Casual Marxism & the housing crisis

Vincent J. Curtis

14 June 23

RE: Free market is failing on housing.  Op-ed by Noelle Allan.  The Hamilton Spectator 14 June 23

This kind of casual Marxism that can maintain that the “free market is failing” at anything is a mental block against a solution to the crisis.  Unless maintaining the crisis is a tactic in promoting a Marxist overthrow.

Let’s start with the housing crisis.  American economist and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell has said for nearly fifty years that skyrocketing housing prices are caused by a shortage of land available for development; a shortage usually caused artificially by government policy.  And it makes sense: if you freeze housing development, then the price of housing will skyrocket in the face of rising population.  The Greenbelt was created to prevent new housing development; and the housing crisis in Ontario, along with homelessness, is the natural and foreseeable consequence of preventing the development of new housing.

It’s not enough to allow a limited amount of land for development.  If the land available is limited, then developers are going to build the most expensive housing they can to maximize their profit; and that’s why you see neighborhoods of monster homes.

If you’re truly interested in solving the housing and homelessness crisis – and many aren’t, it being too politically useful – then the Greenbelt needs to be abolished and land made available to developers in abundance.

The free market responds to market forces, and it won’t solve the housing crisis if government policy prevents it.

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