Flagship report from RBC Economics offers pragmatic solutions to the housing crisis
Seven ways to fix
Today, RBC Economics and Thought Leadership released The Great Rebuild: Seven ways to fix
More than half - one million - of 1.9 million new households by 2030 will not be able to buy a home if affordability remains close to where it is today, according to RBC's research. Worst, more than 40% of the new households that can't buy a home will also not earn enough to afford rent at the market price.
"The current affordability crisis has been driven by a massive undersupply of housing in the face of booming demand," said
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There is no single solution, but these seven actions offer the best path forward to bringing meaningful home price and rent relief:
- Aggressively expand the construction sector's labour pool by prioritizing immigrant skills, recognizing credentials from other jurisdictions and setting ambitious targets for trade enrollments.
- Develop and adopt innovative designs, building techniques and technology to boost productivity through prefabricated housing and pre-approved building designs.
- Speed up housing project approvals by reducing regulatory requirements, harmonizing building codes and prioritizing projects with faster turnaround times.
- Ease zoning restrictions to allow more density in cities and diversify the types of houses built to make more productive use of land.
- Lower the cost of building new housing by using more cost-efficient materials and modulating government charges.
- Change the housing supply mix with incentives to build purpose-built apartments by waiving development charges and using publicly owned land.
- Expand the housing stock from within by reclaiming units from short-term rental businesses, making it easier to build secondary suites and convert non-residential buildings.
"We're working with Canadians across the country — homeowners, builders, policymakers — to help ensure home ownership remains part of the Canadian dream. Efforts will have to go beyond what's been done so far, and we hope these pragmatic ideas help rebalance supply and demand and do so in ways that continue to drive Canadian prosperity," said
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SOURCE RBC