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ilrwbwrkhv

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Please don't start tedious nationalistic or ideological flamewars on HN. Or any flamewars.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Edit: we've unfortunately had to ask you about this repeatedly for a long time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41577037 (Sept 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39281820 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656288 (April 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844518 (Feb 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585046 (Dec 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18575831 (Dec 2018)

If you keep it up, we're going to have to ban you, so please stop posting like this to HN.

sorry. i thought this was meaningful commenting here.

I don't know how your comment is related to the article under discussion. If innovation could solve homelessness, San Francisco wouldn't have had the crisis it currently does. I don't know how changing Toronto to be more like SF in terms of tech companies is supposed to solve homelessness. At best, these are orthogonal issues.

>If innovation could solve homelessness, San Francisco wouldn't have had the crisis it currently does.

You can't innovate when zoning regulations and building codes prevent you from doing so.

Taxis and short-stay-rentals got innovated, even when there were pretty clear regulations that had to be broken/ignored.

I suspect the bigger problem here is that there's no (or not nearly enough) money at the end of the rainbow of solving the homelessness problem.

I don't see housing as something that really needs innovation. We historically solved the problem; in the 1980s rough sleeping in Canada was at levels you see in like Finland today -- estimates for Toronto were a couple hundred individuals (so like 10% the rate today).

What's fascinating to me is everyone seems to know and agree what would help (loosen zoning, increase welfare) and there's broad popular support for these (increasing disability polls at like 85% yes) and political parties sometimes campaign on these - yet because of the way politics works in Canada with three levels of government - it runs into deadlock and never materializes. Public drug insurance coverage is a similar story. The ruling party campaigned on it and 90% of the population wants it and yet the political system seems unable to realize what everyone wants. Americans will sympathize with that circumstance, I imagine.

We need constitutional reform honestly but it'll never happen because the mechanism to pass such an amendment is just as paper-jammed.

Sounds like the actual issue is that everyone agrees that "something" needs to be done, but can't agree on the details, so it flames out when it comes to the implementation stage. Your proposal for "constitutional reform" mirrors this. What "constitutional reform" would solve this? Moving to a unitary system?

Canadian federalism relies on an interworking of government levels. To use an example, criminal law is written federally, the prosecutors are funded and run provincially, the superior courts are run provincially but the federal government appoints the judges.

It's a nice idea but as you say when we run into governments with different views on how to realize things, it can result in a log-jam.

I don't think anything as dramatic as a unitary state is needed; just make healthcare and housing the sole jurisdiction of either the feds or the provinces. The current system of joint funding seems to have caused a game of jurisdictional hot potato.

I'm not sure of the specifics but there are domains of responsibility split between the levels, one example is the healthcare system. Healthcare is a provincial responsibility and the federal government is not allowed to overstep or interfere on how its run, however significant funding for it comes from the federal government so there's some weird disconnects where money is prodivded for one aspect and used for another by the province. Would it take a constitutional change to address this problem? If so, then it will never be fixed.

It’s not true thar people agree on it though. Housing is expensive, we could bring it down, but bringing it down would crush our economy, so we don’t do it. Supermajority of people also own their homes, and if you bought in the last 10 years for some incredibly high price, you wouldn't want your investment to go down.

For homeless people it’s tough, and a good chunk of people got severely desensitized in the last 20 years. So they’ve become an after thought, and people are pushing for “out of sight out of mind” policies. Can’t really blame them either.

You need to build houses. The government has to plan neighbourhoods, finance the building, extend public transport.

The market is great at selling gadgets, but health, transport, education, housing, have to be directed by the government.

You need to build houses.

Correct.

health, transport, education, housing, have to be directed by the government.

This is not at all clear. In the case of housing, government's major contribution has been to forbid people from building more homes, so perhaps we could start by not doing that.

80% of Toronto's shelter space is taken up by refugees and new immigrants to Canada. Canada has a problem with letting way more people in than it can take care of.

In 2023 it was 44%.

Basically, certain diasphoras have figured out how to game the system last few years, from asylum claims to getting beds at various transitional housing programs. On one hand they are taking up space previously used to shelter Canadians, on the other hand many of them do diligently work through transitional programs and make their way into Canadian society, but they're not exactly skilled labour and substantially contributing to the economy. On the third hand, my understanding is they're much easier to deal with for shelther staff.

With the state of the housing market, no one bothers investing in anything else -- it's just not "worth it" when housing is already such a good investment. Not to mention the issue of monopolies.

This. People sit on houses like lecherous dragons instead of funding risky startups which can take over the world. There are no stars in Canada. Growing the pie is frowned upon. That "mediocrity" thinking falls all the way down to the local governance level and housing.

Ah yes, if only Canada had a lion (?) to reduce capital gains tax (?) you’d get more startups (?) which would then magically solve the problem of homeless people being cold in winter.

Or you could, you know, look at perverse housing policy across more or less the entire developed world.

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