Spacing and the Balanced Supply of Housing research node proudly present The Overhead: Understanding Canada’s Affordable Housing Crisis, a special podcast series.
THIS EPISODE: Decommodifying Housing
On previous episodes of this series, we’ve talked about the impact of an over-financialized housing market. It adds to the affordability crisis and leads to eviction and displacement.
In this episode, we ask two experts if it’s possible to decommodify housing—to build housing that isn’t simply a product to be bought, sold, and traded.
David Wachsmuth is an associate professor in the School of Urban Planning at McGill University, and he describes a sort of catch-22 in the the current housing market:
It’s actually quite problematic to, on the one hand, say very appropriately, ‘we need to protect tenant rights and prioritize letting tenants stay in apartments,’ but then also say, ‘we really hope that the private market is going to build housing to meet those demands.’ You’re making it impossible for the private market to do that, because you’re not letting them make money. But you’re not supplying the alternative which is non-market housing that can fill that need. So we’re left with the kind of worst of both worlds.
Dr. David Wachsmuth
Leila Ghaffari is an assistant professor of geography, planning, and environment at Concordia University, who says part of the barrier to decommodifying housing is it doesn’t actually benefit the politicians who say they want to create more affordability:
They don’t really want to decommodify housing… Because our economy is so dependant on real estate right now, the real decommodification of housing is not in the interest of our governments at the moment. Not even at the municipal level: they are so dependant on property tax money. So it’s something we say, but the actions don’t show that we really understand the crisis we are living in. And this crisis today, the vulnerable population has been living through it for years and years. It’s just that now it’s more visible because the middle class is also feeling it.
Dr. Leila Ghaffari
Is it truly possible to decommodify housing when it’s become one of the biggest industries in the country?
For more research related to this episode, visit our project pages below:
- Understanding the Impact of Evictions and the Financialization of Housing on Security of Tenure in Canada
- Assessing the Impact of Short-term Rentals on Canada’s Housing Supply
- Studying Montreal’s Financialization of Multi-Family Rental Housing
- Tracking the Sale of Multi-Family Rental Buildings to Financialized Landlords in Vancouver
- Canadian Rental Housing Index (2023 Update)
- Evictions in Montreal
