Tuesday, June 10, 2025
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
        • Provincial COVID Misery Index
        • Beyond Lockdown
        • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
        • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
        • Provincial COVID Misery Index
        • Beyond Lockdown
        • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
        • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Building a housing agenda from the bottom up: Jane Londerville and Sean Speer for Inside Policy

November 20, 2017
in Domestic Policy, Inside Policy, Latest News, Columns, In the Media, Economic Policy, Jane Londerville, Sean Speer
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A

What principles and priorities should guide the government’s National Housing Strategy? Jane Londerville and Sean Speer offer several recommendations based on their recent co-authored MLI study.

By Jane Londerville and Sean Speer, Nov. 20, 2017

The Trudeau government is set to release its National Housing Strategy in the coming days. It comes in light of new evidence that housing affordability has hit its worst levels in a quarter century. Many will be watching to see if Ottawa’s new plan can help to restore the prospect of affordable and responsible homeownership for aspiring, young families. Count us among them.

We’re typically leery of national strategies. They tend to be glossy documents full of superficialities at best, and federal intrusions into provincial and local jurisdictions at worst.

This one can be different though. The federal government touches on housing and homeownership in various ways. Yet its housing policy framework has tended to be incoherent. A National Housing Strategy can address this coherence problem and start to make federal housing policy look less like the Bride of Frankenstein and more like the product of intelligent design. In so doing, the Trudeau government can make progress on its vision of inclusive growth.

It’s well-known that ongoing housing affordability challenges are putting homeownership out of reach for young families and first-time home buyers in major centres such as Toronto and Vancouver. This is nothing less than a crisis. It comes with various economic and social costs for individuals, families, and society as a whole.

What principles and priorities should guide the government’s strategy?

Most of the resulting policy discussion has been focused at the provincial and local levels. This is sensible. These are mostly localized matters and the underlying policy issues – such as land-use regulations and development rules and fees – are outside of federal control.

But it’s wrong to assume that there’s no federal role in housing and homeownership. Ottawa influences the housing market through a wide range of policies such as monetary policy, mortgage insurance, financial regulations, tax and transfer policies, and social housing spending. Tax-related measures represent more than $6 billion annually alone.

Yet little attention is paid to how these various federal policies interact or fit together. They usually don’t. One example: we’ve seen successive cases of mortgage rule tightening while Ottawa has concurrently expanded tax incentives for first-time home buyers. It often seems like the left hand and right hand aren’t speaking.

Here’s where a National Housing Strategy can be useful. Building a housing agenda from the bottom up can ensure that there are clear objectives and the right set of policies to match.

What principles and priorities should guide the government’s strategy? A new study by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute sets out several recommendations in this regard. Let’s highlight three:

The first is the strategy must be rooted in a clear understanding of the difference between “affordable housing” and “housing affordability.” The former is about subsidized social housing which is roughly 6 percent of the market. The latter is about the overall affordability of market-based housing which covers the rest. The Trudeau government tends to conflate the two in its messaging. It’s notable for instance that the consultation materials for the National Strategy Housing largely neglected market-based homeownership. The strategy itself shouldn’t.

Homeownership is associated with a raft of economic and social benefits – ranging from better health to more stable families to greater civic engagement.

The second is that Ottawa should ignore calls for policy neutrality with regards to homeownership. This would be a mistake. A wide body of research shows that homeownership is associated with a raft of economic and social benefits – ranging from better health to more stable families to greater civic engagement. There are, of course, smart and dumb policies to promote and support homeownership as we’ve witnessed in the United States. We should be in favour of smart ones and against bad ones rather than against them altogether.

The third is that Ottawa should rethink the current mix of mortgage insurance and tax policies to promote and support homeownership. One big idea would be to enact a matching funds mechanism in Tax-Free Savings Accounts (similar to Registered Education Savings Plans or Registered Disability Savings Plans) to support higher down payments and greater equity build-up. These funds would accumulate on a tax-free basis until they were large enough to provide a 20-percent down payment on a home. Such a policy could ultimately lead to greater home equity and put less pressure on public mortgage insurance.

What connects these recommendations? The common thread is our view that a pro-homeownership agenda can support the Trudeau government’s commitment to inclusive growth. The OECD defines inclusive growth as “economic growth that creates opportunity for all segments of the population and distributes the dividends of increased prosperity, both in monetary and non-monetary terms, fairly across society.” Focusing on homeownership, asset development, and “an emotional sense of prosperity” (as Co-operatives UK, an organization responsible for representing housing co-ops, has put it) can help the federal government take concrete steps to advance this vision of inclusivity and opportunity. The pending National Housing Strategy can be an important step in this direction. We’ll be watching.

Jane Londerville and Sean Speer are co-authors of the recent Macdonald-Laurier Institute study, “A Home to Call our Own: A Federal Strategy for Affordable and Responsible Homeownership.”

Tags: Jane LondervillehousingSean Speerhomeownership

Related Posts

How Canadian universities can avoid the American dumpster fire of de-woking: Christopher Dummitt in the National Post
Reforming Universities

How Canadian universities can avoid the American dumpster fire of de-woking: Christopher Dummitt in the National Post

June 10, 2025
A conservatism of ideals: Peter Copeland for the Public Discourse
Political Tradition

A conservatism of ideals: Peter Copeland for the Public Discourse

June 10, 2025
Ryerson’s toppled statue should be restored at Queen’s Park: Patrice Dutil in the National Post
Political Tradition

Ryerson’s toppled statue should be restored at Queen’s Park: Patrice Dutil in the National Post

June 10, 2025
Next Post
Nazareth talks temporary foreign workers on 1310 News

NAFTA in the Digital Era: Owens interview on Beyond The Headlines

Newsletter Signup

  Thank you for Signing Up
  Please correct the marked field(s) below.
Email Address  *
1,true,6,Contact Email,2
First Name *
1,true,1,First Name,2
Last Name *
1,true,1,Last Name,2
*
*Required Fields

Follow us on

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

  • Inside Policy Magazine
  • Annual Reports
  • Jobs
  • Privacy Policy

© 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video

© 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

Lightbox image placeholder

Previous Slide

Next Slide

Share

Facebook ShareTwitter ShareLinkedin SharePinterest ShareEmail Share

TwitterTwitter
Hide Tweet (admin)

Add this ID to the plugin's Hide Specific Tweets setting: