and challenge the theoretical basis for rent controls’ poor reputation. Finally, I examine our shifting understanding of the relationship between tenants and landlords, and the history of Canadian housing policy to argue for the state’s role in ensuring the provision of security of tenure.</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="56:1-56:26">
<a id="rent-control-in-ontario" class="anchor" href="#rent-control-in-ontario" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Rent control in Ontario</h2>
<h3 data-sourcepos="58:1-58:30">
<a id="during-the-1970s-and-1980s" class="anchor" href="#during-the-1970s-and-1980s" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>During the 1970s and 1980s</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="60:1-60:590">When we talk about rental supply, we typically distinguish between the “primary” rental market, where professional landlords operate purpose built rental buildings, and the “secondary” rental market, where individuals rent out their basement apartments or spare condominiums.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-toronto-2006" id="fnref-toronto-2006" data-footnote-ref>12</a></sup> We typically favour primary rentals because professional, full-time landlords are more capable of absorbing maintenance costs and are far likelier to provide long-term accommodation. Condominium units have a tendency to get flipped, and basement apartments are often vacated for the owner’s own use.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="62:1-62:224">We’re blessed that Ontario is a relatively well studied jurisdiction. In a widely cited<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-widely-cited" id="fnref-widely-cited" data-footnote-ref>13</a></sup> paper written in 1988, Lawrence Smith looked at Ontario’s rental market in the aftermath of the province’s rent controls.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="66:1-66:570">According to Smith, the primary rental housing sector has been in a state of crisis for about forty years.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-smith-1983" id="fnref-smith-1983" data-footnote-ref>14</a></sup> Beginning in the 1970s, the construction of new private purpose-built rental buildings collapsed. If in 1969 Ontario had 27,543 new, unassisted rental building starts, by the mid 1980s under 5,000 were being built as private developers left the market.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-smith-1988" id="fnref-smith-1988" data-footnote-ref>15</a></sup> At first their departure was compensated by government assisted housing starts, but before long the provincial and federal governments began to withdraw funding as well.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-toronto-2006" id="fnref-toronto-2006-2" data-footnote-ref>12</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="69:1-69:466">Around the same time primary rentals dried up, new tenant protection legislation was being introduced, and by 1975 rent controls were in effect throughout the province. In the beginning, rents were essentially fixed in nominal terms, which in a high inflation era meant their real values quickly declined. New construction was at first exempted, and then not; only by 1986 were the guidelines changed such that rent adjustments became tied to inflation.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-smith-1988" id="fnref-smith-1988-2" data-footnote-ref>15</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="71:1-71:533">Smith’s technical argument against controls goes something like this: rent control artificially lowers the income that landlords can expect to receive from rental properties. This depresses any motivation investors may have for responding to demand by creating new rental buildings. Meanwhile, lower rent costs relative to ownership encourage more people to stay in the rental market, which creates more demand for fewer units. A control imposed in response to unaffordable rents and low vacancy rates will therefore exacerbate both.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="73:1-73:356">Rent controls don’t just affect new construction, and therefore new tenants; they can have stark effects on existing units as well. Faced with a control where increases in rent grow at a rate slower than the costs of maintaining the property, existing landlords are strongly encouraged to let their properties deteriorate, or convert them to condominiums.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="75:1-75:408">Smith argued that all of the above occurred after the province instituted its 1975 rent controls. He found that real rents and capital values of rental units collapsed, and that Toronto lost 11% of its moderately priced rental housing stock through conversions, demolition, and eviction through renovation. By 1986, vacancy rates were an extremely low 0.1%, but the market was unable to add supply. To quote:</p>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="77:1-77:442">
<p data-sourcepos="77:2-77:442">In a normally functioning, uncontrolled housing market a vacancy rate below the natural (or equilibrium) rate triggers an increase in real rents and real capital values. This in turn stimulates increased expenditures on the existing stock and increased new construction. Rent controls break this connection between low vacancies and large housing expenditures, and thereby impede the market adjustment necessary to satisfy the excess demand.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="79:1-79:4">
<p data-sourcepos="79:2-79:4">…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="81:1-81:296">
<p data-sourcepos="81:2-81:296">The timing and severity of the decline in rental housing starts, especially in government unassisted rental starts, and the contrast with the pattern of single detached, semi-detached and duplex starts suggest rent controls substantially reduced the volume of new rental construction in Ontario.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="83:1-83:225">
<p data-sourcepos="83:2-83:225">[Other factors such as less favourable demographics, rising interest rates, and increased tenant protection may have exacerbated the decline in rental starts, but rent controls appear to be the primary factor.] <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-smith-1988" id="fnref-smith-1988-3" data-footnote-ref>15</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>
<figure id="fref:fig1">
<a href="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-1986.png"><img src="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-1986.png" title="Ontario Housing Starts by Intended Market 1969-1986" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>
<b>Figure 1.</b> Ontario housing starts by intended market 1969-1986. This graph does not distinguish between private and government assisted rentals: from 1969-1974 private rentals constituted 72% of all starts, but from 1975 onwards they were under half of all rentals.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2 data-sourcepos="92:1-92:34">
<a id="revisiting-ontarios-experience" class="anchor" href="#revisiting-ontarios-experience" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Revisiting Ontario’s experience</h2>
<h3 data-sourcepos="94:1-94:30">
<a id="during-the-1990s-and-2000s" class="anchor" href="#during-the-1990s-and-2000s" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>During the 1990s and 2000s</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="96:1-96:149">Let’s take this for granted, then. Rent controls appear to be the primary factor. Smith’s paper was published some time ago. What has happened since?</p>
<p data-sourcepos="98:1-98:572">In 1992, the New Democratic government’s Rent Control Act limited the kind of capital expenditures landlords could recover via rent increases and once again exempted new rental housing from rent control for a period of 5 years.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-miron-1995" id="fnref-miron-1995" data-footnote-ref>16</a></sup> In 1998, the Progressive Conservative government initiated the most dramatic change since their introduction: capital expenditures could now be fully recovered, vacancy decontrol<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-vacancy-decontrol" id="fnref-vacancy-decontrol" data-footnote-ref>17</a></sup> was introduced for existing units, and rents in new buildings were permanently deregulated.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-rent-control-city-report" id="fnref-rent-control-city-report" data-footnote-ref>18</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-smith-2003" id="fnref-smith-2003" data-footnote-ref>19</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="102:1-102:294">This means that for over twenty years<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-rta-2006" id="fnref-rta-2006" data-footnote-ref>20</a></sup> tenants have lived in a regime where new construction lacked any kind of rent control. If rent controls by themselves are the main disincentive acting on the volume of new rental construction, how do we expect the market to have responded since?</p>
<p data-sourcepos="106:1-106:288">Any recent resident of Toronto can attest to a rapid pace of new construction. My assumption was that, starting from 1998, we should see a slow but steady increase in the rate of construction in new rental buildings and that they should eventually reach levels similar to those pre-1975.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="108:1-108:156">Compiling data provided by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), I was able to extend <a href="#fref:fig1">Figure 1</a> up to the present day:</p>
<figure id="fref:fig2">
<a href="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-2016.png"><img src="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-2016.png" title="Ontario Housing Starts by Intended Market 1969-2016" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>
<b>Figure 2.</b> Ontario housing starts by intended market 1969-2016. Data from 1987 onwards is restricted to areas with over 10,000 people, and therefore undercounts total starts.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="117:1-117:300">During the 1969-1974 pre-rent control period for which we have data, there were on average 32,704 unassisted rental starts per year, or about 30% of total production. From 2009 to 2016, a period without any rent controls, Ontario averaged 5,147 new rental unit starts, or a mere 10% of total supply.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="119:1-119:356">If rent controls were the primary factor inhibiting new construction today, then surely we’d expect to see the opposite. Yet primary rental starts remain depressed. Opponents of controls argue that developers continued to price in the risk of their reintroduction,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-brescia-2005" id="fnref-brescia-2005" data-footnote-ref>21</a></sup> but judged over the course of almost a generation that argument is wanting.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="121:1-121:542">One downside of Smith’s 1988 study is that it does not control for demographics, interest rates, recessions, etc. Rent controls could have caused record low vacancy rates by inducing higher demand – but 1986 was also when the majority of the baby-boom cohort hit the prime rental occupancy age range of 20-35.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-rental-demographics" id="fnref-rental-demographics" data-footnote-ref>22</a></sup> Adequately controlling for everything is no easy task: reviewing the literature, it’s a bit of an open question whether we possess the empirical data or theoretical capacity to do so properly.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lind-2003-note" id="fnref-lind-2003-note" data-footnote-ref>23</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="127:1-127:317">It’s unsatisfying to merely note that the existing hypothesis doesn’t fit new data. Ideally, we should be able to supply our own causal narrative. Why have developers built fewer units than they did during a period of harsh rent control? For that matter, why aren’t they building them like they used to in the 1960s?</p>
<p data-sourcepos="129:1-129:171">What else could be happening? While researching housing policy and statistics, I was able to identify two other big shifts that significantly impacted our housing supply.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="131:1-131:31">
<a id="the-rise-of-the-condominium" class="anchor" href="#the-rise-of-the-condominium" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>The rise of the condominium</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="134:1-134:270">The first shift happened in 1967, when Ontario legalized condominiums and created a new form of property ownership – thereby substantially altering the economics behind multi-residential buildings. Since then, condominiums have dominated multi-residential construction.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="136:1-136:79">This trend stands out pretty clearly when condominiums are compared to rentals:</p>
<figure id="fref:fig3">
<a href="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-2016%20With%20Condos.png"><img src="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-2016%20With%20Condos.png" title="Ontario Housing Starts by Intended Market and Condos 1969-2016" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>
<b>Figure 3.</b> <a href="#fref:fig2">Figure 2</a>, but distinguishing condos from single, detached and other housing.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="146:1-146:585">On second thought, I wondered whether looking at this data at a regional level might be misleading, since different sub-regional housing markets have differing economic conditions. As you can see from the housing mix in <a href="#fref:fig3">Figure 3</a>, Ontario was and still is aggressively subdividing and sprawling. With an abundance of available freehold land it’s possible that, looking at province-wide data, we might understate the impact of condominiums. How would this look like in an already built-up area where by and large higher density developments are the only option?</p>
<p data-sourcepos="148:1-148:93">For that reason, I dug up and plotted recent and historical data from Toronto:<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-note-digging" id="fnref-note-digging" data-footnote-ref>26</a></sup></p>
<figure id="fref:fig4">
<a href="/img/Toronto%20Housing%20Completions%201981-2016.png"><img src="/img/Toronto%20Housing%20Completions%201981-2016.png" title="City of Toronto Housing Completions by Intended Market 1981-2016" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>
<b>Figure 4.</b> City of Toronto housing completions by intended market 1981-2016. Note that this graph measures completions, as opposed to starts, and is therefore not directly comparable to <a href="#fref:fig3">Figure 3</a>.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="159:1-159:469">Prior to the Condominium Act, apartment buildings could only be rented out or sold in their entirety. Now, for the first time, title could be given to each individual unit, greatly increasing the allowed density of privately owned housing. Condominiums immediately began to crowd out rental building investment: the first condominium in Ontario was originally constructed as a rental and was converted to a condominium soon after the law came into effect.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hanes-2008" id="fnref-hanes-2008" data-footnote-ref>27</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="161:1-161:408">Why is that so? In 2012, Jill Black wrote a great research paper regarding the financing and economics of multi-residential housing development. She explores the incentives property developers act on and the disincentives they suffer as they choose projects to work on, and it’s well worth a read. According to her research, building to rent is riskier and less profitable than building to sell.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-black-2012" id="fnref-black-2012" data-footnote-ref>28</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="163:1-163:481">Developers find building for the ownership market more attractive because with condominium projects construction doesn’t begin until a majority of units are pre-sold to qualified buyers. This early-on cash stream reduces the amount of necessary debt, lowers interest repayment costs, and makes it easier to obtain financing. By the time the condominium units are occupied, the developer has realized their returns and freed up their equity for use in other projects.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-black-2012-2" id="fnref-black-2012-2" data-footnote-ref>29</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="165:1-165:698">In contrast, a rental building doesn’t generate income until it’s completed and therefore it’s harder to assess and demonstrate its financial feasibility. This means more equity is needed to obtain more expensive, CMHC insured, financing – equity which won’t be recouped for years or decades.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-black-2012-2" id="fnref-black-2012-2-2" data-footnote-ref>29</a></sup> Land values, which account for 15-30% of the cost, are thus driven by the more profitable condominium projects.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-pomeroy-2001" id="fnref-pomeroy-2001" data-footnote-ref>30</a></sup> In a way, the development of condominiums in desirable locations can lead to a kind of “Dutch disease”, whereby the more profitable projects support an increase in costs and prices that make other, lower margin, projects unprofitable by comparison.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lind-2003-2" id="fnref-lind-2003-2" data-footnote-ref>31</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="169:1-169:483">Finally, registering as a condominium allows for a more favourable tax treatment, since multi-residential properties are discriminated against by both our sales tax regime<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lampert-2016-note" id="fnref-lampert-2016-note" data-footnote-ref>32</a></sup> and by municipal property tax rates which are set higher than ownership housing.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hswg-2001" id="fnref-hswg-2001" data-footnote-ref>33</a></sup> The average tenant in Ontario pays twice the property tax rate of a homeowner, which for a hypothetical new rental building in Toronto works out to over $200 a month in rent per tenant.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-frpo-2015" id="fnref-frpo-2015" data-footnote-ref>34</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="173:1-173:676">However, condominiums didn’t just change supply incentives. They also changed demand. Ownership has several advantages compared to renting: a homeowner has more control over their surroundings, an easier time accumulating wealth, enjoys tax benefits (which I will soon discuss), and so on. By expanding the options for ownership, condominiums remove the highest income earners from the rental market. As a consequence, “there has been a significant fall in the demand for private renting amongst those able to pay the rents needed to generate new construction of private rented housing” and renting has increasingly become the domain of people with lower incomes.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-crook-1998" id="fnref-crook-1998" data-footnote-ref>36</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="175:1-175:461">All of this conspires to make profit margins in the multi-residential investment market very narrow. What might be a suitable rate of return for an insurance company looking to operate a rental building is often insufficient for a developer to build a new one.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hswg-2001" id="fnref-hswg-2001-2" data-footnote-ref>33</a></sup> Small shifts in financing terms, land values, costs incurred due to delays in the regulatory planning process, and taxation can have a serious impact on the feasibility of a given project.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="177:1-177:205">The notion that condominiums crowded out rental investment is compelling, but by itself doesn’t really exculpate rent controls. What if controls are just enough of a disincentive to shift the equilibrium?</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="179:1-179:39">
<a id="the-end-of-real-estate-tax-shelters" class="anchor" href="#the-end-of-real-estate-tax-shelters" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>The end of real estate tax shelters</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="181:1-181:333">The other significant event occurred in 1972, when the federal government overhauled the income tax system. Seeking to make taxation more equitable, close loopholes and reorient which industries it incentivized,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-budget-1971" id="fnref-budget-1971" data-footnote-ref>37</a></sup> starting in 1972 and throughout the 1970s and 80s, the federal government implemented a series of reforms.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="183:1-183:721">For the first time, the government began to tax capital gains – with the notable exception of the sale of a primary residence. The government changed the tax treatment of losses due to capital cost allowances, the rate at which capital costs can be depreciated, and removed the ability to pool rental buildings and defer the recapture of depreciation upon the sale of a property. It also prevented investors from outside the real estate business from claiming capital cost deductions or offsetting income via rental losses, and it altered how and which “soft” construction costs like architect fees, building permits, etc, can be deducted,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hswg-2001" id="fnref-hswg-2001-3" data-footnote-ref>33</a></sup> amongst other changes.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-note-on-taxes" id="fnref-note-on-taxes" data-footnote-ref>38</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-clayton-1998" id="fnref-clayton-1998" data-footnote-ref>39</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-miron-1995" id="fnref-miron-1995-2" data-footnote-ref>16</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="187:1-187:947">In practical terms, this meant that purpose-built rental buildings became a far less attractive investment class, while homeownership became far more attractive. Taxing all capital gains except primary residences, in addition to the variety of demand and supply side incentives and subsidies being offered at the time, is a considerable enticement for diverting money into homeownership. With regard to rentals, being able to depreciate a building tax-wise at a faster rate than its actual economic depreciation can have a large impact on after-tax returns.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hswg-2001" id="fnref-hswg-2001-4" data-footnote-ref>33</a></sup> Rental buildings become more profitable over time, as inflation and debt repayment lowers ongoing operating costs; prior to these reforms, high-earning professionals could use losses generated by rental properties to offset their higher marginal tax rates, and they could use liberal capital cost allowance rates to defer income tax until they sold their property.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-miron-1995" id="fnref-miron-1995-3" data-footnote-ref>16</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="189:1-189:561">Additionally, in 1991 the Goods and Services Tax was introduced (and later, harmonized in most provinces), which increased the sales tax burden on new construction by almost 70%.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-enemark-2017" id="fnref-enemark-2017" data-footnote-ref>40</a></sup> Whereas before only the building materials used in the construction of a rental building had a sales tax, now the full value of the building was subject to a 7% charge (though, lower today).<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-clayton-1998-2" id="fnref-clayton-1998-2" data-footnote-ref>41</a></sup> Renters don’t pay GST/HST on their rent, which means that developers are stuck with input credits they can’t use, thereby “stranding” tax costs.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lampert-2016" id="fnref-lampert-2016-2" data-footnote-ref>35</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="191:1-191:877">Marion Steele, writing in 1993, argued that these reforms, coupled with contemporary macro economic conditions, incentivized small scale landlording. The 1970s and 1980s featured high inflation and unprecedented housing price booms, which made expected capitals gains “the dominating motivation of investors”. Capital gains, in turn, are more valuable to high-income individuals than they are to corporations, whose marginal tax rates are lower.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-steele-1993" id="fnref-steele-1993" data-footnote-ref>42</a></sup> Before, developers built large scale schemes for their own investment, and smaller schemes for sale to high-income individuals or their syndicates. But now these tax changes prompted developers to leave the industry,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-crook-1998-2" id="fnref-crook-1998-2" data-footnote-ref>43</a></sup> and drew investors to dwelling structures that were easier to sell and whose conversion to ownership tenure was unrestricted: houses, duplexes, etc, and condominium units.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-steele-1993" id="fnref-steele-1993-2" data-footnote-ref>42</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="193:1-193:279">These changes were made with little, if any, regard for their adverse consequences for our housing policy goals,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-clayton-1998" id="fnref-clayton-1998-2" data-footnote-ref>39</a></sup> and given that the “Great Apartment Boom” of the 1960s ended shortly thereafter suggests that the effect of these changes was substantial.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-miron-1995" id="fnref-miron-1995-4" data-footnote-ref>16</a></sup></p>
<figure id="fref:fig5">
<a href="/img/Canada%20Housing%20Starts%201951-2001.png"><img src="/img/Canada%20Housing%20Starts%201951-2001.png" title="Canada Housing Starts by Structure Type 1951-2001" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>
<b>Figure 5.</b> Canada housing starts by structure type 1951-2001. Note that these categories describe physical structures, i.e. "apartment" includes both duplexes, triplexes, etc and the large towers we today find synonymous with condominiums. We built more (almost entirely rental) apartment buildings in 1968 than we built (mostly condominiums) apartment buildings in 2001 (or 2016, for that matter).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="202:1-202:531">Various federal Liberal governments recognized there were consequences from changing the Income Tax Act and tried to do something about it. The Multi-Unit Residential Building incentive (1974-1979, 1981) re-enabled the use of rental investment as a tax shelter. The Assisted Rental Program (1974-1979, 1981) gave subsidized mortgages to developers in exchange for below-market rents. The Canada Rental Supply Program (1981-1984) provided interest-free loans for up to fifteen years. The list goes on.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-goldberg-1985" id="fnref-goldberg-1985" data-footnote-ref>44</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-suttor-2009" id="fnref-suttor-2009" data-footnote-ref>45</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="204:1-204:544">Besides the decline in rental housing starts, we have one other piece of evidence: the United States’ current tax regime as applied to rental buildings is broadly similar to how we did things pre-1972.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-clayton-1998-3" id="fnref-clayton-1998-3" data-footnote-ref>46</a></sup> Though we can’t compare them directly – Canada and the US are very different places – consider the example of Seattle and Vancouver. While Vancouver is experiencing a furious condominium boom, taking up to 60% of housing starts, the vast majority of new units in Seattle are apartment buildings.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-nota-bene" id="fnref-nota-bene" data-footnote-ref>47</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-morales-2017" id="fnref-morales-2017" data-footnote-ref>48</a></sup></p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="208:1-208:13">
<a id="in-review" class="anchor" href="#in-review" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>In review</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="210:1-210:297">Commentators argue that rent controls are harmful because they remove new primary rental supply from the market, and therefore exacerbate the problem of low vacancies. In 1992, the province exempted new construction from rent controls for five years, and in 1998 that exemption was made permanent.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="212:1-212:447">Yet investment in units intended for the rental market continues to be depressed. Instead, I argue that two other concurrent policy changes can better explain this trend. The first was the legalization of condominiums, which shifted the supply and demand incentives in multi-residential buildings and crowded out investment in rental buildings. The second were income and sales tax reforms, which has reduced the profitability of rental buildings.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="214:1-214:417">Of course, there are many other factors and angles we haven’t looked at. We have not controlled for the huge impacts of fluctuating interest rates, demographic trends, land prices, and so on. Tenants are further discriminated by municipal property taxes and exclusionary zoning restrictions. Yet given the timing of these changes, it seems fair to say that rent controls are not the main disincentive operating today.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="216:1-216:344">But if Ontario’s rent controls probably did not impact the supply of new housing, what else can we say about them? How does this evidence fit into the theoretical basis behind most economists’ criticism of rent controls? What evidence do we have from other jurisdictions? What other criticisms are misguided — and which ones are well founded?</p>
<!-- part two -->
<h2 data-sourcepos="221:1-221:25">
<a id="a-theoretical-overview" class="anchor" href="#a-theoretical-overview" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>A theoretical overview</h2>
<h3 data-sourcepos="222:1-222:30">
<a id="the-many-types-of-controls" class="anchor" href="#the-many-types-of-controls" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>The many types of controls</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="224:1-224:220">The point of this paper isn’t to say that price controls are a paragon of virtue, but instead to critically examine the received wisdom: the picture is rather murkier than that shown in in the standard textbook analysis.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="226:1-226:468">One major problem with this discussion is that there are actually many qualitatively different kinds of rent controls, which different regions have experimented with over different periods of time. When designing a control, we can decide when and how prices increase, whether they track inflation or another indicator, whether capital expenditures can be recovered, at what rate vacant units can reset to what the market will bear (if at all), and so on.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-nota-bene-2" id="fnref-nota-bene-2" data-footnote-ref>49</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="230:1-230:546">Richard Arnott, in a widely read paper from 1995, broadly categorizes rent control policy into two distinct phases.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-arnott-original" id="fnref-arnott-original" data-footnote-ref>50</a></sup> The first wave, or generation, of controls were enacted around World War II and they imposed nominal rent freezes tied to individual units. In a planned war economy that lacked much in the way of private housing construction, this made a certain amount of sense; but afterwards most regions dismantled their controls and only New York City (and some European cities) maintained that wartime policy.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-arnott-1995" id="fnref-arnott-1995" data-footnote-ref>51</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="234:1-234:624">The second generation began in the 1970s as rent control ordinances were passed in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and in a variety of towns in California, Massachussetts, New Jersey, New York, etc. The structure of Canadian governance saw these policies accumulate at the provincial level, and during this period ten provinces also enacted rent controls (though most have since abandoned them). These policies “differed significantly from the first-generation rent control programs” and usually allowed automatic increases in rent, the passing through of additional costs, and other like-minded provisions.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-arnott-1995" id="fnref-arnott-1995-2" data-footnote-ref>51</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="236:1-236:618">Separating controls into “hard” and “soft” is not especially useful, though. Hans Lind, writing in 2001, defined five distinct functional types of rent control. In his view, regulations can protect sitting tenants from being charged above-market rents (type A), or from increases in rent unattached to increases in costs (type B). Alternatively, regulations can instead bind to units and prevent landlords anywhere from charging above-market rents (type C), prevent rapid inflation by smoothing increases (type D) or, finally, prevent rents from ever reaching actual market prices (type E).<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-note-on-lind" id="fnref-note-on-lind" data-footnote-ref>52</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lind-2001" id="fnref-lind-2001" data-footnote-ref>53</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="240:1-240:730">The takeaway here is that when we talk about regulations, we have to be specific since their goals, mechanisms and therefore impacts are going to be different. New York City’s rent controls, which Lind identifies as an extreme version of a type E control,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lind-2001" id="fnref-lind-2001-2" data-footnote-ref>53</a></sup> are the most famous and well studied example, and consequently critics are quick to conflate all rent regulation with the kind experienced there.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-widely-cited-2" id="fnref-widely-cited-2" data-footnote-ref>54</a></sup> That tendency is unfortunate, since in doing so they perform a sleight of hand: New York City’s complex and overlapping rent regulations were enacted at different points of time,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-nycrgb-2016-note" id="fnref-nycrgb-2016-note" data-footnote-ref>55</a></sup> and therefore its experience is idiosyncratic and unlikely to be directly applicable to other cities.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="246:1-246:607">Of course, they’re not wrong to criticize nominal rent freezes. Obviously, a control regime that over time lowers real income below that of real expenditures is a <em>bad idea</em>. It transforms rental properties into endless money pits. It’s fine, and likely necessary, to subsidize some aspects of how we produce or provide housing units in order to achieve our policy goals – but it’s unreasonable to expect that subsidy to be provided to the exclusive detriment of individual landlords. If investors wish to transfer their wealth to tenants they don’t need to go through the trouble of erecting a building.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="248:1-248:128">But that’s a false choice. We’re not limited to choosing between an unfettered market and a ruinously restrictive price control.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="250:1-250:62">
<a id="in-a-competitive-market-prices-dont-increase-arbitrarily" class="anchor" href="#in-a-competitive-market-prices-dont-increase-arbitrarily" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>In a competitive market, prices don’t increase arbitrarily</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="252:1-252:554">When economists discuss losses in efficiency, allocation and welfare, they’re comparing the real world with an idealized “perfectly competitive” market where landlords compete to produce homogeneous housing units, there are no externalities, every actor possesses perfect information, and so on. In this view, a landlord faced with increased demand is free to increase prices and profits accordingly. Abnormally high profits, though, attract other potential landlords who by virtue of adding to the supply of apartments will then drive down their prices.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="254:1-254:631">Given a perfect market, any sketch on a napkin will show that if prices are not allowed to rise with demand then new entrants will stay put, supply will not increase, and shortages will follow. However, given perfect competition, the market prices any landlord can fetch will over the long run equal their marginal cost, i.e. the amortized cost of building and operating a housing unit plus the landlord’s opportunity cost. Put another way, in a <em>well functioning market</em> it’s more or less unreasonable to expect that the rents any given landlord is able to extract will grow much faster than costs and inflation.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-arnott-monopoly" id="fnref-arnott-monopoly" data-footnote-ref>58</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="258:1-258:726">The implication here is that while absolute price ceilings can be and are harmful, there is no obvious reason why price <em>smoothing</em> such that increases match but do not exceed costs should have a strong effect on the incentive to create new rental housing.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-arnott-2003-note" id="fnref-arnott-2003-note" data-footnote-ref>59</a></sup> Other economists have reached this conclusion. Writing in 2001, Alastair McFarlane developed an econometric model of rent stabilization and concluded that “because allowing fully flexible base rents permits landlords to capture all of the advantages of a rent growth control, neither the timing nor the density of development will be affected by rent stabilization”, though landlords are incentivized to redevelop sooner than later.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-macfarlane-2001" id="fnref-macfarlane-2001" data-footnote-ref>60</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="262:1-262:458">Trivially, investment in multi-residential buildings is a function of one’s cost of equity, cost of financing and net operating income; developers may invest in a project expecting significant growth in their net operating income, but in a competitive market that is a rather risky assumption. Therefore, even in the absence of rent controls, projects by and large must be cashflow positive given rents available immediately post-construction.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-black-2012-4" id="fnref-black-2012-4" data-footnote-ref>62</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="264:1-264:675">As far as new supply is concerned, we can therefore conceive of a non-harmful rent control: if prices increase with costs and inflation, landlord cashflows should largely be unaffected. It’s easy to see why: a cost-adjusted tenancy rent control primarily impacts only one area of the development process: the initial lease up of an empty building.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-tait-2017" id="fnref-tait-2017" data-footnote-ref>63</a></sup> Given the long-term nature of multi-residential investment, and provided with the ability to adjust for initial mistakes, over the long run the impact on their finances should be reasonable if not minimal – and their business model can be satisfied so long as cashflows keep up with costs and capital expenditures.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="266:1-266:97">Consider GWL Realty Advisors, whose president Paul Finkbeiner was quoted in the <em>Financial Post</em>:</p>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="269:1-269:310">
<p data-sourcepos="269:4-269:310">“We believe there is a strong demand for rental apartments and this property will lease up over time,” Finkbeiner said about his Livmore project, […] “Apartments provide good long-term returns and very low vacancy levels, it’s just one of the best assets classes from a stability point of view.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="271:1-271:5">
<p data-sourcepos="271:3-271:5">…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="273:1-273:354">
<p data-sourcepos="273:3-273:354">GWL seems to think it can work within the new provincial rules. “As a developer, we are building something that will last for 25-50 years that works for tenants,” said Finkbeiner. “We want long-term renters which is also consistent with our investors that are long-term in nature. These buildings go to pay pensions and people’s investments.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="275:1-275:166">
<p data-sourcepos="275:3-275:166">He noted Ontario still allows rents to be raised to market level once a tenant leaves a unit and capital improvements to buildings can also be passed on to tenants.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="277:1-277:210">
<p data-sourcepos="277:3-277:210">“All we want is a fair rent for our apartments, we do not want above guidelines. We have been able to work within rent controls and still deliver a good product for our investors and tenants,”<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-marr-2017" id="fnref-marr-2017" data-footnote-ref>64</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>
<h3 data-sourcepos="279:1-279:47">
<a id="evidence-on-supply-from-other-jurisdictions" class="anchor" href="#evidence-on-supply-from-other-jurisdictions" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Evidence on supply from other jurisdictions</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="281:1-281:288">Recall that Ontario’s current rent control regime pegs rents to inflation, does not control rents between tenants, and allows cost pass through. Lind categorized it as a type B control,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lind-2001" id="fnref-lind-2001-3" data-footnote-ref>53</a></sup> and elsewhere it is variously called a kind of tenancy rent control or rent stabilization.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="283:1-283:359">We saw earlier that though Ontario’s previous rent control regimes may have been harmful, they were unlikely to be the main disincentives acting on supply since 1998, when vacancies were decontrolled and new construction was exempted entirely. Since we need to compare apples-to-apples, what other evidence can we draw for the impacts of type B rent controls?</p>
<p data-sourcepos="285:1-285:576">Consider Manitoba, whose regulation scheme is broadly similar<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-note-on-mb" id="fnref-note-on-mb" data-footnote-ref>65</a></sup> and has regulated rents since roughly 1976. Hugh Grant, writing in 2011, argues that there is no evidence that Manitoba’s rent regulation program had a negative effect on the supply of new, or maintenance of existing, rental properties. Manitoba at the time was experiencing a low vacancy rate, which Grant attributed to a rapid influx of immigration, and a relatively inelastic supply due to large planning-to-completion time lags and uncertainty about future rates of population growth.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-grant-2011" id="fnref-grant-2011" data-footnote-ref>66</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="289:1-289:643">In New Jersey, over one hundred municipalities have enacted their own rent controls. Each city implemented their regulation differently, but by and large they all permit automatic increases, passing on capital improvements, etc; almost half also engage in vacancy decontrol. In 2015, Joshua Ambrosius et al used the 2010 United States Census and compared the regulated cities with unregulated cities. They found that, once they controlled for other factors, New Jersey rent control policies had no statistical impact on rental quality, rental supply, property appreciation or foreclosure rates in the cities that enacted them.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-ambrosius-2015" id="fnref-ambrosius-2015" data-footnote-ref>67</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="291:1-291:346">In fact, tenancy rent controls seem to barely control rents at all. Earlier this year, Graham Haines analyzed Ontario’s rent regulations and developed a model that estimated that “the discounted cumulative income earned by the rent controlled building was between 98.5% and 99.0% of that earned by the non-rent controlled building”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-haines-2017" id="fnref-haines-2017" data-footnote-ref>68</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="293:1-293:426">This finding is corroborated by both the Manitoba and the New Jersey study cited above. In New Jersey, median rents in rent controlled cities were found to be roughly the same as rents in non-controlled cities.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-ambrosius-2015-2" id="fnref-ambrosius-2015-2" data-footnote-ref>69</a></sup> In Manitoba, Grant argues “there is no evidence that rent regulations have restricted rents below what would prevail in a perfectly-competitive market under equilibrium conditions”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-grant-2011-2" id="fnref-grant-2011-2" data-footnote-ref>70</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="295:1-295:896">Though they do not quite confirm to my criteria above, two other studies are worth mentioning. Frank Denton et al, in a 1993 report commissioned by the CMHC, developed an econometric model and conducted an extensive empirical investigation of the impact of rent controls on Canadian housing markets. They concluded that “there is no evidence that controls influence the long-run rate of increase of rents”, nor did they impact housing starts or maintenance though they may lower vacancy rates.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-denton-1993-note" id="fnref-denton-1993-note" data-footnote-ref>71</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-denton-1993" id="fnref-denton-1993" data-footnote-ref>72</a></sup> Celia Lazzarin analyzed rent regulations in British Columbia from 1974 to 1984 for her 1990 master’s thesis. She found that basically there were too many confounding variables (demographics, unemployment, interest and inflation rates, migration, etc) to attribute the declines in Vancouver’s rental supply solely to rent controls.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lazzarin-1990-note" id="fnref-lazzarin-1990-note" data-footnote-ref>73</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lazzarin-1990" id="fnref-lazzarin-1990" data-footnote-ref>74</a></sup></p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="301:1-301:60">
<a id="controls-probably-incentivize-tenure-conversions-though" class="anchor" href="#controls-probably-incentivize-tenure-conversions-though" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Controls probably incentivize tenure conversions, though</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="303:1-303:162">There is one noticeable disadvantage to a tenancy rent control: in tight markets the delta between long term tenant rates and market rates can grow rather large.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="305:1-305:269">Because rents reset between tenants, landlords therefore may try to select for shorter term tenancies (i.e. by preferring students over families) and building smaller units. Lawrence Smith wrote about this in 2003, as well as Richard Arnott.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-smith-2003" id="fnref-smith-2003-2" data-footnote-ref>19</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-arnott-2003" id="fnref-arnott-2003-2" data-footnote-ref>61</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="307:1-307:385">Keeping some rents below market prices has another detrimental effect: it encourages property owners to economically evict their tenants via renovations or to convert to unregulated forms of tenure. At the beginning of this paper, I reviewed Lawrence Smith’s 1988 paper which mentions this for Toronto, and earlier I cited McFarlane (2001). I’ve chosen to highlight three other papers.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="309:1-309:491">Writing in 2017, Martine August documented the financialization of multi family residential properties in Toronto. Aided by the deregulation of capital markets, the end of Canadian social housing provision and historically low interest rates, private equity funds and real estate investment trusts have been buying up aging rental properties – with the explicitly stated purpose of turfing their existing low-income populations in order to renovate and gentrify their units.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-august-2017" id="fnref-august-2017" data-footnote-ref>75</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="311:1-311:295">David Sims, writing in 2007, examined what happened after Massachusetts ended rent controls in 1994. He argues that units in previously controlled areas became 6 to 7 percentage points more likely to be rented out (i.e. that units were kept from the rental market).<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-sims-2007-note" id="fnref-sims-2007-note" data-footnote-ref>76</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-sims-2007" id="fnref-sims-2007" data-footnote-ref>77</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="315:1-315:585">Rebecca Diamond et al, in a paper published in 2017, leveraged a uniquely rich dataset. In 1994, the city of San Francisco extended its rent regulation to buildings with 4 or fewer rental units built before 1980 (about 30% of the rental stock). Combining a private data provider with property records, they were able to follow individual San Francisco tenants occupying regulated and unregulated housing units from 1994 to the present day. They found “that rent-controlled buildings were almost 10 percent more likely to convert to a condominium or a Tenancy in Common”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-diamond-2017" id="fnref-diamond-2017" data-footnote-ref>78</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="317:1-317:450">There is some reason to doubt these numbers prima facie, since converted housing units remain part of the housing stock – and a large percentage of condominiums are rented out to tenants without this necessarily being reflected in most housing data sources (though it seems that Diamond’s dataset mostly controls for this). It may be more accurate to say that primary rental units are being converted to ownership <em>and</em> the secondary rental market.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="319:1-319:507">In addition, California’s Ellis Act creates a relatively permissive environment for conversions. This is in contrast with Massachusetts, where Sims found that “rent decontrol is associated with an 8 percentage point increase in the probability of a unit being a condominium”, presumably since conversion restrictions were lifted alongside controls.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-sims-2007" id="fnref-sims-2007-2" data-footnote-ref>77</a></sup> Nevertheless, it seems fair to conclude that keeping units below market rates exacerbates the incentive towards selling them or redeveloping them.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="321:1-321:677">I think it is important to distinguish between conversion to ownership tenure and “renovictions”. Reading these papers I can’t help but think that the actual problem with condominium conversions has more to do with rising land values and the lack of new supply. That regular, continuous growth in market rates makes conversions attractive is not surprising. San Francisco’s property values have appreciated by 550% over the last thirty years,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-mclaughlin-2016" id="fnref-mclaughlin-2016" data-footnote-ref>79</a></sup> and it rather famously doesn’t build much in the way of new housing despite creating lots of well paid jobs.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-torres-2017" id="fnref-torres-2017" data-footnote-ref>80</a></sup> As seen in Massachusetts, condominium conversions can likely be regulated or disincentivized.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="323:1-323:453">With regard to “renovictions”, I think we can ameliorate these conditions by moderately controlling vacancies, paired with a temporary exemption for new construction. If inter-tenancy rent increases are restricted by 10% or even 5% over inflation we reduce the incentive for high tenancy turnover and smooth rapid price increases across the market,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-august-note" id="fnref-august-note" data-footnote-ref>81</a></sup> while preserving the normal incentive structures and business models previously described.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="327:1-327:35">
<a id="affordability-is-about-the-land" class="anchor" href="#affordability-is-about-the-land" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Affordability is about the land</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="329:1-329:512">The essential observation here is that rent controls cause a decline in rentals not because they are rendered unprofitable or unsustainable, but because they are crowded out by ownership housing and other, more profitable uses. Today’s land prices set the floor on the rent tomorrow’s new supply needs to extract, and so it seems that when we talk about letting rent prices float to market rates, we imply that landlords deserve to capture the growth in value immediately rather than just through capital gains.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="331:1-331:489">To the extent that increases in land values in certain cities are a function of inelastic supply, capital markets and low interest rates, that seems like a strange reason to support a transfer from tenants to landlords. In fact, allowing landlords to arbitrarily increase prices and extract value gains immediately likely incentivizes existing investors to <em>prefer</em> a regime of supply inelasticity – since no new investment or activity is necessary from their behalf to reap the benefits.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="333:1-333:534">Ultimately, our housing crisis is a matter of income: tenants with low incomes have an <em>income</em> problem, not a housing problem.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hswg-final" id="fnref-hswg-final" data-footnote-ref>82</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-brescia-2005-3" id="fnref-brescia-2005-3" data-footnote-ref>83</a></sup> Land prices and other costs, driven by restrictive land use policies and the speculative bubble, have grown faster than tenant incomes and pushed financial recovery rents beyond what most of the rental population can afford or finds reasonable. While land prices continue to grow above inflation or wages, maintaining affordable housing stock will continue to be a challenge.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="335:2-335:479">In the absence of subsidies, the private sector is unlikely to build new rental housing for the low end of the market. Though the profitability of building modest cost ownership housing in large volumes can approach that of smaller quantities of high-end ownership housing, the same is not true for affordable rentals. It costs only slightly less to build an affordable rental, compared to building high end, but the resulting income stream is substantially smaller.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hswg-2001" id="fnref-hswg-2001-5" data-footnote-ref>33</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="337:1-337:708">Relatively affordable privately developed housing, then, occurs because as inflation and mortgage payments decrease carrying costs over time, the rent necessary to carry a rental investment decreases. And, through a process called filtering, new high-end housing creates vacancies lower in the chain as people move on up to occupy new supply. In theory, as the existing housing stock ages and deteriorates, people with higher incomes will tend to prefer newer, higher quality housing.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-brescia-2005-2" id="fnref-brescia-2005-2" data-footnote-ref>84</a></sup> In practice, as housing preferences change and formerly ‘downtrodden’ areas become trendy, the filtering chain can get interrupted as higher-income people renovate and move into formerly lower-income areas.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="339:1-339:13">
<a id="in-review-1" class="anchor" href="#in-review-1" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>In review</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="341:1-341:282">Commentators criticizing rent controls often point to New York City as a negative example, but that city’s experience is rather idiosyncratic. The design and implementation of rent controls varies so much that we must be careful and specific when making comparing different regions.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="343:1-343:585">Price controls are bad in so far that they render the production of goods and services untenable: absent subsidies, a landlord must be able to recoup her investment from the rent she extracts from her tenants. Conversely, as long as landlords can recover increases in their costs over time, their business models should be unaffected. While first generation controls were likely to be as harmful as described, there is no theoretical reason why a well-designed rent control should disincentivize new construction. This outcome is confirmed by several theoretical and empirical studies.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="345:1-345:355">However, a well-designed rent control allows landlords to pass through capital expenditures and somewhat incentivizes renovations, and therefore does not directly help with gentrification. A well-designed rent control does not disincentivize new supply but it doesn’t ease supply inelasticity either – and therefore by itself cannot ensure affordability.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="347:1-347:117">What <em>are</em> rent controls good for, then? That a regulation is relatively neutral does not justify its implementation.</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="349:1-349:33">
<a id="the-role-of-security-of-tenure" class="anchor" href="#the-role-of-security-of-tenure" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>The role of security of tenure</h2>
<h3 data-sourcepos="351:1-351:48">
<a id="rent-control-and-the-prevention-of-precarity" class="anchor" href="#rent-control-and-the-prevention-of-precarity" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Rent control and the prevention of precarity</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="353:1-353:294">The economics literature on rent controls has much to say about efficient allocation, property values, maintenance and the supply and demand for rental housing, but unfortunately economists and other commentators rarely seem to have anything to say about security of tenure.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-jenkins-2009-note" id="fnref-jenkins-2009-note" data-footnote-ref>85</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="357:1-357:100">The omission is glaring. In a 2003 paper reviewing tenancy rent controls, Richard Arnott noted that:</p>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="359:1-359:648">
<p data-sourcepos="359:3-359:648">Almost all economists lead financially secure lives and were raised by parents who emphasized responsibility and self-discipline. They have little or no personal experience with the insecurity that is ever-present in the lives of the less advantaged—those from dysfunctional families, those not raised to middle-class values, and the less able—who tend to live from one paycheck to the next. Not surprisingly, therefore, most economists ignore or underemphasise the importance of security of tenure in rental housing, even though it is consistently second only to affordability on the list of concerns raised by tenant groups.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-arnott-2003-2" id="fnref-arnott-2003-2" data-footnote-ref>87</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>
<p data-sourcepos="361:1-361:573">Security of tenure is the idea that you have the right to occupy your home and be protected from being forced to leave against your will. By way of contrast, a homeowner’s right to security of tenure is usually taken for granted. So long as they’re current on mortgage payments (if any), taxes, etc, a homeowner is protected from involuntary eviction. That security is not absolute, of course: they may be expropriated or rising interest rates may render them unable to afford their home, but by and large “they cannot be forced out at the whim of someone else”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-yee-1989" id="fnref-yee-1989" data-footnote-ref>88</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="363:1-363:565">By default, in most common law jurisdictions tenants do not have this security. They may be denied a renewal of their lease, they may be subject to seizure by landlords who simply dislike them, or they may be ‘economically evicted’ due to arbitrary increases in their rent. Providing tenants with security of tenure (i.e. protection from involuntary or arbitrary eviction) requires that we not only ensure that housing units are well-maintained and safe for inhabitation, but that we also prevent landlords from unduly exercising their economic power over tenants.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="365:1-365:272">Earlier, I examined the theoretical basis for a well-designed rent control, and concluded that it was an ineffective tool for ensuring affordability or preventing gentrification. However, rent regulations do seem to be effective at keeping current tenants in their homes.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="367:1-367:690">For example, consider the case of Massachusetts, which abolished its rent controls in 1994. Four years later, the <em>Economist</em> reported that in Cambridge “nearly 40% of tenants in regulated flats moved out after rent control ended”, and that “decontrolled rents overall jumped by more than 50% between 1994 and 1997”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-economist-1998" id="fnref-economist-1998" data-footnote-ref>89</a></sup> David Sims, writing in 2007 about the same decontrol event, found that “decontrol is associated with a decrease of renter stays of 1.84 years”, which is rather “sizeable when compared to the mean renter stay of 6 years in the sample”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-sims-2007" id="fnref-sims-2007-3" data-footnote-ref>77</a></sup> This is framed as a loss of efficiency in terms of labour mobility, but I’m not sure it’s that cut and dry.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="369:1-369:850">Most striking is the result from Rebecca Diamond et al’s research. They frame rent regulations as a kind of insurance against rent increases whose cost in practice is borne by all tenants, as the restriction in supply causes unregulated or vacant rents to rise more than they would have otherwise. They then found that tenants receiving rent control were up to 20% likelier to remain in their apartments and that “absent rent control essentially all of those incentivized to stay in their apartments would have otherwise moved out of San Francisco”. Diamond et al conclude that the gains in welfare those tenants experience narrowly outweigh the resulting deadweight loss incurred on others, but argue that providing this insurance function directly as a government subsidy or tax credit would be more efficient.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-practical-insurance" id="fnref-practical-insurance" data-footnote-ref>90</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-diamond-2017" id="fnref-diamond-2017-2" data-footnote-ref>78</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="373:1-373:504">Given that the welfare gains for San Francisco alone are measured in the billions of dollars, that could be a sizeable intervention. But why shouldn’t we intervene? After all, we substantially subsidize private ownership. Its relative attractiveness as an investment is the direct result of government policy. The relative scarcity of land via exclusionary zoning is a government policy. Financial liberalization and the coupling of capital markets to home financing was the result of government policy.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="375:1-375:350">Most suggestions for how to improve the affordability of rental buildings involve either direct subsidies or the reinstitution of tax shelters, and the extent to which they are built at all today in Canada would not happen without the direct intervention of a government agency, the CMHC. It’s not like our housing markets exist in a state of nature.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="377:1-377:40">
<a id="a-brief-history-of-housing-in-canada" class="anchor" href="#a-brief-history-of-housing-in-canada" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>A brief history of housing in Canada</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="379:1-379:430">Property rights and the markets they enable exist to the extent they are enforced and protected by the state. When we establish and regulate rights, we typically seek to balance the interests and concerns of everyone involved, and revisit those tradeoffs as our values and goals shift over time. We think our food should be safe to eat, our doctors should be well trained, and that you shouldn’t dump waste anywhere you feel like.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="381:1-381:362">In Canada, it would be difficult to identify a time when we had a completely laissez-faire housing market. Some of our earliest municipal by-laws regulated building standards. First, we sought to improve our health, safety, fire, and construction standards, and later we gradually began to add a host of land use and development regulations.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-laissez" id="fnref-hulchanski-laissez" data-footnote-ref>91</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="383:1-383:494">These regulations led to the elimination of unhealthy, unsafe and poor quality housing in urban areas. If in 1951 almost one out of every ten houses lacked basic plumbing facilities, by 1982 that had dropped to 1.6%.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-brescia-2005-4" id="fnref-brescia-2005-4" data-footnote-ref>92</a></sup> However, our improved housing standards and growing restrictions on land use led to an increase in the cost of its manufacture. As early as 1914, it became apparent that the private market alone was not providing enough low income housing.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-laissez" id="fnref-hulchanski-laissez-2" data-footnote-ref>91</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="385:1-385:532">One intervention begat another. Federal incentives were introduced in 1938 to stimulate the development of low income rental housing, and by 1949 the government began to invest directly in its production.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-laissez" id="fnref-hulchanski-laissez-3" data-footnote-ref>91</a></sup> Buoyed by the post-war economic and population boom, we began to seriously expand our welfare state and, concerned with ensuring “enough rental housing production to nourish the golden goose of urban growth”, from 1965 to 1995 up to 10% of all new housing was some mix of social housing.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-suttor-abridged" id="fnref-suttor-abridged" data-footnote-ref>93</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="387:1-387:444">These interventions were not limited to the poor – quite the opposite. In 1946, the CMHC was established with the aim of increasing home ownership among the broad middle and lower-middle class. Focusing mainly on making amortized mortgages work for house buyers and private investors in rental housing, by the mid-1960s most households obtained at least part of their mortgage loan directly from the federal government.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-bulletin38" id="fnref-hulchanski-bulletin38" data-footnote-ref>94</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="389:1-389:635">In fact, most of the history of the role of Canadian government housing policy is an effort to assist ownership. In 2005 alone, more individual homeowners were helped through mortgage insurance than the number of all social housing units funded since the 1970s. In addition to creating cheaper loans, the federal government also provides subsidies through a variety of tax credits, tax sheltered investment vehicles, and tax exemptions. When the federal government began taxing capital gains it exempted the sale of primary residences, which by 2008 was costing almost $6 billion a year in uncollected revenue.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-bulletin38" id="fnref-hulchanski-bulletin38-2" data-footnote-ref>94</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="391:1-391:487">In so far that our housing policy has targeted the middle class’ standard of living, it has been rather successful. As an investment asset, home ownership confers unique benefits: it provides shelter as well as equity that can be withdrawn later in life. Canadians who pay off their mortgages spend on average only 11% of their income on housing and, by 1999, the average homeowner earned 208% more income, and owned 70 times more wealth, than the average tenant.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-bulletin38" id="fnref-hulchanski-bulletin38-3" data-footnote-ref>94</a></sup></p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="393:1-393:27">
<a id="tenants-have-rights-too" class="anchor" href="#tenants-have-rights-too" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Tenants have rights too</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="395:1-395:401">This is to say, “what kind of living conditions do we want people to enjoy?”, and consequently, “what, exactly, should be the goal of our housing system?” have been considered important questions for over a century. Our answers to these questions have shifted over time. We began by regulating the safety of our housing, and today we significantly subsidize its ownership for those who can afford it.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="397:1-397:620">Similarly, our perception of the nature of the relationship between property owners and tenants has also shifted.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-yorke-2015-note" id="fnref-yorke-2015-note" data-footnote-ref>95</a></sup> Under common law, which concerned itself with a leaseholder’s (agricultural) relationship to the land, a landlord was under no statutory requirement to maintain the premises or conduct any repairs. Nor were there any limits on their power to evict or even seize the property of tenants. A review of the applicable laws in 1968 found that landlords possessed such a disparity of bargaining power that tenants did not have a freedom of contract in any real sense.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-tenant-rights" id="fnref-hulchanski-tenant-rights" data-footnote-ref>96</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="401:1-401:536">For a variety of ethical, legal and economic reasons, it became clear that tenants deserved protection, and that applying antiquated land law principles to the modern urban apartment was totally unsuitable. Gradually the law caught up: Ontario adopted its first residential protection laws in 1970, while the notion that tenants deserve security of tenure was added by 1975. Today, landlords are seen as responsible for providing safe and livable accommodations, and that tenants should be protected from arbitrary evictions.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-yee-1989" id="fnref-yee-1989-2" data-footnote-ref>88</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="403:1-403:638">Often, this is framed as a conflict of self-interests between landlords and tenants, where tenants suffer disproportionate costs when forced to move, and benefit from stability. In a perfect market, the average tenant should be free from arbitrary increases or poorly maintained units due to the emancipating effect of competition. But in practice, that doesn’t seem to describe reality. Given the possibility of economic eviction, the regulation of security of tenure must be accompanied by the regulation of rent.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-1984" id="fnref-hulchanski-1984" data-footnote-ref>98</a></sup> David Hulchanski, writing over thirty years ago, compares rent regulations to consumer protection laws:</p>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="405:1-405:254">
<p data-sourcepos="405:3-405:254">Where the rental market cannot function normally, such as in meeting supply, or when moving costs limit the mobility of consumer rental services […] regulations protect consumers who find themselves in inferior bargaining positions.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hulchanski-1984" id="fnref-hulchanski-1984-2" data-footnote-ref>98</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>
<p data-sourcepos="407:1-407:773">Every regulation imposes tradeoffs, and in that light we can compare the regulation of rent with the regulation of fire safety. Mandating that landlords’ properties satisfy certain minimum fire safety standards also raises costs and therefore diminishes the affordability of housing. Though some are happy to make that macabre argument,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-mcardle-2017-note" id="fnref-mcardle-2017-note" data-footnote-ref>99</a></sup> by and large we’ve decided it’s a cost worth bearing: individual people are rarely in position to demand improved construction standards, and fires impose costs on everyone around it. At some point, we will always be dealing with thresholds and equilibriums, and it is up to society to decide what is or isn’t acceptable: in Ontario, only about 7 people per million die every year in residential fires.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-fire-deaths" id="fnref-fire-deaths" data-footnote-ref>100</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="411:1-411:198">And, much like fire safety, security of tenure doesn’t just benefit individual tenants. The stability provided by security of tenure is the stuff from which well functioning communities are made of.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="413:1-413:39">
<a id="security-of-tenure-is-a-public-good" class="anchor" href="#security-of-tenure-is-a-public-good" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Security of tenure is a public good</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="415:1-415:368">In economics there exists a concept of a “public good”, which broadly applies to any “service” or “thing that people derive benefit from” that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Non-excludable means that you can’t prevent people from enjoying it; non-rivalrous means that by enjoying the good you are not depriving other people from doing the same.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-cowen-2007" id="fnref-cowen-2007" data-footnote-ref>102</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="417:1-417:658">The classical examples include clean air, national security, knowledge, and so on. I can’t prevent you from breathing in the same fresh air that I’m enjoying, and when you consume official government statistics you are not depriving me of the same benefit. Public goods aren’t necessarily provided by the state, much the same way that the state provides access to some private goods. The distinction is relevant because the nature of public goods incentivizes people to be jerks and therefore public goods “must be provided for everyone if they are to be provided for anyone, and they must be paid for collectively or they cannot be had at all”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-galea-2016" id="fnref-galea-2016" data-footnote-ref>103</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="419:1-419:462">Though housing itself is a private good, one’s enjoyment of security does not impinge on the security of others. As we’ve seen, security of tenure cannot be provided without a collective investment of some sort since individual tenants rarely possess the bargaining power to afford it themselves. But more importantly, security of tenure provides benefits to the community at large – and also suffers from the free-rider problem that plagues other public goods.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="421:1-421:45">
<a id="security-of-tenure-is-good-for-the-public" class="anchor" href="#security-of-tenure-is-good-for-the-public" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Security of tenure is good for the public</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="423:1-423:442">Our communities consist of both physical infrastructure, like roads and public transit, as well as “human” infrastructure, like community organizations and loose neighbourhood ties. A neighbourhood may be desirable for its proximity to a grocery store – but also for the quality of its schools, the absence of crime and the vitality of its community events. A healthy neighbourhood is one where its residents are looking out for one another.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="425:1-425:389">When landlords raise rents above costs, they are in effect cashing in on new or improved local amenities provided either by the state or the local community itself. The reduction of crime, or the expansion of public transit, readily provide rationales for increasing rents. Creating conditions where tenants may reasonably fear investment in their communities is a rather perverse outcome.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="427:1-427:229">Tenants face substantial hurdles. I recently read Matthew Desmond’s incredible and harrowing book <em>Evicted</em>, in which he followed several low-income renters in the city of Milwaukee over the course of a year. Early on, he writes:</p>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="429:1-429:785">
<p data-sourcepos="429:3-429:785">“The public peace–the sidewalk and street peace–of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.” So wrote Jane Jacobs in <em>The Death and Life of Great American Cities</em>. Jacobs believed that a prerequisite for this type of healthy and engaged community was the presence of people who were simply present, who looked after the neighborhood. She has been proved right: disadvantaged neighborhoods with higher levels of “collective efficacy”–the stuff of loosely linked neighbors who trust one another and share expectations about how to make their community better–have lower crime rates.</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-sourcepos="431:1-431:37">Towards the end of the book, he adds:</p>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="434:1-434:429">
<p data-sourcepos="434:3-434:429">Residential stability begets a kind of psychological stability, which allows people to invest in their home and social relationships. It begets school stability, which increases the chances that children will excel and graduate. And it begets community stability, which encourages neighbours to form strong bonds and take care of their block. But poor families enjoy little of that because they are evicted at such high rates.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="436:1-436:5">
<p data-sourcepos="436:3-436:5">…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote data-sourcepos="438:1-438:535">
<p data-sourcepos="438:3-438:535">Eviction even affects the communities that displaced families leave behind. Neighbors who cooperate with and trust one another can make their streets safer and more prosperous. But that takes time. Efforts to establish local cohesion and community investment are thwarted in neighborhoods with high turnover rates. In this way, eviction can unravel the fabric of a community, helping to ensure that neighbors remain strangers and that their collective capacity to combat crime and promote civic engagement remains untapped.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-desmond" id="fnref-desmond" data-footnote-ref>104</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>
<p data-sourcepos="440:1-440:325">Faced with the unpredictable but certain need to move in the near future, it’s harder to establish deep ties to a neighbourhood. As a result, tenants are routinely discounted or ignored by our political structures,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-mcgrath-2017-note" id="fnref-mcgrath-2017-note" data-footnote-ref>105</a></sup> and face greater hardships accessing necessary social services and economic opportunities.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="444:1-444:622">In 2016, the New Zealand Housing Foundation commissioned Charles Waldegrave et al to undergo a literature review of the “Social and Economic Impacts of Housing Tenure” and the results are rather bleak. Being a homeowner, as opposed to a tenant, means you live longer and are both physically and psychologically healthier. It makes you less likely to retire early due to health reasons and homeowners on average spend less time unemployed. Owners live in neighbourhoods with lower crime rates, and their children are less likely to suffer from depression, and are more likely to graduate from high school.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-waldegrave-2016" id="fnref-waldegrave-2016" data-footnote-ref>107</a></sup></p>
<p data-sourcepos="446:1-446:807">Some of these effects are undoubtedly due to homeowners’ higher levels of income and wealth. Life is much less stressful if you have the financial cushion to weather various misfortunes. However, these effects mostly persist even after controlling for socio-economic status and/or income. Waldegrave et al note that their study is limited, and did not include studies that focused on mortgage and rent stress though “it is acknowledged that unaffordable housing of whatever tenure type will almost certainly lead to negative health and social outcomes”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-waldegrave-2016" id="fnref-waldegrave-2016-2" data-footnote-ref>107</a></sup> A few of the studies they encountered did not find meaningful differences once they accounted for <em>residential stability</em> – and, after income, that instability is arguably the main source of stress differentiating owners from tenants.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="448:1-448:181">In practical terms, it’s hard to avoid the inference that being a tenant is a rather harsh externality that our housing policies impose largely on the poor and the recent immigrant.</p>
<h2 data-sourcepos="450:1-450:14">
<a id="conclusions" class="anchor" href="#conclusions" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Conclusions</h2>
<p data-sourcepos="452:1-452:489">A popular urbanist school of thought posits that our cities are the economic engines of the future. Globalization diminished the importance of physical distance in the manufacturing economy, but the resulting shift to the service economy has magnified the importance of clustering effects and economies of scale provided by greater densities of goods and people – to say nothing about the looming threat of climate change and the environmental unsustainability of our low density suburbs.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="454:1-454:774">In this view, it’s not hard to imagine a near future where the equity requirements of residential ownership (let alone freehold structures) has priced out most people. Back in March 2017, CIBC’s Benjamin Tal wrote that “the GTA market is fast approaching a full-blown affordability crisis” as a surge in demand due to “a notable increase in speculative and flipping activity” is pricing out most people from ownership markets. He argues that therefore municipalities must “rethink the role of rental activity in the region’s housing mix”.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-tal-rent-2017" id="fnref-tal-rent-2017" data-footnote-ref>108</a></sup> Though I am prone to quibble with some of his preferred solutions,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-greenbelt-note" id="fnref-greenbelt-note" data-footnote-ref>109</a></sup> it seems correct to observe that current macro economic conditions are rushing us towards a new era of unobtainable ownership prices.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="458:1-458:619">In 2011, a little under half of the population of the city of Toronto rented their housing,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-census-2011" id="fnref-census-2011" data-footnote-ref>110</a></sup> and the preliminary results from the 2016 census suggest renting is poised for a comeback. Rental housing dominates recent growth and change, and home-ownership is now out of reach for the young and the middle- and low-income.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-suttor-2017" id="fnref-suttor-2017" data-footnote-ref>111</a></sup> It’s become fun for real estate commentators to shrug and joke about life being unfair,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-carrick-note" id="fnref-carrick-note" data-footnote-ref>112</a></sup> but our housing universe and its financing mechanisms aren’t just some random happenstance – they’re the result of decisions and policies we have made over the decades.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="462:1-462:660">Critics do us a disservice by pretending rent controls are about affordability or supply. The best rationale for instituting rent controls is that of ensuring security of tenure, and in an environment where rents are rapidly increasing it becomes necessary to regulate rent. Not only do tenants deserve security of tenure, but they lead healthier, more productive lives in safer, more pleasant communities when residential stability can be taken for granted. Early rent controls were poorly designed; but a regulation that controls the rate of price inflation, while allowing for legitimate cost increases to be recouped, can be both sustainable and equitable.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="464:1-464:530">A close examination of recent construction starts, and policy changes affecting the economics of purpose built rental buildings, reveals that Ontario’s rent regulations are likely not the main disincentive removing supply from our housing markets. The legalization of condominiums in 1967 and the federal government’s overhaul of the Income Tax Act in 1972 (amongst other tax changes) had a big impact on the relative profitability of rental buildings, and are likely the cause of their decline relative to other kinds of housing.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="466:1-466:473">Almost no two rent controls are the same, and one has to be very careful when comparing different cities or regions. There is evidence from other jurisdictions with similar kinds of rent controls to that of Ontario’s current regime that shows a lack of effect on the supply of new housing. Anyone who, when discussing rent controls, does not bring up the problem of security of tenure, or blithely compares regulations from different jurisdictions, may be pulling your leg.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="468:1-468:249">Finally, housing is complicated and our governments routinely intervene and shape its outcomes. They did a great job creating and subsidizing suburbs and middle class ownership, but they are currently failing the poor and people who live in cities.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="470:1-470:409">For better or for worse, renting is the future. Long-term tenants have a legitimate interest in staying in the communities they have made successful – and it’s in society’s interest that they lead stable, successful lives. Tenants do not deserve to be subjected to a tenure regime that significantly disadvantages them socially, economically, and politically compared to the subsidized homeowning population.</p>
<hr>
<h2 data-sourcepos="474:1-474:9">
<a id="tables" class="anchor" href="#tables" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Tables</h2>
<ol data-sourcepos="476:1-479:0">
<li data-sourcepos="476:1-476:87"><a href="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-2016.xlsx">Ontario Housing Starts 1969-2016</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="477:1-477:97"><a href="/img/Toronto%20Housing%20Completions%201981-2016.xlsx">Toronto Housing Completions 1981-2016</a></li>
<li data-sourcepos="478:1-479:0"><a href="/img/Canada%20Housing%20Starts%201951-2001.xlsx">Canada Housing Starts 1951-2001</a></li>
</ol>
<h2 data-sourcepos="480:1-480:27">
<a id="references-and-footnotes" class="anchor" href="#references-and-footnotes" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>References and footnotes</h2>
<!-- % part two -->
<!-- % part three -->
<section class="footnotes" data-footnotes>
<ol>
<li id="fn-ltb-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="482:14-482:252">Landlord and Tenant Board. (2017, May). Brochure: A Guide to the Residential Tenancies Act. Retrieved September 29, 2017, from <a href="http://www.sjto.gov.on.ca/documents/ltb/Brochures/Guide%20to%20RTA%20(English).html">sjto.gov.on.ca</a> <a href="#fnref-ltb-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-mcgrath-skepticism">
<p data-sourcepos="484:24-484:264">McGrath, J. (2017, March 22). Ontario needs a rental rethink, but should tread carefully. Retrieved August 17, 2017, from <a href="https://tvo.org/article/current-affairs/ontario-needs-a-rental-rethink-but-should-tread-carefully">tvo.org</a> <a href="#fnref-mcgrath-skepticism" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-mcfarland-vigorous">
<p data-sourcepos="486:24-486:337">McFarland, J. (2017, April 4) ‘Exact opposite of what is needed’: CIBC slams Ont. rent-control rules. Retrieved August 17, 2017, from <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/toronto/new-ontario-rent-control-rules-exact-opposite-of-what-is-needed-analyst-warns/article34569276/">theglobeandmail.com</a> <a href="#fnref-mcfarland-vigorous" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-gee-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="489:14-489:291">Gee, M. (2017, April 20). Rent control isn’t the solution to Ontario’s housing problem. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/rent-control-isnt-the-solution-to-ontarios-housing-problem/article34753102/">theglobeandmail.com</a> <a href="#fnref-gee-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-gee-2017-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-gee-2017-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-tal-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="491:14-491:208">Tal, B. (2017, April 4). Rent Control—The Wrong Medicine. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from <a href="https://economics.cibccm.com/economicsweb/cds?ID=2595&TYPE=EC_PDF">economics.cibccm.com</a> <a href="#fnref-tal-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-tal-2017-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-tal-2017-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-selley">
<p data-sourcepos="493:12-493:274">Selley, C. (2017, March 21). Chris Selley: Rent control is a bad solution to the wrong problem. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from <a href="http://nationalpost.com/news/toronto/chris-selley-rent-control-is-a-bad-solution-to-the-wrong-problem">nationalpost.com</a> <a href="#fnref-selley" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-thesun">
<p data-sourcepos="495:12-495:254">Lafleur, S., & Filipowicz, J. (2017, April 15). Rent controls wrong answer to housing crisis. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from <a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2017/04/15/rent-controls-wrong-answer-to-housing-crisis">torontosun.com</a> <a href="#fnref-thesun" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-cbc-squeeze">
<p data-sourcepos="497:17-497:253">McGillivray, K. (2017, April 05). Ontario second-worst economy for young people in Canada: report. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/generation-squeeze-ontario-economy-1.4054589">cbc.ca</a> <a href="#fnref-cbc-squeeze" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-cbc-martin">
<p data-sourcepos="499:16-499:266">Martin, S. (2017, February 22). No fixed address: How I became a 32-year-old couch surfer. Retrieved September 29, 2017, from <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/no-fixed-address-how-i-became-a-32-year-old-couch-surfer-1.3985771">cbc.ca</a> <a href="#fnref-cbc-martin" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-tgam-jaafari">
<p data-sourcepos="501:18-501:277">Jaafari, J. D. (2017, April 14). Toronto tenants crushed by rent hike exemptions. Retrieved September 29, 2017, from <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/toronto-tenants-crushed-by-rent-hike-exemptions/article33806825/">theglobeanmail.com</a> <a href="#fnref-tgam-jaafari" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-mercer-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="503:17-503:226">Mercer, G. (2017, May 13). Tenants sound alarm on creeping rents. Retrieved October 31, 2017, from <a href="https://www.therecord.com/news-story/7312772-tenants-sound-alarm-on-creeping-rents/">therecord.com</a> <a href="#fnref-mercer-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-toronto-2006">
<p data-sourcepos="505:18-505:252">City of Toronto (2006) <a href="https://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/social_development_finance__administration/files/pdf/housing_rental.pdf">Rental Housing Supply and Demand Indicators</a>. Toronto City Planning and Policy Research <a href="#fnref-toronto-2006" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-toronto-2006-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-widely-cited">
<p data-sourcepos="64:18-64:220">Not only does it make a frequent appearance in the literature, both the <em>Globe</em>‘s Marcus Gee<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-gee-2017" id="fnref-gee-2017-2" data-footnote-ref>4</a></sup> and CIBC’s Benjamin Tal<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-tal-2017" id="fnref-tal-2017-2" data-footnote-ref>5</a></sup> cited it when writing their rent control skeptic op-eds in 2017. <a href="#fnref-widely-cited" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-smith-1983">
<p data-sourcepos="507:16-507:212">Smith, L. B. (1983). The Crisis in Rental Housing: A Canadian Perspective. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 465(1), p. 3-4, 58-75. doi:10.1177/0002716283465001006 <a href="#fnref-smith-1983" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-smith-1988">
<p data-sourcepos="509:16-509:189">Smith, L. B. (1988). An economic assessment of rent controls: The Ontario experience. The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 1(3), 217-231. doi:10.1007/bf00658918A <a href="#fnref-smith-1988" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-smith-1988-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-smith-1988-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-miron-1995">
<p data-sourcepos="511:16-511:145">Miron, J. R. (1995). Private Rental Housing: The Canadian Experience. Urban Studies, 32(3), 579-604. doi:10.1080/00420989550012988 <a href="#fnref-miron-1995" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-miron-1995-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-miron-1995-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-miron-1995-4" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">4</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-vacancy-decontrol">
<p data-sourcepos="100:23-100:202">In the absence of ‘vacancy control’, rents are allowed to reset to market rates when tenants vacate their dwellings, i.e. the control binds to the tenant and not the dwelling unit. <a href="#fnref-vacancy-decontrol" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-rent-control-city-report">
<p data-sourcepos="515:30-515:260">Staff report for information on Tenant Issues Related to the RTA 1 (Rep. pg 2-3). (2013, October 15). Retrieved August 28, 2017, from <a href="http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2013/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-63467.pdf">toronto.ca</a> <a href="#fnref-rent-control-city-report" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-smith-2003">
<p data-sourcepos="517:16-517:155">Smith, L. B. (2003). Intertenancy Rent Decontrol in Ontario. Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, 29(2), 213. doi:10.2307/3552456 <a href="#fnref-smith-2003" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-smith-2003-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-rta-2006">
<p data-sourcepos="104:14-104:87">Tenant laws were changed again in 2006, but rent controls were unaffected. <a href="#fnref-rta-2006" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-brescia-2005">
<p data-sourcepos="519:18-519:112">Brescia, V. (2005). The Affordability of Housing in Ontario: Trends, Causes, Solutions (p. 31). <a href="#fnref-brescia-2005" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-rental-demographics">
<p data-sourcepos="123:25-123:515">As people age through their lifecycles they occupy different kinds of housing. As we will see later in this paper, Canadian policy is heavily weighted towards homeownership and so the relationship between vacancy rates in Toronto and the corresponding age pyramid in Ontario is rather obvious. Vacancy rates climbed in the 1990s as boomers entered the ownership market, and dipped again in the late 2000s as millennials, the next disproportionately large cohort, became of age.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-canada-2017" id="fnref-canada-2017" data-footnote-ref>24</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-rental-demographics" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lind-2003-note">
<p data-sourcepos="125:20-125:280">Hans Lind, writing in 2003, noted both that the “[Smith (1988)] study is very crude, as there is no control for other factors.” (p. 149) and that useful housing economic models are hard to develop given the required volume of empirical data (p. 151)<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lind-2003" id="fnref-lind-2003" data-footnote-ref>25</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-lind-2003-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-canada-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="521:17-521:233">Government of Canada (2017, May 01). Historical Age Pyramid. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/pyramid/pyramid.cfm?geo1=35&type=1">statcan.gc.ca</a> <a href="#fnref-canada-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lind-2003">
<p data-sourcepos="523:15-523:149">Lind, H. (2003). Rent regulation and new construction: With a focus on Sweden 1995-2001. Swedish Economic Policy Review, (10), 135-167. <a href="#fnref-lind-2003" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-note-digging">
<p data-sourcepos="150:18-150:513">The CMHC’s website only provides convenient access to data back to 1990. For information prior to then, I had to look it up in individual yearly housing statistics publications. However, the yearly publications only began to distinguish starts or completions by intended market starting in 1985 (presumably this data was collected prior to then, but simply not aggregated and published). In order to make the time frame being compared as similar as possible, I relied on a City of Toronto report. <a href="#fnref-note-digging" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-hanes-2008">
<p data-sourcepos="529:16-529:174">Hanes, T. (2008, February 23). Happy 40th. Retrieved September 18, 2017, from <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/2008/02/23/happy_40th.html">thestar.com</a> <a href="#fnref-hanes-2008" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-black-2012">
<p data-sourcepos="525:16-525:217">Black, J. (September 2012). The Financing and Economics of Affordable Housing: Development Incentives and Disincentives to Private-Sector Participation (p. 8-9, 20), Cities Centre, University of Toronto <a href="#fnref-black-2012" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-black-2012-2">
<p data-sourcepos="527:18-527:37">Black (2012, p. 8-9) <a href="#fnref-black-2012-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-black-2012-2-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-pomeroy-2001">
<p data-sourcepos="531:18-531:116">Pomeroy, S. (2001, October). Toward a Comprehensive Affordable Housing Strategy for Canada (p. 15). <a href="#fnref-pomeroy-2001" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lind-2003-2">
<p data-sourcepos="167:17-167:451">Discussing housing construction in Stockholm, Hans Lind (2003, p. 159) wrote: “Very few new projects were also started in the suburbs around the year 2000, as production costs had increased faster than the willingness to pay. This can be seen as a kind of Dutch disease, where the increase in factor prices generated by some profitable sectors—the centrally located condominiums—makes other “low-margin” sectors unprofitable.” <a href="#fnref-lind-2003-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lampert-2016-note">
<p data-sourcepos="171:23-171:187">Rental buildings are GST/HST exempt, as opposed to zero-rated – meaning that unlike other businesses they can’t pass on sales tax to final consumers.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lampert-2016" id="fnref-lampert-2016" data-footnote-ref>35</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-lampert-2016-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-hswg-2001">
<p data-sourcepos="535:15-535:179">Housing Supply Working Group. (2001, May) Affordable Rental Housing Supply: The Dynamics of the Market and Recommendations for Encouraging New Supply, p. 9-14, 17-18 <a href="#fnref-hswg-2001" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-hswg-2001-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-hswg-2001-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-hswg-2001-4" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">4</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-hswg-2001-5" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">5</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-frpo-2015">
<p data-sourcepos="537:15-537:129">Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario (2015) Removing Barriers to New Rental Housing in Ontario (p. 18) <a href="#fnref-frpo-2015" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lampert-2016">
<p data-sourcepos="533:18-533:165">Lampert, G. (2016). Encouraging Construction and Retention of Purpose-Built Rental Housing in Canada: Analysis of Federal Tax Policy Options (p. 6). <a href="#fnref-lampert-2016" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-lampert-2016-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-crook-1998">
<p data-sourcepos="539:17-539:152">Crook, T. (1998) The Supply of Private Rented Housing in Canada. Netherlands Journal of of Housing and the Built Environment, 13(3), 339 <a href="#fnref-crook-1998" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-budget-1971">
<p data-sourcepos="541:17-541:262">Benson, E. J. (1971, June 18) Budget speech delivered by the Honourable E. J. Benson Minister of Finance and Member of Parliament for Kingston and The Islands. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.budget.gc.ca/pdfarch/1971-sd-eng.pdf">budget.gc</a> <a href="#fnref-budget-1971" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-note-on-taxes">
<p data-sourcepos="185:19-185:681">It’s easy to understate these reforms because the true scope of the changes is a hard story to tell. There are a good half dozen different tax levers being pulled at different times: depreciation rates were altered, deductions eliminated, investment rules were changed and so on in 1972, 1974, 1978, 1981, 1986, etc. To compensate for these changes, the federal government introduced a variety of subsidies, like the Multiple Unit Residential Building in 1974, the Assisted Rental Program in 1975, etc, etc. If you want to go deep on these topics, see Clayton (1998), Housing Supply Working Group (2001), and Miron (1995), among many others cited in this article. <a href="#fnref-note-on-taxes" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-clayton-1998">
<p data-sourcepos="543:18-543:262">Clayton, F. (1998, November) Economic Impact of Federal Tax Legislation on the Rental Housing Market in Canada (p. i, 9-12) Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations - Fédération Canadienne des Associations de Propriétaires Immobiliers <a href="#fnref-clayton-1998" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-clayton-1998-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-enemark-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="545:18-545:225">Enemark, T. (2017, July 06). Fastest Way to More Rental Housing? Tax Changes. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/07/06/Tax-Changes-More-Rental-Housing/">thetyee.ca</a> <a href="#fnref-enemark-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-clayton-1998-2">
<p data-sourcepos="555:20-555:46">Clayton (1998, p. 9, 32-33) <a href="#fnref-clayton-1998-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-steele-1993">
<p data-sourcepos="547:17-547:164">Steele, M. (1993) Conversions, Condominiums and Capital Gains: The Transformation of the Ontario Rental Housing Market. Urban Studies 30(1), 103-126 <a href="#fnref-steele-1993" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-steele-1993-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-crook-1998-2">
<p data-sourcepos="549:19-549:42">Crook (1998, p. 335-336) <a href="#fnref-crook-1998-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-goldberg-1985">
<p data-sourcepos="551:19-551:229">Goldberg, M. A., & Mark, J. H. (1985). The Roles of Government in Housing Policy A Canadian Perspective and Overview. Journal of the American Planning Association, 51(1), 35-36. doi:10.1080/01944368508976798 <a href="#fnref-goldberg-1985" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-suttor-2009">
<p data-sourcepos="553:17-553:166">Suttor, G. (2009). Rental Paths from Postwar to Present: Canada Compared (p. 39-40, Research Paper 218). Toronto: Cities Centre University of Toronto. <a href="#fnref-suttor-2009" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-clayton-1998-3">
<p data-sourcepos="558:20-558:44">Clayton (1998, p. 14, 28) <a href="#fnref-clayton-1998-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-nota-bene">
<p data-sourcepos="206:16-206:197">Ah ha, you say, but rent controls are <em>illegal</em> in Washington State. Yet condominiums don’t get built because of prohibitive building standards. It’s complicated and hard to compare! <a href="#fnref-nota-bene" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-morales-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="560:18-560:273">Morales, M. (2017, August 14). Why Seattle Builds Apartments, but Vancouver, BC, Builds Condos. Retrieved September 13, 2017, from <a href="http://www.sightline.org/2017/08/14/why-seattle-builds-apartments-but-vancouver-bc-builds-condos/">sightline.org</a> <a href="#fnref-morales-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-nota-bene-2">
<p data-sourcepos="228:17-228:167">For a more exhaustive treatment of the literature, see Lind (2001) and (2003), Brescia (2005), Jenkins (2009), Grant (2011) and Ambrosius et al (2015)} <a href="#fnref-nota-bene-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-arnott-original">
<p data-sourcepos="232:21-232:290">This distinction between “first” and “second” generation or “hard” and “soft” controls is not original to Arnott; Hulchanski (1984) also refers to them that way and it’s likely that categorization was made contemporaneously when these controls were enacted in the 1970s. <a href="#fnref-arnott-original" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-arnott-1995">
<p data-sourcepos="564:17-564:152">Arnott, R. (1995). Time for Revisionism on Rent Control? Journal of Economic Perspectives,9(1), 100-102, 112-115. doi:10.1257/jep.9.1.99 <a href="#fnref-arnott-1995" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-arnott-1995-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-note-on-lind">
<p data-sourcepos="238:19-238:269">I am not sure that Lind’s categories are especially useful for comparing different regulatory systems, in so far that its abstraction elides too many relevant details. However, it’s great for illustrating the wide variety in intent and implementation. <a href="#fnref-note-on-lind" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lind-2001">
<p data-sourcepos="566:15-566:165">Lind, H. (2001). Rent Regulation: a Conceptual and Comparative Analysis. European Journal of Housing Policy, 1(1), 41-57. doi:10.1080/14616710110036436 <a href="#fnref-lind-2001" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-lind-2001-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-lind-2001-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-widely-cited-2">
<p data-sourcepos="242:20-242:153">For example, both the <em>Globe</em>‘s Marcus Gee<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-gee-2017" id="fnref-gee-2017-3" data-footnote-ref>4</a></sup> and CIBC’s Benjamin Tal<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-tal-2017" id="fnref-tal-2017-3" data-footnote-ref>5</a></sup> cite New York City when writing their op-eds. <a href="#fnref-widely-cited-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-nycrgb-2016-note">
<p data-sourcepos="244:22-244:466">NYC distinguishes between rent <em>controls</em>, which target buildings built before 1947 and continuous tenancy prior to 1971, and rent <em>stabilization</em>, which targets buildings built prior to 1974 with rents under $2,700. Different tenants under different systems have different rights. Rent <em>controls</em> may have been a nominal freeze when they were enacted, but today landlords are entitled to a 7.5% increase per annum.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-nycrgb-2016" id="fnref-nycrgb-2016" data-footnote-ref>56</a></sup> <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-curbed-2017" id="fnref-curbed-2017" data-footnote-ref>57</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-nycrgb-2016-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-nycrgb-2016">
<p data-sourcepos="568:17-568:216">New York City Rent Guidelines Board. (2016, September 23). Rent Control FAQ. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from <a href="http://www.housingnyc.com/html/resources/faq/rentcontrol.html">housingnyc.com</a> <a href="#fnref-nycrgb-2016" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-curbed-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="570:17-570:237">Nonko, E. (2017, August 28). Rent control vs. rent stabilization in NYC, explained. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from <a href="https://ny.curbed.com/2017/8/28/16214506/nyc-apartments-housing-rent-control">ny.curbed.com</a> <a href="#fnref-curbed-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-arnott-monopoly">
<p data-sourcepos="256:21-256:460">Arnott makes the case that housing markets are actually monopolistically competitive since housing structures and preferences are not homogenous, there are substantial asymmetries in information, and transactions costs are non-trivial. Consequently, rents are set higher than their efficient level and the corresponding deadweight loss can be mitigated (Arnott 2003, p. 106). But for our purposes we don’t need to engage with this argument. <a href="#fnref-arnott-monopoly" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-arnott-2003-note">
<p data-sourcepos="260:22-260:168">“The introduction of tenancy rent control has no obviously strong effect on the incentives to undertake rental housing construction.”<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-arnott-2003" id="fnref-arnott-2003" data-footnote-ref>61</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-arnott-2003-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-macfarlane-2001">
<p data-sourcepos="574:21-574:145">Mcfarlane, A. (2001). Rent Stabilization and the Long-Run Supply of Housing. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.283336 <a href="#fnref-macfarlane-2001" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-arnott-2003">
<p data-sourcepos="572:17-572:96">Arnott, R (2003). Tenancy Rent Control. Swedish Economic Policy Review, (10), 98 <a href="#fnref-arnott-2003" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-arnott-2003-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-black-2012-4">
<p data-sourcepos="576:18-576:216">Black, J. (September 2012). The Financing and Economics of Affordable Housing: Development Incentives and Disincentives to Private-Sector Participation (p. 8-12), Cities Centre, University of Toronto <a href="#fnref-black-2012-4" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-tait-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="578:15-578:274">Tait, S. (2017, April 30). Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan & Purpose-Built Rental Development. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ontarios-fair-housing-plan-purpose-built-rental-development-sean-tait/">linkedin.com</a> <a href="#fnref-tait-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-marr-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="580:15-580:382">Marr, G. (2017, July 18). Rent controls, no worries. Developer unveils major apartment complex in downtown Toronto. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from <a href="http://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/property-post/one-of-the-best-assets-classes-major-landlord-expects-rental-apartment-demand-to-remain-strong-despite-rent-controls">business.financialpost.com</a> <a href="#fnref-marr-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-note-on-mb">
<p data-sourcepos="287:16-287:216">Manitoba does not allow the rent in buildings with more than 3 units to be reset on vacancy, but it exempts new buildings for 20 years and has a more generous cost pass through provision. Grant (2011)} <a href="#fnref-note-on-mb" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-grant-2011">
<p data-sourcepos="582:16-582:187">Grant, H. (2011, January 31). An Analysis of Manitoba’s Rent Regulation Program and the Impact on the Rental Housing Market. Manitoba Family Services and Consumer Affairs <a href="#fnref-grant-2011" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-ambrosius-2015">
<p data-sourcepos="584:20-584:329">Ambrosius, J. D., Gilderbloom, J. I., Steele, W. J., Meares, W. L., & Keating, D. (2015). Forty years of rent control: Reexamining New Jersey’s moderate local policies after the great recession. Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, 49, 121-133. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2015.08.001 <a href="#fnref-ambrosius-2015" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-haines-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="586:17-586:195">Haines, G. (2017, April 28). Making Cents of Ontario’s Rent Regulation: Assessing the Financial Impact of Rent Control and Developer Incentives. Ryerson City Building Institute. <a href="#fnref-haines-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-ambrosius-2015-2">
<p data-sourcepos="588:22-588:55">Ambrosius et al (2016, p. 129-130) <a href="#fnref-ambrosius-2015-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-grant-2011-2">
<p data-sourcepos="590:18-590:36">Grant (2011, p. 24) <a href="#fnref-grant-2011-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-denton-1993-note">
<p data-sourcepos="297:23-297:272">It’s worth noting that this study suffers from the same problems all econometric studies do: the lack of suitable data, the difficulty of adequately modelling housing markets, etc, and the report itself includes many attached comments to that effect. <a href="#fnref-denton-1993-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-denton-1993">
<p data-sourcepos="592:17-592:162">Denton, F. T., Feaver, C. H., Muller R. A., Robb, A. L., Spencer, B. G. (1993). Testing Hypotheses About Rent Control: Final Report. Ottawa: CMHC. <a href="#fnref-denton-1993" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lazzarin-1990-note">
<p data-sourcepos="299:24-299:195">BC’s controls at the time were rather haphazardly designed (increases were set to 8% or 10%, though inflation occasionally exceeded that) hence why I mention it in passing. <a href="#fnref-lazzarin-1990-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lazzarin-1990">
<p data-sourcepos="594:19-594:185">Lazzarin, C. C. (1990). Rent Control and Rent Decontrol in British Columbia: A Case Study of the Vancouver Rental Market, 1974 to 1989. University of British Columbia. <a href="#fnref-lazzarin-1990" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-august-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="513:17-513:205">August, M., Walks, A. (2017) Gentrification, suburban decline, and the financialization of multi-family rental housing: The case of Toronto. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.04.011">http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.04.011</a> <a href="#fnref-august-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-august-2017-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-sims-2007-note">
<p data-sourcepos="313:21-313:215">“My results suggest rent control had little effect on the construction of new housing but did encourage owners to shift units away from rental status and reduced rents substantially.” Sims (2007) <a href="#fnref-sims-2007-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-sims-2007">
<p data-sourcepos="596:15-596:185">Sims, D. P. (2007). Out of control: What can we learn from the end of Massachusetts rent control? Journal of Urban Economics, 61(1), 129-151. doi:10.1016/j.jue.2006.06.004 <a href="#fnref-sims-2007" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-sims-2007-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-sims-2007-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-diamond-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="598:18-598:171">Diamond, R., McQuade, T., & Qian, F. (2017). The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco. <a href="#fnref-diamond-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-diamond-2017-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-mclaughlin-2016">
<p data-sourcepos="600:21-600:245">McLaughlin, R. (2016, August 31). Rich City, Poor City: How Housing Supply Drives Regional Economic Inequality. Retrieved October 31, 2017, from <a href="https://www.trulia.com/blog/trends/rich-city-poor-city/">trulia.com</a> <a href="#fnref-mclaughlin-2016" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-torres-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="602:17-602:279">Torres, B. (2017, April 28). Housing’s tale of two cities: Seattle builds, S.F. lags. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/04/28/san-francisco-seattle-housing-production-pipelines.html">bizjournals.com</a> <a href="#fnref-torres-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-august-note">
<p data-sourcepos="325:18-325:1121">August goes a step further and documents how vacancy decontrol in Ontario was likely designed as a predatory move: <br><br>“In 1998, Residential Equities REIT (ResREIT) was launched, with plans to acquire 27 Ontario properties “to more fully benefit from the anticipated relaxation of rent controls in Ontario, with legislation expected to be proclaimed in force in April 1998”. Quite notably, ResREIT was launched by Dino Chiesa, Assistant Deputy Minister in the Housing Ministry during the time the 1997 Tenant Protection Act (TPA) was conceived. Immediately after, he left public office and started ResREIT to directly profit from new opportunities for rental increases in legislation he helped to craft”<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-august-2017" id="fnref-august-2017-2" data-footnote-ref>75</a></sup><br><br> August’s paper makes a compelling argument for the role of (vacancy controlling) rent controls, paired with condominium conversion restrictions, in acting as a kind of stabilizer that disincentivizes predatory gentrification and preserves existing affordable units. I came across it only after I’d written this paper, hence this footnote and quick mention above. <a href="#fnref-august-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-hswg-final">
<p data-sourcepos="604:16-604:283">Lampert, G., Pomeroy, S., & Bradley, R. (2002). Creating a Positive Climate for Rental Housing Development Through Tax and Mortgage Insurance Reforms: The Second Report of the Housing Supply Working Group (p. 7). Toronto: Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. <a href="#fnref-hswg-final" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-brescia-2005-3">
<p data-sourcepos="606:20-606:41">Brescia (2005, p. 7-8) <a href="#fnref-brescia-2005-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-brescia-2005-2">
<p data-sourcepos="608:20-608:40">Brescia (2005, p. 27) <a href="#fnref-brescia-2005-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-jenkins-2009-note">
<p data-sourcepos="355:24-355:174">For example, in 2009, Blair Jenkins looked at over fifty economics papers and did not see fit to include anything on security of tenure.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-jenkins-2009" id="fnref-jenkins-2009" data-footnote-ref>86</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-jenkins-2009-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-jenkins-2009">
<p data-sourcepos="612:18-612:112">Jenkins, B. (2009, January) Rent Control: Do Economists Agree? Econ Journal Watch, 6(1), 73-112 <a href="#fnref-jenkins-2009" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-arnott-2003-2">
<p data-sourcepos="614:19-614:39">Arnott (2003, p. 111) <a href="#fnref-arnott-2003-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-yee-1989">
<p data-sourcepos="616:14-616:132">Yee, G. (1989) Rationales for Tenant Protection and Security of Tenure, Journal of Law and Social Policy (5), p. 48, 50 <a href="#fnref-yee-1989" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-yee-1989-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-economist-1998">
<p data-sourcepos="618:20-618:151">The morning after. (1998, May 02). Retrieved October 31, 2017, from <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/161526">economist.com</a> <a href="#fnref-economist-1998" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-practical-insurance">
<p data-sourcepos="371:25-371:721">I’m not sure that insurance is practical. Insurance can either be privately mandated or publically provided. A private mandate is a non-starter; a control at least saves us from the cost of an administrative apparatus. A public provision is more appealing. On the one hand, funding it from the population at large would be more progressive than just across tenants. On the other hand every insurance function I’m aware of eventually acts to cap costs and so it’s not clear to me landlords would end up in a significantly different position. That said, a public rent insurance program could be very politically useful: it would re-normalize the routine direct public provision of housing services. <a href="#fnref-practical-insurance" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-hulchanski-laissez">
<p data-sourcepos="620:24-620:47">Hulchanski (1984, p. 27) <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-laissez" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-laissez-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-laissez-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-brescia-2005-4">
<p data-sourcepos="622:20-622:40">Brescia (2005, p. 26) <a href="#fnref-brescia-2005-4" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-suttor-abridged">
<p data-sourcepos="624:21-624:106">Suttor, G. (2016) Canadian Social Housing: Policy Evolution and Program Periods, p. 12 <a href="#fnref-suttor-abridged" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-hulchanski-bulletin38">
<p data-sourcepos="626:27-626:191">Hulchanski, J. D. (2007, September) Canada’s Dual Housing Policy Assisting Owners, Neglecting Renters, University of Toronto Centre for Urban and Community Studies <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-bulletin38" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-bulletin38-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a> <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-bulletin38-3" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">3</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-yorke-2015-note">
<p data-sourcepos="399:21-399:656">I haven’t been able to corroborate this quote but it’s eye popping: <br><br>“The next year, 1969, the Vancouver Tenants Council \textbf{campaigned actively for the right of tenants to vote in civic elections,} for enforcement of the building code, for changes in the Landlord and Tenant Act, for abolition of the Distress Act, and that landlords be compelled to give reasons for evictions.”<br><br> I knew that in both Vancouver and Toronto non-resident property owners get to vote in municipal elections (presumably, since they pay property taxes) but it blew my mind that this wasn’t originally extended to <em>tenants</em>!<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-yorke-2015" id="fnref-yorke-2015" data-footnote-ref>97</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-yorke-2015-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-hulchanski-tenant-rights">
<p data-sourcepos="630:30-630:56">Hulchanski (1984, p. 74-75) <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-tenant-rights" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-yorke-2015">
<p data-sourcepos="628:16-628:241">Yorke, B. (2015, December 10). The Tenant Movement in B.C. from 1968 to 1978. Retrieved September 20, 2017, from <a href="http://themainlander.com/2012/11/09/the-tenant-movement-in-b-c-from-1968-to-1978/">themainlander.com</a> <a href="#fnref-yorke-2015" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-hulchanski-1984">
<p data-sourcepos="632:21-632:221">Hulchanski, J. D. (1984) Market Imperfections and the Role of Rent Regulations in the Residential Rental Market, Toronto: Ontario Commission of Inquiry into Residential Tenancies, Research Study No. 6. <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-1984" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-hulchanski-1984-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-mcardle-2017-note">
<p data-sourcepos="409:24-409:576">The columnist Meghan McArdle, writing about the Grenfell tower tragedy, callously noted: <br><br>“It’s possible that by allowing large residential buildings to operate without sprinkler systems, the British government has prevented untold thousands of people from being driven into homelessness by higher housing costs. […] Hold these possibilities in mind before condemning those who chose to spend government resources on other priorities. Regulatory decisions are never without costs, and sometimes their benefits are invisible.”<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-mcardle-2017" id="fnref-mcardle-2017" data-footnote-ref>101</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-mcardle-2017-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-fire-deaths">
<p data-sourcepos="636:17-636:270">Fire Death Rates. (2016, December). Retrieved September 12, 2017, from <a href="https://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/english/FireMarshal/MediaRelationsandResources/FireStatistics/OntarioFatalities/FireDeathRate/stats\_death\_rate.html">mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca</a> <a href="#fnref-fire-deaths" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-mcardle-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="634:18-634:262">McArdle, M. (2017, June 16). Beware of Blaming Government for London Tower Fire. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-16/beware-of-blaming-government-for-london-tower-fire">bloomberg.com</a> <a href="#fnref-mcardle-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-cowen-2007">
<p data-sourcepos="638:16-638:168">Cowen, T. (2007, December). Public Goods. Retrieved November 02, 2017, from <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicGoods.html">econlib.org</a> <a href="#fnref-cowen-2007" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-galea-2016">
<p data-sourcepos="640:16-640:264">Quote is by John Kenneth Galbraith via Galea, S. (2016, January 10). Public Health as a Public Good | SPH | Boston University. Retrieved November 02, 2017, from <a href="https://www.bu.edu/sph/2016/01/10/public-health-as-a-public-good/">bu.edu</a> <a href="#fnref-galea-2016" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-desmond">
<p data-sourcepos="642:13-642:110">Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Crown Books. p. 70, 296-298. <a href="#fnref-desmond" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-mcgrath-2017-note">
<p data-sourcepos="442:24-442:258">As the columnist John McGrath wryly noted, <br><br>“If you don’t currently own a house in Toronto, preferably a detached one, the city’s political class doesn’t care about you and doesn’t even really want you.”<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-mcgrath-2017" id="fnref-mcgrath-2017" data-footnote-ref>106</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-mcgrath-2017-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-mcgrath-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="644:18-644:317">McGrath, J. (2017, July 14). There’s life outside Toronto, but leaving the city is harder than it used to be. Retrieved September 13, 2017, from <a href="http://tvo.org/article/current-affairs/the-next-ontario/theres-life-outside-toronto-but-leaving-the-city-is-harder-than-it-used-to-be">tvo.org</a> <a href="#fnref-mcgrath-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-waldegrave-2016">
<p data-sourcepos="646:21-646:145">Waldegrave, C., Urbanová, M. (2016, November) Social and Economic Impacts of Housing Tenure. New Zealand Housing Foundation. <a href="#fnref-waldegrave-2016" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a> <a href="#fnref-waldegrave-2016-2" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩<sup class="footnote-ref">2</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-tal-rent-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="648:19-648:232">Tal, B. (2017, March 15). GTA Housing—Rent Must be Part of the Solution. Retrieved September 1, 2017, from <a href="https://economics.cibccm.com/economicsweb/cds?ID=2475&TYPE=EC\_PDF">economics.cibccm.com</a> <a href="#fnref-tal-rent-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-greenbelt-note">
<p data-sourcepos="456:21-456:603">Relaxing intensification targets and eating away at the Greenbelt seems short sighted. It says a lot that in terms of our political economy giving up those goals is easier than rezoning our land and increasing density. However, it will harm us in the long run as we miss out on economic clustering effects and continue to waste good money on unsustainable low density development. While I’m at it, the implicit assumption that the present equilibrium, where land prices are allowed to inflate at arbitrary values, is value neutral or not worth direct policy action is rather suspect. <a href="#fnref-greenbelt-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-census-2011">
<p data-sourcepos="650:17-650:146">Statistics Canada (2017, May 3) Census concepts: A profile of the City of Toronto, Toronto Census 2016 Community Planning Session. <a href="#fnref-census-2011" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-suttor-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="654:17-654:285">Suttor, G., & Leon, S. (2017, October 27). 6 Toronto Rental Housing Highlights in the 2016 Census. Retrieved November 7, 2017, from <a href="http://www.wellesleyinstitute.com/housing/6-toronto-rental-housing-highlights-in-the-2016-census">wellesleyinstitute.com</a> <a href="#fnref-suttor-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-carrick-note">
<p data-sourcepos="460:18-460:192">Rob Carrick, reprinting in <em>The Globe and Mail</em> the quote: “The housing situation in Toronto is never going to be fair, but then again, life isn’t fair either.”<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-carrick-2017" id="fnref-carrick-2017" data-footnote-ref>113</a></sup> <a href="#fnref-carrick-note" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-carrick-2017">
<p data-sourcepos="652:18-652:320">Carrick, R. (2017, November 02). Accept it, your children may grow up to be renters. Retrieved November 02, 2017, from <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/household-finances/accept-it-your-children-may-grow-up-to-be-renters/article36806999/">theglobeandmail.com</a> <a href="#fnref-carrick-2017" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>http://okayfail.com/2017/rent-control-great.html2017-11-13T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:15ZActually, Rent Control Is Great<p data-sourcepos="1:1-1:173"><em>A version of this article was published in the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2017/11/18/rent-controls-promote-stability-mendona-vieira.html">Toronto Star</a></em>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="3:1-3:502">I’ve been renting in Toronto for almost a decade now, and I’ve watched rents in my neighbourhood(s) climb substantially. In that period I have moved eight times, and whenever I have looked for housing the uncertainty of living in an uncontrolled apartment weighed heavily on my mind. That’s why I got excited when, back in April of this year, the government of Ontario announced that it was extending rent control to every dwelling in the province, as opposed to just buildings constructed before 1991.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="5:1-5:384">However, this move prompted a lot of commentary, and the chorus was overwhelmingly negative. Critics argued that, under rent control, the quantity and quality of available rental units will fall as developers are less incentivized to build rental properties, and that the province should instead tackle the root of the problem: the supply of new housing is not keeping up with demand.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="7:1-7:271">To me this was strange, since removing the exemption seemed like such a no-brainer. And, much to my disappointment, few if any critics actually addressed what I felt was the real problem at hand: the lack of security of tenure. This prompted me to look into the research.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="9:1-9:648">Housing insecurity means you have to move all the time, which is expensive, but the real cost is in the instability it inflicts. The constant possibility of eviction, two months’ notice, changes your relationship with the community around you. If your stay is likely to be short, then volunteering at your local school or investing in strong local ties doesn’t make a lot of sense. Quite the opposite: it may well be in your interest that your community not improve or appreciate <em>too much</em>. A brand new transit line or community centre that causes the cost of your home to exceed your resources and forces you to move is no cause for celebration.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="11:1-11:744">Studies have found that being a homeowner, as opposed to a tenant, means you live longer and are both physically and psychologically healthier. It makes you less likely to retire early due to health reasons and homeowners on average spend less time unemployed. Owners live in neighbourhoods with lower crime rates, and their children are less likely to suffer from depression, and are more likely to graduate from high school. These effects persist even after controlling for wealth and income, but tend to go away when we control for residential stability. Since we spend many times more money subsidizing homeownership than we do helping tenants, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we deliberately impose these externalities on renters.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="13:1-13:791">Meanwhile, data shows that Ontario’s rent controls do not actually have the pernicious effect on the supply of new rental housing that is attributed to them. Consider that rent control in new buildings was permanently exempted back in 1998 — yet rental housing starts have failed to recover, and today we build far less rental housing than we did in the 1970s and 1980s. While a strict price control that causes real costs to rise above real incomes is indeed harmful, that does not accurately describe the kind of rent control we have in Ontario. A well designed control, one that allows rents to rise with costs and inflation, does not actually harm new supply, and this is corroborated by researchers that examined controls similar to ours in Manitoba, New Jersey and Massachusetts.</p>
<figure id="fref:fig1">
<a href="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-2016%20With%20Condos.png"><img src="/img/Ontario%20Housing%20Starts%201969-2016%20With%20Condos.png" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>
<b>Figure 1.</b> Ontario housing starts by intended market 1969-2016. Data from 1987 onwards is restricted to areas with over 10,000 people, and therefore undercounts total starts.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="23:1-23:772">A more likely explanation for the squeezing of our primary rental housing supply in recent decades can be found in the legalization of condos, in 1967, and the federal government’s overhaul of our tax system in 1972 and other changes in subsequent years. Prior to the <em>Condominium Act</em> all apartment buildings were rentals, since title could not be sold for individual units. And prior to the revisions of the <em>Income Tax Act</em> rental buildings were attractive tax shelters for high income individuals looking for stable returns on their investment. Since today building to own is less risky and more profitable than building to rent, in practice condominiums have crowded out investment in rental buildings. Their impact is easy to see in Toronto’s housing statistics.</p>
<figure id="fref:fig2">
<a href="/img/Toronto%20Housing%20Completions%201981-2016.png"><img src="/img/Toronto%20Housing%20Completions%201981-2016.png" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>
<b>Figure 2.</b> City of Toronto housing completions by intended market 1981-2016.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="31:1-31:473">Commentators do us a disservice when they pretend rent controls are about affordability or redistribution and ignore tenant concerns over security of tenure. From what I’ve learned it’s way more complicated than that. Today, low- and middle-income people have been priced out of ownership in our city. Why should we be subjected to a tenancy regime that significantly disadvantages us socially, economically and politically compared to the subsidized homeowning population?</p>
<hr data-sourcepos="33:1-34:0">
<p data-sourcepos="35:1-35:191">This essay is actually a condensed version of a longer paper I wrote on the topic. If you’re interested, <a href="/2018/rent-control-great-security-of-tenure.html">click here to read in more detail</a>.</p>http://okayfail.com/2017/saints-of-little-portugal.html2017-07-19T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:16ZThe Saints of Little Portugal<p>
When you next walk through the residential streets of Toronto's west end, take a look at the houses around you. Before long, you'll see the azulejos.
</p>
<p>
Carefully glued by a house's front entrance, azulejos are small sets of ceramic tiles, usually six or twelve per panel. Though each panel typically depicts generic-looking Catholic iconography - various iterations of the Virgin, miscellaneous saints - they're effectively ethnic markers:
</p>
<p>
To see one is to know that the owners are Portuguese immigrants.
</p>
<p>
In May 2015, I canvassed my neighbourhood, from Ossington to Dufferin and from Queen to Dundas, and catalogued every azulejo I found: sixty six of them in total.
</p>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9087.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9087.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9103.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9103.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-brookfield-IMG_9066.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-brookfield-IMG_9066.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-cross-IMG_9163.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-cross-IMG_9163.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9071.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9071.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9074.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9074.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9078.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9078.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9084.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9084.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9085.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-argyle-IMG_9085.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-beaconsfield-IMG_9198.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-beaconsfield-IMG_9198.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-beaconsfield-IMG_9207.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-beaconsfield-IMG_9207.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-beaconsfield-IMG_9209.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-beaconsfield-IMG_9209.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-brookfield-IMG_9064.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-brookfield-IMG_9064.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-collahie-IMG_9158.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-collahie-IMG_9158.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9104.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9104.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9110.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9110.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9118.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9118.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9121.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9121.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-dufferin-IMG_9279.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-dufferin-IMG_9279.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-dufferin-IMG_9283.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-dufferin-IMG_9283.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-dufferin-IMG_9286.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-dufferin-IMG_9286.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-fennings-IMG_9052.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-fennings-IMG_9052.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-fennings-IMG_9053.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-fennings-IMG_9053.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-fennings-IMG_9055.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-fennings-IMG_9055.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-fennings-IMG_9060.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-fennings-IMG_9060.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-foxley-IMG_9125.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-foxley-IMG_9125.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-foxley-IMG_9131.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-foxley-IMG_9131.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-foxley-IMG_9132.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-foxley-IMG_9132.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9215.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9215.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9227.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9227.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9230.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9230.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9238.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9238.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<h2>
<a id="slightly-more-than-what-meets-the-eye" class="anchor" href="#slightly-more-than-what-meets-the-eye" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Slightly more than what meets the eye</h2>
<p>
You can be certain the owners are Portuguese for two reasons.
</p>
<p>First, the azulejo is a distinctively Portuguese art form, though they're also common in Spain and in the former colonies.</p>
<p>Both the word 'azulejo' (which refers to any ceramic tile) and its artistic tradition were introduced by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista">the Moorish invaders</a>, who brought with them their Arabesque decorative ceramics and an obsession with filling empty space.</p>
<p>Adopted first in Spain, in the 1500s they were imported to Portugal. In the 1600s their manufacturing was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delftware">improved by the Dutch</a>, and they became widely used by the 1700s. Many houses in Portugal today are still covered top to bottom, inside and out, in azulejos: they're cheap, they last forever, they're easy to clean, and they keep things cool in the summer.
</p>
<p>Secondly, these azulejos feature Portuguese saints.</p>
<p>If to glance at an azulejo is to have a suspicion, then to see the tortured face of Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres (Lord Holy Christ of The Miracles) is to know that the owners are, specifically, from the Açores.</p>
<figure>
<a href="/img/azulejos/azulejo-dufferin-IMG_9290.jpg"><img src="/img/azulejos/azulejo-dufferin-IMG_9290-medium.jpg" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>The cult of Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres is over three hundred years old.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I don't quite recall all the theological quirks,<sup id="fnref:az-irreligious"><a href="#fn:az-irreligious" class="footnote">1</a></sup> but, in a nutshell, Catholics love their minor cults.
</p>
<p>You may only worship the Holy Trinity, of course.</p>
<p>But if you're in a jam and need a favour, it's common to pray directly to a holy-adjacent figure that specializes in your troubles. Cults form around specific divine interventions and become embodied by a stable iconography laden with symbolism. Choosing a saint or figure in particular often reflects traditions from your family or region.</p>
<p>Take Nossa Senhora de Fátima.</p>
<p>In 1917, Our Lady the Virgin Mary appeared<sup id="fnref:az-appeared"><a href="#fn:az-appeared" class="footnote">2</a></sup> to, and hung out with, three little shepherds<sup id="fnref:az-childlabour"><a href="#fn:az-childlabour" class="footnote">3</a></sup> in the village of Fátima. She did this six times over the course of several months and, before she left for good, she gave the shepherds three secrets and performed some miracles. People were so impressed, they built an immense sanctuary right on the spot.</p>
<p>Today, it receives millions of tourists every year. People in need will make pilgrimages and, in penance, crawl on their knees the whole way there.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="168:1-168:150"><a href="/img/azulejos/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9107.jpg"><img src="/img/azulejos/azulejo-dovercourt-IMG_9107-medium.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 2%"></a></p>
<p>I grew up about a ten minute drive from Fátima. I went to school there. I've attended mass both in the cathedral, and outside, during high season, when tens of thousands of pilgrims congregate in the sanctuary grounds. For me personally, it's all extremely normal, a kind of background cosmic religious radiation.<sup id="fnref:az-religiousradiation"><a href="#fn:az-religiousradiation" class="footnote">4</a></sup></p>
<p>
Most Portuguese immigrants to Toronto, though, are not from the mainland — let alone from my region.</p>
<p>Last fall, while en route to work, I noticed that the church down on Argyle and Dovercourt was unusually crowded for a Thursday morning. I stopped an old man and asked him, is this a funeral, a wedding or what? With emotion in his voice, he replied: they brought Our Lady over! and beckoned me to check it out.
</p>
<p>
I parked my bike, and stepped inside the church. The pews were packed with worshippers, and a priest was wrapping up a mass. I spotted her, in the distance: there stood the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Virgen_de_F%C3%A1tima.JPG">pilgrim image</a> of Our Lady of Fátima. I chatted with an old lady who told me she never thought she'd get to see it in the flesh; she seemed very pleased. I later found out that the statue was making a week-long tour of the Greater Toronto Area Portuguese churches.</p>
<p>While Fátima is the most famous... <i>visit</i> by Our Lady,<sup id="fnref:az-visit"><a href="#fn:az-visit" class="footnote">5</a></sup> the Lord works in mysterious ways. Over the centuries every other town has had a holy appearance or become associated with a given saint. Saint Anthony represents both Portugal and Lisbon, and helps with marriages, the poor, and finding things that are lost. Saint Joseph, in turn, is the patron saint of fathers, families and Canada.</p>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9243.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9243.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9247.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9247.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9268.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9268.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9270.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-gladstone-IMG_9270.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-grove-IMG_9153.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-grove-IMG_9153.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8941.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8941.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8945.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8945.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8947.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8947.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8990.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8990.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8993.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8993.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8995.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8995.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8997.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8997.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8999.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8999.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9002.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9002.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9004.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9004.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9006.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9006.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9008.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9008.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9010.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9010.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9012.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9012.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9016.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_9016.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-mackenzie-IMG_9018.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-mackenzie-IMG_9018.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-mackenzie-IMG_9024.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-mackenzie-IMG_9024.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9033.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9033.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9034.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9034.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9037.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9037.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9041.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9041.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9045.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-northcote-IMG_9045.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-rolyat-IMG_9139.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-rolyat-IMG_9139.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-rolyat-IMG_9143.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-rolyat-IMG_9143.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-rolyat-IMG_9147.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-rolyat-IMG_9147.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-stonehouse-IMG_9257.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-stonehouse-IMG_9257.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
<div class="azulejo">
<a href="/2017/saints-of-little-portugal/azulejo-stonehouse-IMG_9261.html"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-stonehouse-IMG_9261.jpg" style="display: inline"></a>
</div>
</section>
<h2>
<a id="stocks-and-flows" class="anchor" href="#stocks-and-flows" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Stocks and flows</h2>
<p>Most Portuguese came to Canada in the 1960s and 1970s,<sup id="fnref:az-trickle"><a href="#fn:az-trickle" class="footnote">6</a></sup> and largely settled in Montreal and Toronto. By the time I was born, my ethnic group consisted of up to one third of the population in Toronto's west-end neighbourhoods.<sup id="fnref:az-hood"><a href="#fn:az-hood" class="footnote">7</a></sup> People fled the subsistence farming, crushing poverty and fascist political repression that at the time was a constant in the home country.</p>
<p>Most first-generation immigrants are from my parents' and grandparents' generation, though, and what used to be a bustling ethnic enclave has since petered out. Between the reduced rate of migration and the unsustainable housing inflation that is fuelling our housing crisis,<sup id="fnref:az-housing"><a href="#fn:az-housing" class="footnote">8</a></sup> the old people who remain are dying or selling out and are being replaced, as far as I can tell, by wealthier "ingleses".</p>
<p>When I first began this project, I was engaging in a kind of proactive nostalgia: I was moving to California for a few months, and I felt sad about missing summer in Toronto. I didn't realize at the time that I was also creating a record of gentrification.</p>
<section class="azulejo-row">
<div class="azulejo-half">
<figure>
<a href="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8945.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_8945.jpg" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>May 2015</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="azulejo-half">
<figure>
<a href="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_6669.2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/img/azulejos/thumb/azulejo-lisgar-IMG_6669.2.jpg" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>May 2017</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</section>
<p>
Cities change, it's how it goes.
</p>
<p>
As I write this, I am being evicted myself from the neighbourhood: my landlords cashed in and sold the house I live in — which is now being converted into luxury rentals. I'm currently looking for housing, but odds are good I won't be able to stick around.
</p>
<p>I've lived in or adjacent to Little Portugal for about seven years now, and for a long time I got to have it both ways: I was both gentrified and gentrifier. On the one hand, I frequented the bakeries, the bbq shops and rather enjoyed doing all of my shopping without speaking English.<sup id="fnref:az-noenglish"><a href="#fn:az-noenglish" class="footnote">9</a></sup> On the other hand, I also got to live in what was hipster-central and hang out at all the nice new bars and restaurants.</p>
<p>I'm not sure that I have a special right, per se, to stay in this specific neighbourhood. But there's something to be said about all the different amenities<sup id="fnref:az-amenity"><a href="#fn:az-amenity" class="footnote">10</a></sup> and quirks that mostly only people like me can enjoy, and that will vanish without enough people like me to support it.</p>
<p>Put another way: enjoy it while it lasts!</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:az-irreligious">
<p>At the end of every year, the priest would come down from the castle (i.e. the parish headquarters) and quiz the kids on their bible lessons. What are the seven deadly sins? What were the three temptations of Christ? When I was thirteen I skipped out on the oral examination to go on summer vacation early, and upon my return I was informed I had <i>flunked Sunday school</i>. My faith was already unsteady, but I decided right then and there that organized religion wasn't my thing. <a href="#fnref:az-irreligious" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-appeared">
<p>Think less "showed up" and more "<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apparition">apparation</a>". <a href="#fnref:az-appeared" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-childlabour">
<p>Think less "picturesque" and more "child labour". The oldest was ten, and this being deep rural Portugal, they were very likely done school forever, if they had any schooling at all. It's hard to overstate how little education people received. By the time I finished highschool, I had more years of formal education than all four of my grandparents put together. <a href="#fnref:az-childlabour" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-religiousradiation">
<p>I worked on this essay for several days before I realized that I'm not immune: I own a tiny, glow in the dark Our Lady of Fátima figurine. It was too tacky not to purchase. <a href="#fnref:az-religiousradiation" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-visit">
<p>You may have heard of many other Our Ladies, including but not limited to: Hope, Mercy, Lourdes, Guadalupe, etc. <i>These all refer to the one and only Virgin Mary</i>, and are either specific titles attributed to her, or are specific locations where she has appeared. I added this footnote because this was apparently not obvious, which is very amusing to me. <a href="#fnref:az-visit" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-trickle">
<p>Before the 1950s, like many other ethnicities and nationalities, the Portuguese were considered to be "undesirable", incapable of adapting to Canadian farming conditions. After 1974, between the end of the dictatorship (which ended the colonial wars and eased material deprivation) and the new Canadian points-based immigration system (which deprioritized unskilled labour) the flow of Portuguese slowed to a trickle. <a href="#fnref:az-trickle" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-hood">
<p>There is a great, illustrative audiotour guide you can <a href="https://izi.travel/en/browse/0cc257b0-7984-4ba7-b9bf-4b9eec52fa65">follow along here</a>.<a href="#fnref:az-hood" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-housing">
<p>I have lots of feelings about this, as you may guess. I've started a group named BetterToronto <a href="http://betterto.ca">and you should check it out</a>. <a href="#fnref:az-housing" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-noenglish">
<p>I've had the following weekend routine for many years now: walk on over to the laundromat, cross the street for lunch at the churrasqueira, fetch bread and a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastel_de_nata">pastel de nata</a> at the bakery, circle around to obtain chouriço and queijo fresco from the butcher. There's only one or two other areas in this city where you can replicate this experience. <a href="#fnref:az-noenglish" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:az-amenity">
<p>"Amenity" I think is a bit loaded; imagine calling it "infrastructure". Immigrant enclaves are actually very important for recent newcomers: when you're fresh off the boat, you depend heavily on the community for jobs, for housing, for social interaction, for learning how to navigate society around you. We don't just lose "quaintness" when an enclave gets eroded away. <a href="#fnref:az-amenity" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>http://okayfail.com/2017/vba-word-excel-hyperlinks.html2017-05-01T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:16ZHow to create relative links in MS Word via MS Excel using Visual Basic<p data-sourcepos="1:1-1:202">I recently had to do a bunch of work in Visual Basic for Applications and wire together a Word document with an Excel spreadsheet. This blog post documents all the things I wish I’d found via googling.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="3:1-3:136">I assume you’re reading this because it came up via a search engine, so I put all the snippets first and my motivating story at the end.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="5:1-5:238">All of the following snippets of code are executed within the context of a Word document. I lightly edited the code and changed some variable and function names, so I make no guarantees that the code will copy and paste in without errors.</p>
<h3 data-sourcepos="7:1-7:71">
<a id="how-to-open-an-excel-document-with-user-input-from-a-word-document" class="anchor" href="#how-to-open-an-excel-document-with-user-input-from-a-word-document" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>How to open an Excel document with user input, from a Word document</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="9:1-9:83">First, make sure you add a reference to Microsoft Excel Objects via the Tools menu.</p>
<pre>
Dim xl As Excel.Application
Dim wkbk As Excel.Workbook
Dim ex_sheet As Excel.Worksheet
Dim t_sheet As Excel.Worksheet
Dim j_sheet As Excel.Worksheet
Set xl = Excel.Application
fileToOpen = xl.GetOpenFilename
If fileToOpen = "False" Then
MsgBox "Sorry, gotta pick a file!"
End
End If
Set wkbk = xl.Workbooks.Open(fileToOpen)
Set ex_sheet = wkbk.Sheets(1)
Set t_sheet = wkbk.Sheets(2)
Set j_sheet = wkbk.Sheets(3)
' do work here
wkbk.Close SaveChanges:=False
</pre>
<h3 data-sourcepos="38:1-38:81">
<a id="how-to-search-through-every-part-of-a-word-document-given-a-wildcard-pattern" class="anchor" href="#how-to-search-through-every-part-of-a-word-document-given-a-wildcard-pattern" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>How to search through every part of a Word document, given a wildcard pattern</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="40:1-40:366">One of the workhorses in Microsoft Office is the concept of a ‘Range’, which represents a subset of the document you’re editing. You execute searches on a Range, which will then ‘select’ the sub-subset of the document you’re interested in. A Word document, as far as I can tell, consists of many ‘Stories’, which stand in for the different sections of the document.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="42:1-42:259">In order to search through an <em>entire</em> document (i.e. main body, headers, footnotes, etc), we must iterate through the Range that represents each ‘Story’. Also, a Story may contain subranges. I found the original source of this code through VBA documentation.</p>
<pre>
' provide this function with a Word document, and an Excel Worksheet
' you can pass down to your 'DoTheWorkWeWant' sub function.
' in our case this will be the 'AddHyperlinkToARange' function from the next
' code block
Function SearchDocument(curdoc As Document, ex_sheet As Excel.Worksheet)
Dim count As Integer
Dim mypattern As String
Dim sRange As Range
count = 0
mypattern = "YOUR WILDCARD PATTERN HERE"
' by default, i.e. the Selection.Find range, Word won't
' search thru every single part of the document. So, we
' instead have to iterate over every 'story'/doc section
' and search those ranges individually.
For Each sRange In curdoc.StoryRanges
ExecuteSearch sRange, mypattern
While sRange.Find.Found
' having found a search hit, we dispatch
' this to a sub function; pick a better name
DoTheWorkWeWant sRange, count, ex_sheet
' necessary for moving the range forward
' or else when we reexecute the search
' it'll just start at the beginning again
' see superuser.com/questions/1009085
sRange.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
count = count + 1
sRange.Find.Execute
Wend
' but, apparently, each StoryRange is also
' composed of many sub-ranges, so you have to
' also iterate over the StoryRange substories?
' This was copied from Msft documentation.
While Not (sRange.NextStoryRange Is Nothing)
Set sRange = sRange.NextStoryRange
ExecuteSearch sRange, mypattern
While sRange.Find.Found
DoTheWorkWeWant sRange, count, ex_sheet
sRange.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
count = count + 1
sRange.Find.Execute
Wend
Wend
Next
End Function
Function ExecuteSearch(sRange As Range, mypattern As String)
With sRange.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = mypattern
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
.Execute
End With
End Function
</pre>
<h3 data-sourcepos="122:1-122:59">
<a id="how-to-insert-a-relative-hyperlink-into-a-word-document" class="anchor" href="#how-to-insert-a-relative-hyperlink-into-a-word-document" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>How to insert a relative hyperlink into a Word document</h3>
<pre>
' DoTheWorkWeWant from the function provided above
' Assumes ActiveDocument is the word doc you want to edit,
' and that you're provided with an Excel file to edit
Function AddHyperlinkToARange(sr As Range, count As Integer, wsheet As Worksheet)
' sanity check to prevent infinite loops
' if you make a mistake in your code that
' iterates thru Word document searches,
' this can end up in an infinite loop
If count > 2000 Then
End
End If
' in the problem I had to solve,
' I had to extract two numbers from the
' provided substring
Dim info() As String
info = ExtractSearchInformation(sr.Text)
If info(0) <> "" Then
hyperlink = FetchHyperlinkFromExcel(wsheet, info(0), info(1))
If hyperlink <> "" Then
' note the "..\" string
' in our case, the files we were referencing were one file path down
ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=sr, Address:="..\" & hyperlink
End If
End If
End Function
</pre>
<h3 data-sourcepos="158:1-158:70">
<a id="how-to-search-through-two-excel-worksheet-columns-at-the-same-time" class="anchor" href="#how-to-search-through-two-excel-worksheet-columns-at-the-same-time" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>How to search through two Excel Worksheet columns at the same time</h3>
<pre>
Function FetchHyperlinkFromExcel(wsheet As Excel.Worksheet, colAValue As String, colBValue As String)
Dim cRange As Excel.Range
Dim cFound As Excel.Range
' we set a range on the full A columns
' so we only search within there
Set cRange = wsheet.Columns("A:A")
Dim hyperlink As String
' xl's Range.Find works a bit differently.
' gotta be careful to specify LookAt:=xlWhole, or else it'll
' match substrings, which is NOT what we want
Set cFound = cRange.Find(colAValue, LookIn:=xlValues, LookAt:=xlWhole)
If Not cFound Is Nothing Then
' the only way to avoid infinite loops, apparently, is to keep
' track of the first found address and loop until we see it again
cFirstAddress = cFound.Address
' the format we're looking for depends on two columns (A,B)
' so once we find the first column, we refine our search
' by iterating over every found row and peeking inside the B col
' Debug.Print "addr: " & cFound.Row & "x" & cFound.Column
foundColB = wsheet.Cells(cFound.Row, 2).Value
' if the foundColB is empty AND our colBValue is empty, we
' found what we're looking for
If (IsEmpty(foundColB) And colBValue = "") Or foundColB = colBValue Then
' in this case, we were looking for the value of 4th column
hyperlink = wsheet.Cells(cFound.Row, 4).Value
Else
Do
Set cFound = cRange.FindNext(cFound)
foundColB = wsheet.Cells(cFound.Row, 2).Value
If foundColB = colBValue Then
hyperlink = wsheet.Cells(cFound.Row, 4).Value
End If
Loop Until (foundColB = colBValue) Or (cFound.Address = cFirstAddress)
End If
End If
FetchHyperlinkFromExcel = hyperlink
End Function
</pre>
<h3 data-sourcepos="210:1-210:64">
<a id="how-to-create-a-new-word-file-and-write-any-given-text-to-it" class="anchor" href="#how-to-create-a-new-word-file-and-write-any-given-text-to-it" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>How to create a new Word file and write any given text to it</h3>
<pre>
' note that this will shift your ActiveDocument
Set logger = Word.Application.Documents.Add
logger.Content.InsertAfter Text:="This is the dumbest, easiest way" & vbNewLine
</pre>
<hr data-sourcepos="218:1-219:0">
<h2 data-sourcepos="220:1-220:23">
<a id="why-did-you-do-this" class="anchor" href="#why-did-you-do-this" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>Why did you do this?</h2>
<p data-sourcepos="222:1-222:92">Recently, as a favour, I was asked to step in and perform some Microsoft Office automation.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="224:1-224:386">A legal firm was producing a lengthy court submission with thousands of citations. These citations all referenced existing files. This submission would be delivered on a USB key along side the files it cited. The trick was, they wanted their submitted document to link directly to these files, as they came up in footnotes. Like any website, except only referencing a local filesystem.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="226:1-226:270">They were <em>extremely</em> short for time, the intern that normally handled this was away on exams, and every other computer person they knew turned them down. All I had to do was parse a spreadsheet, search through a Word file and insert a relative link in the right place.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="228:1-228:103">I said sure, how hard could it be? and promptly wildly underestimated how long this task would take me.</p>
<figure>
<a href="/img/vb-stackoverflow.png" target="_blank"><img src="/img/vb-stackoverflow.png" alt="A graph representing the number of visits I usually make to StackOverflow" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption>A graph representing the number of visits I usually make to StackOverflow</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="235:1-235:193">I’ve spent enough time in my career parsing OpenOffice documents to know that, while I <em>could probably</em> crack open MS Word files using some half-baked library, down that path also lies madness.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="237:1-237:440">I rolled up my sleeves and dug into Visual Basic for Applications.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-officeautomation" id="fnref-officeautomation" data-footnote-ref>1</a></sup> This proved to be challenging,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-lolvba" id="fnref-lolvba" data-footnote-ref>2</a></sup> mostly because of the runtime: it obviously hasn’t been updated in ten or fifteen years, and the version I was dealing with couldn’t be bothered to give me line numbers when errors occurred. I lost hours and hours fighting cryptic syntax and runtime errors and runtime errors reported as syntax errors.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-vbagripes" id="fnref-vbagripes" data-footnote-ref>3</a></sup></p>
<section class="footnotes" data-footnotes>
<ol>
<li id="fn-officeautomation">
<p data-sourcepos="242:22-242:267">As far as I can tell this is still the Best Way to automate things in MS Office. I probably could’ve done this in .NET, but that would involve installing .NET runtimes on aggressively locked down Windows laptops, and that felt like a non-starter. <a href="#fnref-officeautomation" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-lolvba">
<p data-sourcepos="240:12-240:278">A few years ago, <a href="/2014/only-correct-way-think-brendan-eich.html">in a post about Brendan Eich</a>, I’d joked about Microsoft VisualBasicScript winning the browser scripting wars; this experience gave me a new appreciation for how reasonable Javascript is in comparison. <a href="#fnref-lolvba" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-vbagripes">
<p data-sourcepos="244:15-244:293">VBA at a glance seems loosely typed, but is in fact strongly, statically typed. It’s not smart enough to infer types returned from methods. It distinguishes between primitives and objects with different syntax. It ships with poor support for even basic data structures. Etc, etc. <a href="#fnref-vbagripes" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>http://okayfail.com/2017/canada-keep-the-queen.html2017-03-18T00:00:00Z2024-03-06T14:40:15ZCanada, Keep the Queen!<figure>
<a href="/img/keepthequeen.png" target="_blank"><img src="/img/keepthequeen.png" alt="A $20 Canadian bank note with a brown-skinned Queen against a backdrop of the Rockies" style="max-width:100%;"></a>
<figcaption><a href="http://www.kaleymckean.com/">Kaley McKean</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-sourcepos="7:1-7:196">Let’s talk about the Queen, shall we? Elizabeth Alexandra Mary has been the Queen of Canada and fourteen other countries since 1952. She is now ninety years old, and she’s not getting any younger.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="9:1-9:150">Those of you not in the Commonwealth may have only a dim and fuzzy idea of the Queen’s role. As a loyal subject, the picture’s only slightly clearer.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="11:1-11:444">The Queen decorates our money, she provides royal assent to our laws, and is the literal personification of the Canadian government. To swear loyalty and to love Canada is to be loyal to and love the Queen. Except, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II the physical old lady is technically a <a href="http://policyoptions.irpp.org/2015/03/02/citizenship-and-the-hollowed-canadian-crown/">distinct and separate legal entity</a> from the Crown, the Canadian state.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="13:1-13:28">It’s complicated<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-catholic" id="fnref-catholic" data-footnote-ref>1</a></sup>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="15:1-15:488">A recent article in the <em>Guardian</em> explained <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge">what’ll happen when the Queen kicks it</a>. There is a vast machinery in place for the English, proud, vain and fond of their symbols and rituals, to exercise their mass grief. Every news channel will pause and emit the same message, the streets will be clogged with mourners and into the ground she will go, wrapped in a lead coffin<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-coffin" id="fnref-coffin" data-footnote-ref>2</a></sup>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="17:1-17:55">What comes next will be even sadder, and more terrible.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="19:1-19:208">It is at this point that Charles will receive the Mandate of Heaven and ascend to the throne. He will become King, assume her responsibilities as sovereign of the Commonwealth realms, and appear on our money.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="21:1-21:72">It’s not his fault he will be disappointing. He’s just… unexceptional.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="23:1-23:253">After sixty five years on the job, it’s difficult to imagine anyone else inhabiting the role. Popes come and go; POTUS’ and prime-ministers rotate on the regular, but the Queen kept on keeping on throughout the twentieth century and well into this one.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="25:1-25:212">On VE Day, 1945 prim in her uniform, she stood waving to the crowd from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. She is the last living link to the founding myth of the Western world system as we know it today<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-quoted" id="fnref-quoted" data-footnote-ref>3</a></sup>.</p>
<h3>
<a id="its-time-for-canada-to-brexit" class="anchor" href="#its-time-for-canada-to-brexit" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>It's time for Canada to Brexit</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="29:1-29:356">I don’t have to tell you it’s insulting that a country as vibrant, diverse and democratic as ours is represented by some old white failson who inherited the job. That it’s time for us to move beyond our shameful colonial past and present into our <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/8/11879482/ramadan-justin-trudeau-canada">confident, multicultural future</a>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="31:1-31:258">I’ve come to believe that it is the duty of all loyal and patriotic Canadians everywhere to prevent this event from ever coming to pass. We are overdue for reconsidering our relationship with the United Kingdom. Our Crown should Brexit, and be done with it.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="33:1-33:309">But what of the legal and political implications of such a break? The very idea of <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/what-constitutes-our-constitution/">revisiting our constitutional agreements</a> is enough to bore most people to tears. Surely, this will provoke years of pointless debates and fights between the provinces.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="35:1-35:23">To you I say, fear not.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="37:1-37:125">I have devised the ultimate, <em>most Canadian</em> solution to our conundrum. When the time comes, we should simply <strong>do nothing</strong>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="39:1-39:446">That’s right. When our beloved Queen passes away, we should simply <em>preserve the status quo</em>. Keep her as the Queen in perpetuity. Canada will remain being a constitutional monarchy, we’ll pay obeisance to some shared heritage by attending the Commonwealth Games or whatever, and the Queen of Canada will soldier on as a literal symbolic figurehead that has no actual bearing on the functioning of our country, i.e. nothing changes<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-seriously" id="fnref-seriously" data-footnote-ref>4</a></sup>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="41:1-41:196">We keep Charles off our money, we avoid any stupid fights with either Québec or Alberta, and we get to keep referring to the Crown using female pronouns, which I’ve always found to be pleasant.</p>
<h3>
<a id="a-queen-for-everyone" class="anchor" href="#a-queen-for-everyone" aria-hidden="true"><span aria-hidden="true" class="octicon octicon-link"></span></a>A Queen for everyone</h3>
<p data-sourcepos="45:1-45:370">Better yet, once people get used to having a <em>wholly</em> symbolic Queen, she can become representative of us all. We can hold contests so that any female-identifying person in Canada may embody the Queen, for a day. We can appropriate the symbols of the Crown to fashion a self image that doesn’t rely on Anglo colonial settlers and their multicoloured wool blankets<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn-hbc" id="fnref-hbc" data-footnote-ref>5</a></sup>.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="47:1-47:309">I can picture it now. Young women across the land competing to <em>become the Queen</em>, and in exchange for having to sit there next to the prime-minister during the speech to the throne, and signing lots of laws, they’ll be crowned and tour the country and get a scholarship. The ratings alone could save the CBC.</p>
<p data-sourcepos="49:1-49:141">Instead of a mere mortal vessel of flesh, the representation of our state can change with us, as we no doubt will keep changing, in due time.</p>
<section class="footnotes" data-footnotes>
<ol>
<li id="fn-catholic">
<p data-sourcepos="51:14-51:121">Though, I mean, growing up Catholic, it has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity">familliar ring</a> to it. <a href="#fnref-catholic" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-coffin">
<p data-sourcepos="52:12-52:191">“British royals are buried in lead-lined coffins. Diana’s weighed a quarter of a ton.” One presumes, in order to keep them from escaping or contaminating the environment further. <a href="#fnref-coffin" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-quoted">
<p data-sourcepos="53:12-53:249">Exquisite framing courtesy of <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/23/the-crown-great-family-business/">Jonathan Freedland</a> by way of <a href="https://articlemag.ca/brexit-britains-existential-reckoning-b194b6e99e97#.uq628tst6">Colin Horgan</a>. <a href="#fnref-quoted" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-seriously">
<p data-sourcepos="54:15-54:308">The great trick of the Westminster system is most of its gears and cogs are made of unwritten norms and traditions. The Queen may sign off on parliament’s laws but it’d actually be inconceivable for her to quibble about it. Anything short of automatic assent would trigger a vast crisis, right? <a href="#fnref-seriously" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn-hbc">
<p data-sourcepos="55:9-55:266">I recently <a href="https://twitter.com/phillmv/status/838485129832062976">got woke</a> and now find Hudson’s Bay blankets to be inappropriate objects to own. Now, I’m not saying you should destroy your $300 blanket, but you should at least hide it from polite company. <a href="#fnref-hbc" class="footnote-backref" data-footnote-backref aria-label="Back to content">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>