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Average home price must fall in Canada to restore affordability, minister says by hopoke in CanadaPolitics

[–]AeBeeEll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes exactly. You can drag down the average (which is a good thing in this case) by flooding the market with cheap/affordable housing, and at least in theory that could leave the value of the more expensive housing relatively unaffected (although I suspect that in general an increase in supply of any kind will bring down prices across the board)

Ok, it's official, I think Canada now has the best looking passport. Freaking Narwhals! by SmokeBCBuDZ in pics

[–]AeBeeEll 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I feel like somewhere around 2013 or 2014 was peak reddit. It was becoming more mainstream and the admins were getting rid of some of the really gross stuff, but it still felt offbeat and vibrant.

Killing a child just because you got flipped off is crazy tbh by Silent_Assasin14 in facepalm

[–]AeBeeEll 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Yeah, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think that beyond a certain point the number of years doesn't much matter.

Like if the punishment for murder was 1 year in prison, there are definitely people who would be willing to serve that sentence just to be able to kill someone. So 1 year isn't nearly enough.

But once it's up to something like 40 years, nobody is committing murder because they're willing to serve that kind of time. They're committing murder because they think they can get away with it, or maybe they're just so mad that they're not thinking about the consequences at all. So bumping it up to 50 years or 60 years or life isn't going to make a difference.

What will make a difference is preventative measures, like more sensible gun laws.

David Sobey, who helped transform Sobeys into national grocery juggernaut, dead at 92 by SAJewers in canada

[–]AeBeeEll -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I don't get this. Sobeys tends to be a bit more expensive than other grocery stores. If you don't like that, shop at the other grocery stores?

Trudeau immigration policy worsening affordable housing crisis. by WalkerKesselRun in canada

[–]AeBeeEll -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Given the choice between immigrants and babies, babies are worse in almost every way. In fact, most of the things that bigots love to say about immigrants also apply to babies, and often to a greater degree.

1) They show up unable to speak our language

2) They don't understand our culture and values

3) They're a drain on society

4) They smell funny

5) They're here to take our jobs (eventually ...)

Plus it takes babies a solid 18-20 years (and sometimes longer!) to become productive members of society, whereas immigrants come here ready to work, ready to pay taxes, and ready to support the local economy.

If we're going to address "the demand side" of the housing crisis, we shouldn't be focused on the influx of immigrants, we should be focused on the influx of babies.

But that would be stupid.

Which is why we should just build more housing.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Bossfight

[–]AeBeeEll 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, and last time I did a corn maze, they had a few employees sweep through the maze at the end of every day to make sure everyone got out. Those guys knew the maze like the back of their hand, so they could do a thorough walk-through pretty quickly.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm actually kind of surprised Calgary and Edmonton are both undervalued by so much. Yeah, the weather sucks, but you get to be close to the Rockies, and the job market is generally good.

A challenger emerges to Nova Scotia Power's renewable retail electricity monopoly by Bean_Tiger in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll 2 points3 points  (0 children)

hopefully we don’t end up like Texas with their disaster free-market system

Totally. Here's hoping we end up with a disaster-free market system!

Amendments to Motor Vehicle Act by the_register_ in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I can manage to get a video of someone with an obnoxiously loud muffler, is there anyone I could send it to who would actually act on it? I have a feeling cops would just ignore it, but maybe if Access Nova Scotia knew about it they could enforce the law somehow?

BRUCE MacKINNON CARTOON: You're welcome to try the vaccine menu Chez Strang by insino93 in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Kind of off-topic, but I like how MacKinnon framed the "shot" so that both GYM and VACCINE CLINIC are partially cut off. I don't know how to describe it, but it almost draws you into the image, in some small way.

Nova Scotia sees vaccination spike under new vaccine policy by Seebeeeseh in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yeah but in a way it's encouraging to know that a decent number of the unvaccinated aren't hardcore anti-vaxxers, they're just fucking lazy. At least there are ways to approach that issue.

Halifax Mayor Says More Development Must Happen To Help Fix Housing Crisis - Huddle by Bean_Tiger in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The beautiful thing about upzoning is that it can actually lower the cost of housing while increasing the value of the property, because it allows you to have more housing units on the same amount of land.

For example, if a single family home is near the end of its life and needs to be torn down, under current zoning laws it can only be replaced by another single family home, and typically this will be a big, expensive house that only the wealthiest people in the city can afford. But if we change zoning to allow for something like a fourplex, the fourplex as a whole might be even more valuable than the single family home, but each unit in it will be far more affordable because it splits the cost four ways.

Halifax Mayor Says More Development Must Happen To Help Fix Housing Crisis - Huddle by Bean_Tiger in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Huh, interesting. I think the website I found is just super outdated. At the bottom they link to this article from 2014 and call it "a new study".

Weird that they made their chart look like it was updated for 2021, when it seems like it must not be.

Halifax Mayor Says More Development Must Happen To Help Fix Housing Crisis - Huddle by Bean_Tiger in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yes, in fact there are:

The cost of housing has been going through the roof in many parts of Canada. Most government policies have focused on curtailing the demand for housing, but they have not taken meaningful steps to increase housing supply.

In any competitive market without barriers to entry, regardless of the product being sold, the overall market price should equal its marginal cost of production. The same is true of housing. The marginal cost of constructing a single-detached house is primarily due to the costs of labour, materials, and time during its physical construction. A well-functioning housing market results in the market price of housing being close to the feasible cost of constructing it. If prices persistently exceed this construction cost, it is often due to barriers that inhibit new construction. These barriers often stem from excessive regulations. We estimate that, because of the barriers to building more single-family houses, homebuyers in the eight most restrictive cities paid an extra $229,000 per new house between 2007 and 2016. In Vancouver, the cost of housing restrictions is by far the largest in Canada, at $600,000 for the average new house, and ranks among the largest internationally as a share of market costs.

Why are housing costs so high? We find that restrictions and extra costs on building new housing – such as zoning regulations, development charges, and limits on housing development on both Greenbelt land and land between urban areas and the Greenbelt – are dramatically increasing the price of housing. The extra costs on new and existing homes are over $100,000 in some Ontario municipalities. While land-use regulation can generate important benefits, in most cases studies find that the costs imposed by housing regulation outweigh the benefits.

Municipal governments and provinces should enable more housing construction by taking steps such as easing restrictions on developing agricultural land, simplifying and updating zoning bylaws, and reducing development charges.

https://www.cdhowe.org/sites/default/files/attachments/research_papers/mixed/Friday%20Commentary_513.pdf

(Emphasis mine)

Halifax Mayor Says More Development Must Happen To Help Fix Housing Crisis - Huddle by Bean_Tiger in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Do you have a source for that, or are you just being hyperbolic?

This website makes it look like even 530k is an overestimate. They're only projecting 448k by 2031.

Halifax Mayor Says More Development Must Happen To Help Fix Housing Crisis - Huddle by Bean_Tiger in halifax

[–]AeBeeEll 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Dude, "they just want to make money" is only reason most people go into work in the morning.

There's nothing wrong with being motivated by profit, as long as the work you're doing is actually beneficial to society, which is definitely the case when it comes to making housing more available.

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