The truth is that immigrants to Canada, many of them beginning as international students, hold up a large piece of the country's service economy; they perform the low-paid or insecure work that...
The truth is that immigrants to Canada, many of them beginning as international students, hold up a large piece of the country's service economy; they perform the low-paid or insecure work that already-naturalized Canadians refuse to do. Over the last few decades, housing supply has been bought up by REIT's (Real estate investment trust), private equity firms, or the privileged for speculative purposes, leaving a large supply of housing vacant. Critics have pinned the housing crisis on international studies because it's a familiar refrain for other Western/European societies; blaming immigrants is an easy out. This whole crisis is manufactured by private industry working hand-in-hand with government, which is kind of what Canada is best known for.
Just as a sidenote, the last time federally-funded social housing was built in Canada, it was in 1993.
Refuse is an interesting word here. The local seafood processing plant here put out an ad online to hire overnight (eg graveyard) labourers, 12 hour shifts, for $15/hr. They're offering that...
they perform the low-paid or insecure work that already-naturalized Canadians refuse to do
Refuse is an interesting word here. The local seafood processing plant here put out an ad online to hire overnight (eg graveyard) labourers, 12 hour shifts, for $15/hr. They're offering that because they know locals will "refuse" and are applying for immigrants and short term foreign workers instead of raising wages.
If Canadians are refusing wages, employer should be forced to up wages not sneak around and import international labour.
Many locals are refusing this kind of wage because working graveyard for pennies won't even make rent.
I also wonder how comfortable young Canadians feel working in an environment like fast food where every other worker in the company is from another cultural background and they regularly speak...
I also wonder how comfortable young Canadians feel working in an environment like fast food where every other worker in the company is from another cultural background and they regularly speak their native language to each other. The average person would feel like a foreigner at work.
When my 16 yr old worked at McD's so did a lot of his schoolmates. Now none of them do. All the staff are immigrants.
It's a crazy climate when you, as a teenager in their first job, are working with fully competent adults working at a job far below their skill level and you're still learning how to work an 8...
It's a crazy climate when you, as a teenager in their first job, are working with fully competent adults working at a job far below their skill level and you're still learning how to work an 8 hour shift.
I don't know whether there's more value in going through McJobs with your slacker Jr. High classmates than what's happening now, but it does probably expose young people to some rough truths about the immigrant experience.
Why is a fully capable, likely educated person is working at what we all know is a shit job meant for unskilled teenagers?
My first job was working at the local Burger King. I don't specifically remember any eight-hour shifts, but maybe I did on a weekend? There are limits on how much teenagers can work. I don't...
My first job was working at the local Burger King. I don't specifically remember any eight-hour shifts, but maybe I did on a weekend? There are limits on how much teenagers can work. I don't remember opening or closing, though other people did.
I guess it's a "broadening experience" when you come home smelling like grease. I worked less smelly jobs after that.
It seems like meeting people from other countries might have been fun? It depends on the people, of course.
I came here to say this, so thank you for saying it better. I'm also concerned because a lot of Canadians are falling for it and are having American style negative reactions to immigration and...
I came here to say this, so thank you for saying it better. I'm also concerned because a lot of Canadians are falling for it and are having American style negative reactions to immigration and American style culture wars. We need immigrants in Canada, but we need sustainable levels and instead our governments are not investing in the services needed to support them while lining their cronies pockets. Well, at least in Ontario for sure.
I think it's both and that's what I said. I said it was unsustainable. It can be both unsustainable and American culture wars bullshit. I guess we found the area we don't agree on. No one will...
I think it's both and that's what I said. I said it was unsustainable. It can be both unsustainable and American culture wars bullshit. I guess we found the area we don't agree on. No one will convince me that international students are the reason houses are unaffordable.
I think this particular line of thinking is highly problematic and just blatant anti-American prejudice. You can easily replace America in your sentence with the UK, Germany, Sweden, Hungary,...
having American style negative reactions to immigration
I think this particular line of thinking is highly problematic and just blatant anti-American prejudice. You can easily replace America in your sentence with the UK, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, France, Korea, or Japan and come away with a more compelling argument. America hosts the largest percentage of foreign born residents in the whole world and 70% of Americans think immigration is good for the country. In fact, it's only on the topic of illegal immigration that Americans are so against but that's easy for a Canadian to overlook as the country doesn't share an external border with a country that is frankly a massive source of illegal immigration (just to note for the record: I welcome most illegal immigrants, as a former Californian I see the net good they bring to the country).
I only bring this up because I believe Tildes can be a better platform than the rest of the internet and knee-jerk judgements should be avoided here - even the unfounded hurr-durr America is the worst country in history trend that's so cool these days. It's exhausting
Not commenting on the wider discussion, only on this part: I don't think this is true? From your link: They are saying the total amount of foreign-born residents is higher than any other country,...
Not commenting on the wider discussion, only on this part:
America hosts the largest percentage of foreign born residents in the whole world
I don't think this is true? From your link:
The United States is home to more foreign-born residents than any other country in the world. In 2021, immigrants composed almost 14 percent of the U.S. population.
They are saying the total amount of foreign-born residents is higher than any other country, but that does not mean that the percentage is the highest.
To provide a counterexample, according to Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån; the Swedish government agency responsible for population statistics and such), in 2023 the population of Sweden consisted of 10 551 707 people, of which 2 170 627 are foreign-born, amounting to approximately 20.6%.
Yeah, in Germany immigrants were almost 18% of the population in 2021. The EU average was lower than the US (at around 10%) but the countries in Europe that accept more immigrants do have a larger...
Of course, this is completely understandable given how absolutely abysmally hard it is to immigrate to the US legally. I've immigrated to Germany as a non-EU-citizen myself, so I'm intimately acquainted with how awful it is to do that here -- but compared to the US it's positively sane and sensible.
For a large investor, it depends on whether you plan on holding the properties long term and think of yourself as a property manager or are planning on flipping them as soon as the market is right...
For a large investor, it depends on whether you plan on holding the properties long term and think of yourself as a property manager or are planning on flipping them as soon as the market is right and think of yourself as a real estate investor. Think about what is required to rent out property: even the slummiest of slumlords need to have some sort of system to track and receive payments, deal with delinquent renters, track and resolve maintenance requests, handle each municipality's laws, etc, etc, etc. Or you can find, vet, and manage local property managers to do it for you, maybe, but then you have a department to manage those managers.
So the questions are: do you already have in-house expertise to manage the properties yourself? Do you have the expertise to find and manage the local property managers? Will building up that in-house expertise (which is inherently tied to a given location's housing stock and local laws) pay off in your five year plan?
And for a lot of organizations who are just buying housing stock because the value of it keeps increasing faster and faster the less of it there is remaining on the market to live in, the answer will be "no". Ironically, for every property they hold and don't rent, the value of all the rest increases. So they can keep costs lower and extract more value from the ones where their costs are low and profits high.
Honestly I think the 'empty housing' issue is very overblown. As a long term real estate investor, I can see that buying and holding works for SOME offshore investors but only really in ON and BC...
Honestly I think the 'empty housing' issue is very overblown. As a long term real estate investor, I can see that buying and holding works for SOME offshore investors but only really in ON and BC and only in their major cities. No one from China is buying up housing stock in Regina, SK and hoping to double their money in 5 years (for Americans that would be like buying up houses is small town Mississippi and hoping for a windfall)
But if offshore investors are buying and holding they're generally buying 'investment grade' housing, like a 5 million+ house in Vancouver. Thats possibly taking away a house from a rich Canadian buyer but its not the kind of housing that most people can afford nor the kind that would otherwise be used as a rental. And yes, if I owned a 5 million dollar house, I wouldn't want renters in it either. Too much risk. So they pay the tax for an uninhabited home and just keep it empty.
But that's really a small small part of the housing issue in Canada and to me, it feels likes its more about building a case against foreign investors, which I agree with. There are cases of those houses are being bought by 'students' or 'housewives' with very low incomes and there definitely have been some underhanded deals going on within certain communities where the investors, realtors, mortgage brokers and bankers all know each other and work together. Thats not good for the real estate market.
The bigger slice of investors are actually Canadian companies and people like me, who are older and able to pull equity out of the house we own to buy another and then rent them out and hold them for the cash flow, and eventually for the profits when they sell years down the road. Most people dont care too much about people like me because Im one guy and I dont control the market.
But there are now private equity funds, pooled money from rich people, who are buying up a LOT of housing stock and I find that worrisome. It was one thing when they concentrated on apartment buildings which is fine because of the huge cost involved, but now they are buying up single family homes, and that DOES take houses away from Joe and Jane who can't compete with their massive capital.
I just read about Starlight Investments, who own 70,000 multi family units and over 600 properties in Canada. Thats huge. They can shift rent rates in the market with that kind of reach. In January a group called Core Development announced plans to buy up 1 billion dollars worth of single family homes, over 10,000 homes in Canada, which caused quite the backlash. Those are the groups that need to be limited so that they dont block out Joe and Jane from ever being able to buy.
I definitely dont think foreign investors or even Canadian equity funds should be able to come in and buy up single family homes. They should be forced to stick with apartments only. Its hyper inflating our markets, which is ultimately good for investors like me, but it screws over so many younger Canadians and its unfair.
Absolutely. Individuals buying and managing a house or two in or around their area is great. Maybe property managers handling managing properties for an area with a number of different owners is...
Absolutely. Individuals buying and managing a house or two in or around their area is great. Maybe property managers handling managing properties for an area with a number of different owners is reasonable, even as it disassociates the owners from the actual process of holding and renting a property to someone else. But the idea of a company developing significant market control over a basic need like housing is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be squashed.
You're right that if a property is up for sale, it might not make sense to rent it out. Also, hiring a local property manager costs money. But there are also advantages to selling property where...
You're right that if a property is up for sale, it might not make sense to rent it out. Also, hiring a local property manager costs money.
But there are also advantages to selling property where the units are rented out - the buyer doesn't have to do the work. It's a business that's already up and running.
If the property is not for sale, hiring a property manager beats getting no income from the property, so I wouldn't expect properties to be vacant for years? Unless something's gone wrong, or the investors aren't professionals. I'd expect larger investors to be more professional about it.
But I don't actually know. How could we find out about vacancy rates?
This is a huge problem where I live (in the US) too, corporations buying up limited housing stock and leaving it vacant driving up purchase and rent prices beyond the ability of the local economy...
Over the last few decades, housing supply has been bought up by REIT's (Real estate investment trust), private equity firms, or the privileged for speculative purposes, leaving a large supply of housing vacant.
This is a huge problem where I live (in the US) too, corporations buying up limited housing stock and leaving it vacant driving up purchase and rent prices beyond the ability of the local economy to support it. I feel like there needs to be a HUGE disincentive to this, our governments need to do more to protect the interests of people first, not huge corporate investors.
Maybe a Canadian can chime in with a more detailed opinion, but my basic understanding is there's just not enough housing. That's the main reason current immigration levels are "unsustainable". My...
Maybe a Canadian can chime in with a more detailed opinion, but my basic understanding is there's just not enough housing. That's the main reason current immigration levels are "unsustainable". My understanding is also that a significant portion of the Canadian economy's recent growth has been due to immigration growing the pie. Slowing down immigration seems likely to hurt everyone unfortunately.
It's not just housing, pretty much all of our service infrastructure isn't built up to a level that can support this. Healthcare is particularly bad, since we were already insufficiently prepared...
It's not just housing, pretty much all of our service infrastructure isn't built up to a level that can support this. Healthcare is particularly bad, since we were already insufficiently prepared for aging boomers and then covid accelerated healthcare retirements and other stresses.
Canada has an immigration system that's obviously flawed but generally still pretty alright. The problem is there's a parallel stream of irregular immigration that's being abused, and our government has done an atrocious job of containing this, closing loopholes, and ensuring our immigration is orderly and at a manageable level. Our current government (a) sees immigrant growth on their watch as likely to grow their political base, (b) has a progressive wing that likes the idea of Canada taking in people who want to be here regardless of whether it's in our country's interest, and (c) has a business wing that really likes the idea of lots of entry level labour desperate to work and keep wages down.
On the face of it, something like international students should be a no brainer. Smart, educated, young people who build ties here early are pretty close to dream immigrants. Historically that's been true, but that only works if you're actually bringing in students. If you don't vet the institutions and programs you end up with a massive loophole of "students" who are signed up at diploma mills which barely exist, aren't educated, and are working under the table while trying to get permanent residency. It's a mess.
From the article: ... ... ... Even before, getting permanent residency was not guaranteed:
From the article:
[Canada] has capped the number of permanent residents it will welcome, announced a temporary limit on international student visas and pledged to shrink the proportion of the population made up of temporary immigrants such as foreign workers.
...
There were more than 1 million international students here in 2023, up 245 percent from a decade earlier and 60 percent since 2019. Canada, a country of 40 million, had roughly the same number of international students last year as the United States, a country more than eight times its size.
...
Everyone gets something from the arrangement. International students pay several times more in tuition than domestic students, a critical revenue source for colleges and universities whose funding has been slashed by provincial governments.
International students, meanwhile, may apply for post-graduation work permits and eventually permanent resident status, a process called two-step immigration.
...
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said last month that Canada would for the first time set targets for the number of temporary immigrants. He had already announced a temporary cap on undergraduate study permits and increased the amount of money that international students must have to study here.
The ministry also barred students in programs run by public-private college partnerships from applying for postgraduate work permits. Some, Miller said, run “the diploma equivalent of puppy mills,” offering poor curriculums in exchange for the prospect of permanent status.
Even before, getting permanent residency was not guaranteed:
Brunner, who works with international students, said the situation is difficult for many.
“There’s really a lot of uncertainty about your future,” she said. “This two-step migration really positions people to compete in the labor market with no guarantees of permanent residency at the end, and I think that’s been very stressful for individual students.”
Canadians calculate unemployment with the extra population included. That’s why I used U6 - it’s the most apples to apples of the figures the BoL collects.
Canadians calculate unemployment with the extra population included. That’s why I used U6 - it’s the most apples to apples of the figures the BoL collects.
The truth is that immigrants to Canada, many of them beginning as international students, hold up a large piece of the country's service economy; they perform the low-paid or insecure work that already-naturalized Canadians refuse to do. Over the last few decades, housing supply has been bought up by REIT's (Real estate investment trust), private equity firms, or the privileged for speculative purposes, leaving a large supply of housing vacant. Critics have pinned the housing crisis on international studies because it's a familiar refrain for other Western/European societies; blaming immigrants is an easy out. This whole crisis is manufactured by private industry working hand-in-hand with government, which is kind of what Canada is best known for.
Just as a sidenote, the last time federally-funded social housing was built in Canada, it was in 1993.
Refuse is an interesting word here. The local seafood processing plant here put out an ad online to hire overnight (eg graveyard) labourers, 12 hour shifts, for $15/hr. They're offering that because they know locals will "refuse" and are applying for immigrants and short term foreign workers instead of raising wages.
If Canadians are refusing wages, employer should be forced to up wages not sneak around and import international labour.
Many locals are refusing this kind of wage because working graveyard for pennies won't even make rent.
I also wonder how comfortable young Canadians feel working in an environment like fast food where every other worker in the company is from another cultural background and they regularly speak their native language to each other. The average person would feel like a foreigner at work.
When my 16 yr old worked at McD's so did a lot of his schoolmates. Now none of them do. All the staff are immigrants.
It's a crazy climate when you, as a teenager in their first job, are working with fully competent adults working at a job far below their skill level and you're still learning how to work an 8 hour shift.
I don't know whether there's more value in going through McJobs with your slacker Jr. High classmates than what's happening now, but it does probably expose young people to some rough truths about the immigrant experience.
Why is a fully capable, likely educated person is working at what we all know is a shit job meant for unskilled teenagers?
My first job was working at the local Burger King. I don't specifically remember any eight-hour shifts, but maybe I did on a weekend? There are limits on how much teenagers can work. I don't remember opening or closing, though other people did.
I guess it's a "broadening experience" when you come home smelling like grease. I worked less smelly jobs after that.
It seems like meeting people from other countries might have been fun? It depends on the people, of course.
I came here to say this, so thank you for saying it better. I'm also concerned because a lot of Canadians are falling for it and are having American style negative reactions to immigration and American style culture wars. We need immigrants in Canada, but we need sustainable levels and instead our governments are not investing in the services needed to support them while lining their cronies pockets. Well, at least in Ontario for sure.
Aren't you just saying the same thing I said, but in more detail? If that's what you were going for, then good job. I agree with you.
I think it's both and that's what I said. I said it was unsustainable. It can be both unsustainable and American culture wars bullshit. I guess we found the area we don't agree on. No one will convince me that international students are the reason houses are unaffordable.
A fellow Albertan! See at the public library storytime - that's where people in our province fight their battles 🥴
I think this particular line of thinking is highly problematic and just blatant anti-American prejudice. You can easily replace America in your sentence with the UK, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, France, Korea, or Japan and come away with a more compelling argument. America hosts the largest percentage of foreign born residents in the whole world and 70% of Americans think immigration is good for the country. In fact, it's only on the topic of illegal immigration that Americans are so against but that's easy for a Canadian to overlook as the country doesn't share an external border with a country that is frankly a massive source of illegal immigration (just to note for the record: I welcome most illegal immigrants, as a former Californian I see the net good they bring to the country).
I only bring this up because I believe Tildes can be a better platform than the rest of the internet and knee-jerk judgements should be avoided here - even the unfounded hurr-durr America is the worst country in history trend that's so cool these days. It's exhausting
Not commenting on the wider discussion, only on this part:
I don't think this is true? From your link:
They are saying the total amount of foreign-born residents is higher than any other country, but that does not mean that the percentage is the highest.
To provide a counterexample, according to Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån; the Swedish government agency responsible for population statistics and such), in 2023 the population of Sweden consisted of 10 551 707 people, of which 2 170 627 are foreign-born, amounting to approximately 20.6%.
While I can't find data specifically for 2021, the corresponding values in 2020 were 10 379 295 total population, of which 2 046 731 were foreign-born, approximately 19.7%. Data for this is available here from Statistics Sweden, under the header "Foreign born, citizenship and foreign/Swedish background"
Yeah, in Germany immigrants were almost 18% of the population in 2021. The EU average was lower than the US (at around 10%) but the countries in Europe that accept more immigrants do have a larger proportion compared to the US.
Of course, this is completely understandable given how absolutely abysmally hard it is to immigrate to the US legally. I've immigrated to Germany as a non-EU-citizen myself, so I'm intimately acquainted with how awful it is to do that here -- but compared to the US it's positively sane and sensible.
Is there data on vacancy rates? Buying property and not renting it out seems like a bizarre business plan and I wonder how common that is.
For a large investor, it depends on whether you plan on holding the properties long term and think of yourself as a property manager or are planning on flipping them as soon as the market is right and think of yourself as a real estate investor. Think about what is required to rent out property: even the slummiest of slumlords need to have some sort of system to track and receive payments, deal with delinquent renters, track and resolve maintenance requests, handle each municipality's laws, etc, etc, etc. Or you can find, vet, and manage local property managers to do it for you, maybe, but then you have a department to manage those managers.
So the questions are: do you already have in-house expertise to manage the properties yourself? Do you have the expertise to find and manage the local property managers? Will building up that in-house expertise (which is inherently tied to a given location's housing stock and local laws) pay off in your five year plan?
And for a lot of organizations who are just buying housing stock because the value of it keeps increasing faster and faster the less of it there is remaining on the market to live in, the answer will be "no". Ironically, for every property they hold and don't rent, the value of all the rest increases. So they can keep costs lower and extract more value from the ones where their costs are low and profits high.
Honestly I think the 'empty housing' issue is very overblown. As a long term real estate investor, I can see that buying and holding works for SOME offshore investors but only really in ON and BC and only in their major cities. No one from China is buying up housing stock in Regina, SK and hoping to double their money in 5 years (for Americans that would be like buying up houses is small town Mississippi and hoping for a windfall)
But if offshore investors are buying and holding they're generally buying 'investment grade' housing, like a 5 million+ house in Vancouver. Thats possibly taking away a house from a rich Canadian buyer but its not the kind of housing that most people can afford nor the kind that would otherwise be used as a rental. And yes, if I owned a 5 million dollar house, I wouldn't want renters in it either. Too much risk. So they pay the tax for an uninhabited home and just keep it empty.
But that's really a small small part of the housing issue in Canada and to me, it feels likes its more about building a case against foreign investors, which I agree with. There are cases of those houses are being bought by 'students' or 'housewives' with very low incomes and there definitely have been some underhanded deals going on within certain communities where the investors, realtors, mortgage brokers and bankers all know each other and work together. Thats not good for the real estate market.
The bigger slice of investors are actually Canadian companies and people like me, who are older and able to pull equity out of the house we own to buy another and then rent them out and hold them for the cash flow, and eventually for the profits when they sell years down the road. Most people dont care too much about people like me because Im one guy and I dont control the market.
But there are now private equity funds, pooled money from rich people, who are buying up a LOT of housing stock and I find that worrisome. It was one thing when they concentrated on apartment buildings which is fine because of the huge cost involved, but now they are buying up single family homes, and that DOES take houses away from Joe and Jane who can't compete with their massive capital.
I just read about Starlight Investments, who own 70,000 multi family units and over 600 properties in Canada. Thats huge. They can shift rent rates in the market with that kind of reach. In January a group called Core Development announced plans to buy up 1 billion dollars worth of single family homes, over 10,000 homes in Canada, which caused quite the backlash. Those are the groups that need to be limited so that they dont block out Joe and Jane from ever being able to buy.
I definitely dont think foreign investors or even Canadian equity funds should be able to come in and buy up single family homes. They should be forced to stick with apartments only. Its hyper inflating our markets, which is ultimately good for investors like me, but it screws over so many younger Canadians and its unfair.
Absolutely. Individuals buying and managing a house or two in or around their area is great. Maybe property managers handling managing properties for an area with a number of different owners is reasonable, even as it disassociates the owners from the actual process of holding and renting a property to someone else. But the idea of a company developing significant market control over a basic need like housing is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be squashed.
You're right that if a property is up for sale, it might not make sense to rent it out. Also, hiring a local property manager costs money.
But there are also advantages to selling property where the units are rented out - the buyer doesn't have to do the work. It's a business that's already up and running.
If the property is not for sale, hiring a property manager beats getting no income from the property, so I wouldn't expect properties to be vacant for years? Unless something's gone wrong, or the investors aren't professionals. I'd expect larger investors to be more professional about it.
But I don't actually know. How could we find out about vacancy rates?
This is a huge problem where I live (in the US) too, corporations buying up limited housing stock and leaving it vacant driving up purchase and rent prices beyond the ability of the local economy to support it. I feel like there needs to be a HUGE disincentive to this, our governments need to do more to protect the interests of people first, not huge corporate investors.
Maybe a Canadian can chime in with a more detailed opinion, but my basic understanding is there's just not enough housing. That's the main reason current immigration levels are "unsustainable". My understanding is also that a significant portion of the Canadian economy's recent growth has been due to immigration growing the pie. Slowing down immigration seems likely to hurt everyone unfortunately.
It's not just housing, pretty much all of our service infrastructure isn't built up to a level that can support this. Healthcare is particularly bad, since we were already insufficiently prepared for aging boomers and then covid accelerated healthcare retirements and other stresses.
Canada has an immigration system that's obviously flawed but generally still pretty alright. The problem is there's a parallel stream of irregular immigration that's being abused, and our government has done an atrocious job of containing this, closing loopholes, and ensuring our immigration is orderly and at a manageable level. Our current government (a) sees immigrant growth on their watch as likely to grow their political base, (b) has a progressive wing that likes the idea of Canada taking in people who want to be here regardless of whether it's in our country's interest, and (c) has a business wing that really likes the idea of lots of entry level labour desperate to work and keep wages down.
On the face of it, something like international students should be a no brainer. Smart, educated, young people who build ties here early are pretty close to dream immigrants. Historically that's been true, but that only works if you're actually bringing in students. If you don't vet the institutions and programs you end up with a massive loophole of "students" who are signed up at diploma mills which barely exist, aren't educated, and are working under the table while trying to get permanent residency. It's a mess.
From the article:
...
...
...
Even before, getting permanent residency was not guaranteed:
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.ph/RTP6s
That seems like cherry picking. Canadian unemployment is at 6.1%, compared to a U6 in the US of 7.4%.
Canadians calculate unemployment with the extra population included. That’s why I used U6 - it’s the most apples to apples of the figures the BoL collects.