Want to boost housing supply? Look to Nova Scotia
Housing is expensive almost everywhere in Canada. Rather than tanking the housing market, as some might have expected, COVID worsened existing affordability problems. A sudden increase in demand for more square footage certainly didn’t help. But the fundamental problem was and remains that there aren’t enough housing units in Canada. Successive reports, most recently by CMHC, estimate that Canada is short millions of homes and without them the country won’t return to any semblance of affordability.
A joint report by the governments of Canada and British Columbia in 2021 and another by Ontario’s Housing Affordability Task Force this year recommended large increases in housing construction in order to fix the problem. So far, however, both reports’ boldest recommendations have largely been ignored.
But while Ontario and British Columbia drag their feet, the Government of Nova Scotia has gone ahead and adopted sweeping changes recommended this year by its own Executive Panel on Housing in the Halifax Regional Municipality. …[Read More]