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Comment by ddorian43 | Hacker News Reader

Especially with real estate. Either rent indefinetily by paying their pension , buy the house for 2x-3x+ the monthly rent so you pay their pension in lump sum, or go 1+ hour away from city(also high cost in terms of time etc).

The politicians are also older people who can't empathize. The young also don't vote.

And if you do buy high now, who are you gonna sell even higher when you retire, since there are so few new kids being born?

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> The young also don't vote.

This might change, fast.

I have two daughters who are in their early 20s. My oldest daughter, 24, has dreamed of buying a home and starting a family with her high school sweetheart of 10 years and her dream has been completely shattered.

The saddest part is, this isn't even just about buying a home. She's not going to start a family until they are no longer living with us and have a house of their own. But the longer it takes for that to happen, the more difficult and risky it becomes for her to start that family and forget about having 3+ children and starting at 35. That's even if there is a correction in the next 10 years.

So her dreams are completely shattered. She's not the only Gen Z out there that had these types of hopes and ambitions throughout their adolescence and early adulthood and are now feeling completely hopeless.

Just recently, here in Canada, there was a leaked RCMP report issued to the government warning it of potential civil unrest due the economic and housing crises: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-police-future-trends-1...

Yes, it may be true that unemployment is at a low and stocks are up. That means absolutely nothing to young adults in their 20s who are still living with their parents, not by choice but because they have absolutely no hope of ever being able to buy a home of their own.

So I wouldn't be surprised if in the coming years we see record turn-outs of young voters.

Do the young even have someone to vote for in Canada though? Only the PPC wants to stop immigration and build housing but they are a fringe party unlikely to get a single seat rather than run the country. The BQ is a decent option in Quebec, but in the rest of Canada pretty much any party that has seats currently is far too pro-immigration and far too pro-Boomer to get anything done on house prices. PP is very good at talking about how the other parties are failing while offering no real solutions himself for example.

I agree. And it will be interesting to see how the PPC performs (love them or hate them) because, as you said, the mainstream parties look an awful lot alike to people who are not firmly entrenched in a partisan position (i.e: many young people who are still figuring things out).

Every party talks about lowering house prices, but the only government that has been successful at lowering prices has been David Eby's NDP government in BC.

So yes, the young have a great party to vote for.

Eby's NDP government boosted housing starts by 11%. Rental prices still went up in Vancouver and the surrounding area because an 11% increase is a pittance compared to the insane demand from current immigration policy. Assuming that's even possible nationally and that the Federal NDP will have similar policies (both of which are dubious assumptions), that's not going to be adequate to keep up with the insane surge in immigration all of the big three parties seem to be behind. The Liberals at least appear to be somewhat open to minor course corrections but the NDP has historically and is currently the most pro immigration party in the country and it's not possible to get market conditions to improve if you want the population to grow by 2,000,000 people a year.

You can't bring in enough people for 800,000 homes if you have historically built around 250,000 and the best government in the country manages an 11% increase without inflating rents and making the housing crisis worse. We need to radically slow the insane surge in demand so that building more housing has a chance to keep up. Canada has historically had 2.3 people per home so if we increase builds to 300,000/year we can support bringing in roughly 660,000 people with stable prices. If we bring in 2M everyone can guess what will happen.

For sure but I gotta ask, even if the young did vote who is there to vote for? The bipartisan system here is rigged IMO. Even if you vote for a less popular candidate they're usually still beholden to the party.

If the young reliably voted, for their own interests...then both parties have these things called "primaries", where their general election candidates are picked. Sometimes from a wide field of contenders, and usually with very low barriers to entry (either to vote, or to be a candidate).

My understanding is that career politicians' take on the youth vote is: "If the stars happen to align, and you play it right, the youth vote can win you an election. But usually not - so you should mostly let your opponent waste his time chasing the youth vote."

Primaries have a weird system based on delegates, not direct votes. It's really difficult to know who you're actually voting for, I couldn't find any information on which candidate the delegates on my ballot were actually for.

At least in Michigan, the primary ballots pretty much list the actual candidates.

A few times, when things looked murkier, I've just contacted the local (city or county) party organization, and quickly gotten answers.

If that didn't work, I'd probably try contacting the League of Women Voters, County Clerk's office, or similar [non-]governmental groups that work at keeping track of such things. And some web searches, looking for primary candidates with on-line campaign info.

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