Canada is so expensive that some Ukrainian immigrants are leaving | Hacker News Reader

Canada is so expensive that some Ukrainian immigrants are leaving

nationalpost.com

34 pointsIndoCanada18 comments

Why can’t Canada do a US-style defense production act for a major housing build effort? Let existing homeowners lock the value of their homes and tax assessments so they can’t whine the country out of it. The birth rates are low, immigrants can’t afford to stay, and there’s more land and lumber than nearly any other place on earth. History will look back confused at that and scratch their heads. At least the USA has excuses for the really expensive places, we are running out of space in quite a few HCOL areas

Because there's a lot of foreign investments in Canadian (and USA) real estate that lobby to protect their investments.

Also the pension system relies on mortgage backed securities which never really decoupled from 2008 and with that comes an incentive to keep home prices higher because their tied to peoples retirement accounts.

Owning a home shouldn't be an investment.

Also adding is interest rates. The low interest rate era of the 80s to 2020 contributed significantly to home price rices. You don't see much demand by investors today because of the high rates and cracks in real estate are starting to form.

People move to an area and then want it to never change. High housing prices are blamed on landlords, immigrants, new construction, and speculators. Those who are comfortable with their housing have zero motivation to vote to lift zoning restrictions.

Locking property tax values makes the problem worse (e.g. California's Proposition 13).

Repealing restrictive zoning regulations doesn't require any government subsidies. Just get rid of height restrictions, parking minimums, setback, floor area ratio, single family only zoning, etc.

There is no shortage of land in this country. Why not just build out housing in areas that are actually low density, rather than forcing people to live in crammed cities with high rises everywhere?

Why do animals crowd around food sources and not spread out into the desert?

Land has little value by itself. It's proximity to jobs and services that drives lot value (and permits to build on it).

There's a spectrum of housing between high rises and single family houses. Legalizing duplexes, townhouses, condos, fourplexes, etc. would relieve a lot of the housing shortage. And if someone wants to build a high rise on a arterial street to downtown, that is a good fit. Do we want to actually fix housing shortages or do we value the "character of the neighborhood" more?

As a Canadian, I think Canada is a good third or fourth option to immigrate to. If your IQ Z score is 2 or 3 you can be much wealthier in the US. If you have a paid hourly style job, I think your life will be hard in Canada and the US alike.

Canada has had a "housing crisis" for the last 10 years. economyCostOfInfrastruture > economyCostOfSingleFamilyHome in Canada, so expect to live in a super dense shithole.

Having worked in both Canada and the US, I got payed 2.5x for the exact same work in the US. Note: I worked in big tech.

The big brain maneuver, as a lot of my European friends do, is to spend your career in the States stacking up cash then go back to the country of your origination upon retirement to enjoy the nice social safety net

Won't look so big brain when they start instituting wealth taxes to make up for their insolvent welfare systems.

Worth pointing out that the US spends more on welfare than quite a bit of Europe, _and_ has more government debt than most of them.

Depends on the brackets. If the wealth tax effectively ignores everyone with under 50 million dollars of net worth, then a former European who manages to reach 10 million dollars in net worth without sustaining healthcare debts in the US will have plenty of cushion once they return to Europe.

Canada has no “super dense” places to actually live in. It’s all a suburban wasteland with 2.5 pockets of medium density in the 3 largest cities.

>If your IQ Z score is 2 or 3 you can be much wealthier in the US.

...assuming you can get past the USCIS gauntlet.

I assume you don't have a family? No healthcare, guns everywhere,mass shooting almost every week and a political divide that's widening every single day. Maybe you can overlook this and wave your hands and take a chance but it's a deal breaker for me

The media has worked flawlessly on you. Bravo.

Im sure immigrants leave places, that are too expensive, all over the world. Especially compared to eastern block countries, the North Americas are very expensive.

Why are they moving to Toronto? It's the most expensive Canadian city. Hamilton, Montréal or even Mississauga are all cheaper than Stockholm and there's tons of jobs.

The article states he’s actually living in the suburbs of Toronto. Anyway my own family moved to Toronto 23 years ago when we landed - it’s simply by far the easiest place to get a job.

There's plenty of property in Ukraine; you just need to kill the Russians to get it.

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