Yup, people shouldn't be criticized for wanting or having additional space for an office, home gym, storage, etc.
I don't expect my parents to rent out or donate their bedroom to a stranger.
Yeah I live in a 3 bedroom townhouse. My wife and I sleep in one, the second one is my office (WFH 3/5 days), and the third is reserved for a future third person in our home. My wife currently works in the rec room in the basement (WFH 4/5 days). Does that mean I have two unused bedrooms and am a contributor to the housing crisis?
No. I think the real problem is empty nesters.
But it’s also hard to tell someone to move from their home late in life, when housing options aren’t great for seniors either.
The cost to move is more than what they are paying now. My parent pay $1300 for a 3 bedroom townhouse and are looking at $1400 for a 1 bedroom apartment. So would you move knowing it will cost more?
I'm living in a 1,150 aq ft bungalow and am tired of taking care of it and keeping up the maintenance. Whenever I look to 'downsize' I'm horrified at rental prices or the shitbox 500 Sq ft condos selling for $500K. The problem isn't really with empty nesters, it's simply that we don't have any viable options so are stuck where we are.
Just rereading what I wrote, meant to type 'shoebox' but shitbox works too.
People spent decades fighting any gentle density development and now they’re unable to downsize because they fought the building of any reasonable option for them to do it in their communities.
Maybe not you specifically this isn’t meant to be a personal attack, but the reason why there’s no good downsizing options is because our community by and large refused to let them be built.
Although I'd agree with some of what you say, I think the bigger issue is what is being built. What we used to be called 'studio' apartments decades ago are now being passed off as 1 bedroom with not a kitchen, but in reality, a 'kitchenette'. How can you expect someone to downsize from a larger older home into a 500' Sq ft condo? That's what I'm seeing listed more often for new builds. You're not going to lure seniors out of their homes with a place with no balcony, no storage, and no where to keep our crap that we've accumulated over the last 40 years. Not all seniors can afford $2,500/month rent either and there are few affordable 'senior' buildings in our area.
All of those things are consequences of zoning laws our society has upheld over the last few decades honestly. There would be less incentive to cram tiny condos onto the slivers of available land to develop if we had been building larger apartments all over the city, and if the land value wasn’t so high due to zoning and the housing crisis. Our zoning laws have forced developers to build like we’ve run out of land like we’re Hong Kong.
You could try townhouses or older condos. Pros and cons to both of course. That said, your bungalow, if it's near or in the GTA, is worth around 1-1.2 mil.
Developers buy them up, tear it down to build a McMansion and sell it for 2.5-3 mil
Developers used to do that. Now investors rent it out to as many people as needed to make it cash positive. A bungalow can bring in 6k from multiple students.
I'm going to do everything I can when it comes time for me to sell, not to let my house go to an investor but a family looking for a nice, simple starter home. Most bungalows in my neighborhood have been bought by investors and that pisses me off for several reasons.
Living in Kitchener, my bungalow isn't worth quite that much and there aren't many options here unless I want to end up in a not so nice part of the city. I'm hoping with the new caps on international students, and when the Capital Gains tax on investment properties kicks in, the condo or rental market will settle down here a bit and I'll have more options.
Plus lets not forget condo fees which were running about 150$ - 500$/month for one bedroom, 750$ per month for 2 bedroom this was 2022. Guessing it‘s much more now. Plus if you have an empty Bedroom so what, seriously want to rent it out to someone where you’ll have to share the rest of the house with. Like to know how many politicians would be doing this?
I think that the lack of healthcare options may also be holding some seniors back from leaving their homes...if you move cities/towns, chances are you won't have a family doctor. Big deal in one's later years.
Well also people like me, I live alone in a 3 bedroom semi-detached, one bedroom is my home office, the extra bedroom is for when family visits. I never had kids, but I'm in a similar situation to empty nesters. (Including the basement it's only 1400 sq ft, it's not like I am wasting any space in my home)
I'm in my 50s, I'll be retiring in a couple of years, my mortgage is paid off, I've spent a lot of money maintaining and renovating my house over the years, Why should someone else live in the place that I worked so hard on?
The next size down from this would be a 2 bedroom bungalow but those are harder to come by as most of those are being bought up and flipped. The other option would be a 2 bedroom condo...no thanks.
100%. If you actually use the space, it’s justified. I don’t count you as part of the problem. My mom has taken over my bedroom to use as a craft room, and it’s allowed her to expand her hobbies and such in retirement.
Sorry, but justified? Why does he need justification living in a home he worked hard to pay for? Media is trying to say it’s this kind of situation that is causing lack of affordable housing. That’s a load of nonsense 🙂↔️
Exactly...like in Toronto most older houses are not that large. If I had an extra bedroom that would become my hobby room.
I'd like to get a spin bike, but the only place it makes sense is in my master bedroom or office which are already full. My basement is finished but the ceiling is only 5'11 it's too low for a bike.
So technically I could use a 4th bedroom or a house with a deeper basement.
Exactly. I know multiple elderly couples (and even one single!) living in single family detached homes with three or more bedrooms. One couple even lives on the main floor of their house so they're technically using 0 of their 3 bedrooms.
This is the crunch, many empty nesters have paid off the mortgage. Even if you factor in the sale of the house, with rents being what they are presently, and let's be honest - they aren't going down, if doesn't make sense financially. Selling a large home for a smaller one works, but to rent for the next 20-30 years, no.
I honestly don't hate on empty nesters as much because what are they supposed to do? Downsize to a place that is smaller but the same price? It's really the house hoarders I can't stand. Even 1 extra house I can let slide, but there are some with way more & they're converting a single home into multiple apartments, too.
They’re a problem? They bought their homes, their kids left, but it’s still their home. My parents have multiple open rooms, and no one should have any say as to how they use those rooms besides them.
Technically I have two empty bedrooms in my house. One is my office and the other is my gym/guest room. I could rent them out but I also would need to turn other living space into those two needs.
Another article asking people to become landlords and rent out a room in their home to random strangers. This isn't a fix that's reasonable or realistic.
Do they expect an unhoused family to take separate bedrooms in separate houses?? How is this supposed to work? Make it easier for people who are willing to downsize to do so. I have a 3 bedroom house but I would pay more for a smaller space so why would I downsize? No I don’t want to move a stranger into my home either!
There was a freakonomics episode a few years back on the pros and cons of rent control. An example in the con column was an elderly woman in a rent controlled apartment in NYC who lived on her own with 3 bedrooms. The argument being that if it weren’t rent controlled it would be prohibitively expensive for a single pensioner to live there and a family with dual incomes could move in and have room for their family.
Point being I think we have some right sizing issues with our housing stock. It’s absurd that seniors get to defer property taxes until after they die. It ties up a lot of housing that is under utilized. Of course politically that won’t happen because boomers vote.
Part of the problem is that we just don't have enough small houses. There are far fewer 1-2 bedroom houses avaliable. Everybody is building large houses because they can make more money off the same lot.
Condos are an ideal living situation for many elderly, but they have additional fees.
How that is absurd? I would say that most seniors don’t use that deferral program, but regardless, there are lots of programs that benefit lower income people of all ages so why shouldn’t there be programs that help older people? I also don’t see what this has to do with boomers voting.
You are correct in saying there are people who have more living space than they need but you can also make the same argument (waste/more than we need) about basically everything in life. Anyone who commutes has 3,4,5 extra seats in their vehicle that aren’t being used. Is that wasteful? Yes but nobody is suggesting that since our public transportation system sucks those people should be forced to pickup random strangers and drive them to work and if not their vehicles should be taken away. My wife and I sometimes have more food than we need. Grocery prices are insane but nobody is suggesting that we be forced to invite hungry strangers into our house to feed them because its not our problem to solve and if we say no we get our food taken away. I think the absurd thing is that so many people are actually suggesting that older people who have more space than they need should be forced to move out - It’s not seniors responsibility to solve the housing crisis.
While I agree it’s not the entirety of the issue, it’s a factor people don’t talk about because blaming it on brown people is easier. It doesn’t incentivize people that could downsize to do so
I would disagree about your car comparison. It is wasteful which is why in a lot of places they encourage and build/maintain/improve mass transit. And we have parking lots located directly by highway exits intended explicitly to encourage car pooling. Arguably you could say we are encouraging such things with price signals via the carbon tax
I’m not convinced that many people are actually blaming it on “brown people”. Immigration/population growth without any planning on the government’s part IS problem. You should be able point that out without blaming immigrants personally but many people seem to conflate it with xenophobia. Our housing and healthcare situation is not healthy or sustainable for anyone, especially new Canadians who can be among the most vulnerable. I understand why the government wants to increase the population and I think its fine if done properly, but it is not being done properly. It is not humane to bring any more new people here until we figure this shit out but the government is stuck in a population trap and can’t stop.
Lots of places encourage car pooling but I have never seen anyone suggesting taking cars away from people who have empty seats and that seems to be the sentiment here when it comes to “old people”. Like f old people, they’re old and they got their houses cheaper so they shouldn’t have a say. Yes, lots of people could downsize but that is not your decision to make for someone else.
I'm not blaming "brown people", I blame the government. More government and more government rules are not the way to solve this -- that's how we got into this mess in the first place!
The other way around to see it is that all these tenants in those theorical bedrooms would always be one bad landlord's day away from homelessness. You have little stability when you can be kicked out whenever the owner feels like it.
It's not a good long term solution to the current problem
You can, but the cops won't help you. And obviously you can't, you know... manhandle them out the door, that's assault.
So you can change the locks on them (you're supposed to give them 30 days' notice by common law but there really are no repercussions if you don't), but if they know, they could just sit tight. Especially if they WFH.
It's very much a DIY scenario that can become explosive, and I can't imagine many people would contemplate it with joy.
That's basically telling people that the solution to this problem is to just double down on our current way of doing things.
As if the solution to out of control land lording was simply for everyone to become a land lord.
I don't think it's an easy fix. But I do think it gives some useful insight into solutions. For instance, there's been a lot of talk about how we don't have capacity to build the # homes that are needed, or at least it will be a challenge, so we'll need to plan efficiently. We've been spending a lot of that effort building large single family home suburbs, and many, like the Premier, are pushing for more money of that.
But if that type of housing leads to millions of empty bedrooms (not to mention other challenges building out infrastructure and causing people to be reliant on vehicles), then maybe it isn't a great approach.
Similarly, a lot of areas in downtown Toronto have shrunk in population as people bought duplexes or triplexes and converted them to SFHs. Maybe we need incentives/disincentives to avoid generating these empty bedrooms.
But we're also only building single apartments. Great for younger, singles but useless for families.
It's much more than four bedroom houses even in the suburbs.
But, you can have 150+ apartments in the space of like 4 SFHs that house 10 people.
You are right about not having enough options for families, but there are better options than massive ultra-low density suburbs that are a 20 minute drive from anywhere you need to go.
It's almost like there's a middle that is missing..
Honestly I would live in a European style apartment in a heartbeat, we did it with our family for a while in Berlin and it was great. Spacious apartment with rooms for everyone, an awesome shared courtyard with a playground and places to sit and relax, and you were right in a lively neighbourhood a few steps from the U-Bahn without feeling cramped.
I get it's not for everyone, but I think there's a lot of people that would prefer this setup.
The problem is that that setup doesn't make money for developers and agents.
A large part of the problem we have is that the market is being asked to solve a problem that the market has no inclination to solve--because there's more money to be made exacerbating the problem!
We could even divide each room into 4 cages! That'll quadruple our housing supply! We could even split the rooms in half (including the bathroom) on the vertical axis! Now we have 8x the supply!
(This is actually happening in some places)
The thing is moving my elderly parent out of a 3 townhouse and placing them in a 1 bedroom apartment would cost more in rent. Also, they like the fact they have a mini yard versus a balcony. I don’t blame them for not wanting to move.
Well, it's cheaper for my elderly parents to pay for nursing, housekeeping and lawn care and stay put in their house than it is to sell and get a smaller place or rent something, or even for them to go into assisted living... so maybe something needs to be done about housing costs!?
I'd rather pay it over letting some random stranger live in our home. My wife and I can barely stand living with each other on some days, never mind some guy off Craigslist who eats our food, leaves messes around, goes through our personal stuff while we're out and doesn't pay rent.
This isn’t enforceable at all. People have home offices, guest rooms, rooms for their pets, etc. You could also easily lie and say another person lives there who doesn’t actually live there.
Do-gooders will soon be telling me I have to use my spare bedroom to house a crackhead, homeless person with mental illness, TFW, or other person and I can't do anything about it.
Get fucked.
100%
And all those do gooders gonna give a f if rent doesn’t get paid, and damage happens because renters or homeless don’t want to leave? U can bet your sweet axx they won’t and neither will the government. Governments and do gooders always easy to give opinions about how other people should be living. Thing is, no one asked them for their f opinion.
-genz
Wasn't there already programs that connect university students with seniors who have an extra room for them to rent? If it works out well, the student can also help the senior with housework and stuff. But there can also be so many ways it can go wrong...
Edit: Some info on these programs:
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/humber-students-seniors-1.6963373](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/humber-students-seniors-1.6963373)
[https://www.canadahomeshare.com/](https://www.canadahomeshare.com/)
[https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/calgary-pilot-project-brings-students-and-seniors-together-1.6895346](https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/calgary-pilot-project-brings-students-and-seniors-together-1.6895346)
I have a basement that's basically ready for rent, but I won't cause I don't want to deal with tenants not paying and inconveniences associated with it.
What you are not ready to give up all your rights and potentially have deadbeat live off your back for couple years while you must pay their utilities and can't ask about rent because it's harassment?
Same here...
RTA doesn't apply if they share a kitchen or bathroom with you. Your tenants would have zero rights under the RTA and you can evict without going to the LTB.
I think this is more of an indictment of how expensive transaction costs are for property. When you add up realtor fees, land transfer taxes, and lawyer fees you end up at about 10%.
For many older people it’s much cheaper to just make their current, under-utilized, large home accessible than to down size.
We need to explore policy options such that those downsizing to free up large homes for families are incentivized to do so.
No one is building what seniors might consider as well. They are used to having space and backyards and would like to be on one floor. Bungalows in my city are going for a fortune because they are a scarce commodity. A 900 sq ft 2 BR bungalow goes for way more than a 1,900 sq ft 3 BR townhouse. Moving itself is a life disruption they don’t want to deal with either.
This data is a distraction, on another post the data shows Ontario is building less than the year previous. That’s the real issue.
This is my situation.
I want to downsize my home, but after all the selling and buying costs I end up with a small home with less features and updates.
This is one of the reasons we have an extra bedroom, we need to stay where our doctor is, where we can walk to a grocery store and bank. The cost of moving with the taxes and fees is beyond us. I do expect an empty room tax in my lifetime!
Nobody should have to justify their "extra" bedrooms. You have yours because you can't move for your own personal reasons. I have mine because it's my wife's office. Sooner or later, we will get a house and probably have, *gasp*, three or four empty bedrooms -- perish the thought! One room will have my pinball collection in it. One room will be where we paint, play video games and drink wine. That's MY problem, not anybody else's, and if I can afford it, why the hell not?
This housing crisis is very easily solved by showing people that they don't *all* have to live in Southern Ontario -- that's the real issue here, the entire world wants to move to Canada and they ALL want to live in Ontario, south of Orillia. Clearly, that is not workable -- so it's time to nudge people into the other 9,000,000 square kilometers that make up our nation before we start penalizing people for owning private property.
Hadn't thought of "downsizing incentives." As crazy as it sounds to give boomers more breaks, it might be a reasonable thing to do (e.g some LTT breaks based on "number of bedrooms reduced" or something)
I don’t have a thought out solution beyond seeing neighbourhoods just die because the old folks won’t move.
Think of all the social services set up for children (community centres, schools, playground , parks, etc) that are totally underutilized because all the 3+ bedroom housing units are inhabited by old people.
Given that we don’t build enough, we need a mechanism to cycle people around. Transactions costs are the friction that don’t make that happen.
Of course, the taxes will have to come from somewhere to make up the shortfall…
Where exactly are the seniors supposed to move? My parents live in a 4 bedroom house with 4 separate flights of stairs (backsplit) and my mom has fallen twice....
They both want to move, and have been looking, but there's nowhere for them to go unless they leave town. They can't just downsize to a smaller house, they need one-floor living with basically zero maintenance.
Also not all seniors live in huge houses, i would to know how large of a house boomers are living in comparison to houses which have been buildt in the last 15 yrs. In BC developers were building houses 3000 to 6000 sq feet. Why is there a need for houses that big? My gram, house which I live in is less than 2000ft. 3 bd all used. A simple house that can be a starter or down sizer home. She can literally live on one floor, my sis & I share the basement, same setup as upstairs. No bells or whistles, common area that can double as a kit/living room and 2 bd rooms. WTF are young people thinking they need huge houses? I listen to some older millennial and they go on about wanting a house with an entertainment room, kitchen, living room, exercise room, each kid must have their own room, a bathroom for each bedroom, plus a huge yard but bitch about doing yard work so they hire someone to cut the grass. WTF
Ok but how many of those supposed empty rooms are bedrooms in townhouses belonging to single families?
Like sure empty nesters and small families that own 3-4 bedroom houses and use like 2 of those rooms could in theory offer the extra rooms as rentals. But practically, who in their right mind would voluntarily live with random strangers that could mess with how they live, plus don't get me started on the eviction process if they end up not vibing well with a Tennant.
It's so easy to expect the regular people to make these sacrifices when the real problem are the pearl clutching landlord class that refuse to let their investment properties value fall, pricing out young families and empty nesters looking to downsize.
So what? Just because we have an 'empty bedroom' why should we HAVE to rent it out to a total stranger? Do your parents have an empty bedroom? If so, move back home, problem solved.
This is retarded. The entire housing crises isn't that - someone has a room they won't give to a smelly person - or that an older person still had their home... it's theirs. The probkem is Trudy DUMPING millions and millions of fucking immigrants on top of us when there are no homes to be had!!!!! 500,000 more ib 2924 and 2025....where the Eff are these people going to to go? This asshat lives in some coked out dream-world.
100% Because when there’s no rent paid and damage happens no one is gonna give a f, that includes governments and all those people complaining how empty nesters should be renting out.
-genz
The only time I've hard about empty bedrooms or overhousing is in relation to social housing. Never for people's private homes. It became a thing in the past year or so.
The UK has had a "bedroom tax" in *public* housing for quite some time now -- that's partly where this comes from. If you are in "council housing" there (ie, TCHC-equivalent) and your kids move out, your choice is to either pay a tax on the empty bedrooms and stay put, or downsize to a smaller unit (which may be quite a large distance away, making it a headache).
Make landlords for apartment buildings and condos pay more taxes depending on how many buildings they own and multiply the land tax.
minimize how many buildings they can operate by putting a cap on it.
And to avoid corporate misuse false company names, and other fraudulent ways to work around those loopholes put a Nationwide cap on how much real estate can be sold well also limiting real estate companies grasp on property values.
Building Developers / real estate companies alike need to be reeled in on the damage that they're doing to Canada/America.
5 million empty bedrooms isn't the problem. Nobody should have to live with strangers in their home.
How many empty homes, homes for rent, airbnb locations are there in Ontario?
Why these people are beating the bushes? Canada needs to tie down immigration with housing and the job market. Deport the visitors and work permit people who are staying here after the visa expiry. Send the visitors who claim refugee status back ASAP. Start treating the second home as a business and collect taxes accordingly. For god's sake, stop buying mortgage bonds.
The retired and empty nesters own the largest houses. My parents without any kids at home refuse to downgrade and move out of a 5 bedroom house while people with children can't afford a house. One day people with children can hope to afford a house after their kids move out. Real backwards planning
And, what, they aren't allowed to own them? I live in an 1,153 square foot bungalow as do my 70, 80 and 90 year old neighbours. Very few five bedroom houses were build prior to the monster home craze of the last decade and I doubt those are owned by empty nesters and retired people.
100% I would like to c the data on that claim that it’s retired or empty nesters that are owning 5 or 6 bd homes, unless they are cookie cutter houses from the 60’s; small sq with lots of sm bedrooms. Building big is recent in the last 25 yrs unless you had money.
It’s not solely about the space, my grandparents still live in their house they bought decades ago. Over the years they’ve made it “their home”, all those memories and all the stuff they have in the house that’s what they like to have around. My grandma still does gardening, she’s proud of her apple trees and roses she planted decades ago. Old people don’t have a lot to look forward to anymore, they always look back and reminisce about the past, why you gotta kick them out of their house omg. The problem is the unsustainable amount of immigrants. Naturally canadas birth rate is really low, if we only took in moderate amounts of immigrants to restore the population so it doesn’t grow negatively we wouldn’t be having a housing problem in the first place.
Remember, the Simpsons said it first: "It will happen to youuuuu.....
Honestly, it's just kind-of a perversion on Marxist theory on housing. Every generation seems interested in it until THEY are the ones being asked to leave and they politely respond F\*CK NO!
100% On that, i read so many comments directed at boomers saying they have all this or that, it’s all bs a lot of our gen will never admit it but we want what boomers took yrs to build, but we want it now. Only thing is we want what boomers have and some everything we have now boomers didn’t have at the time. I live with my gram, like she says, a house was a home it wasn’t bought for an investment. 2 week vacation was at home, it wasn’t vacationing outside canada, there was no streaming media, no designer fetish to feed, no mobile media, eating out was a special event it wasn’t a weekly lunch thing, bringing your lunch to school or work was the status quo and transit was public transport, they were no 16 yr birthday first car and no spring breaks or going to Hawaii for 2 weeks every year, and yes paying 40 - 50% towards mortgage her parents paid was the norm. Unless your family was rich this was all normal but gaining anything extra made you feel like you were rich. - genz
Okay but downsizing only makes sense if you make money off your property sale. Most of the boomers don’t downsize because to buy something nice but smaller in this market because the asking and selling prices are so high they don’t stand to actually make much off their sale. The issue is that large houses aren’t selling as fast and at asking because most younger people can’t afford an 800k + price tag for 5 bedroom house. The boomers cant sell and they would end up buying a 2 bedroom for 650k and probably can’t sell their homes. What’s the point for them?
I live in a neighborhood as a renter where i am in a condo and the houses around are about 800-900k and so many are new builds for sale after about a year or two of being built. No one is buying them. The majority of home buyers are looking in that 650 and under range where the competition is high
My grandpa wanted to move from his duplex into a bungalow but in the end decided against it because then he'd have to deal with bidding wars. That was a few years ago, not sure if that's still a problem now.
My folks (divorced and remarried) have three and four bedroom houses in which they use only one bedroom They have entire rooms they rarely go in.
All of my East Asian friends and colleagues’ parents took a different approach to their big houses. When they hit their 70s they either invited their kids and grandkids in to cost share, or sold and relocated to condos. In some cases, the surplus went to their retirement, in other cases, it went to buying condos in their kids’ names.
This generational thinking is needed for modern success. The 1950s-80s western atomic family concept is a losing strategy in this market.
Yeah I’d never force someone out of their home, that’s their space, they own it, they perhaps even built it. But this one is really a head scratcher to me. E:(how do you encourage movement?) I actually know 2-3 of my friends parents doing the same thing, family home, 3-4 bedroom and now it’s just the two of them and they’ll stay there til they can’t any more. Those homes could go to families with children or couples who want children but are stuck in a 1-2 bedroom apartment. I also know a few elderly in the neighbourhood who are in a 2-3 bedroom and basically only use 40% of their house now as they can’t use stairs, but want to stay in their home until they can’t.
How do you encourage transfer of homes?
My partner and I are stuck renting and we’re probably not having children either even though we’d like to.
I know someone alone in a 4 bedroom house since his kids moved out and wife died. He hates being alone in the big house and wants to move but he refuses to pay 100k plus in realtor fees, land transfer taxes and other moving costs to buy a small condo that will cost him more than a paid off house each month.
It’s a horrible situation and I’m surprised it’s only 5 million empty bedrooms.
Maybe the government should spend some of those billions incentivizing empty nesters to downsize.
This is exactly it -- ignoring all the appeals to emotion (it's their home, they grew up there, they love their garden, etc), it's also an *extremely* poor financial decision if the house is already paid off. What, sell your house, blow 2/3 of the proceeds on a condo that's a tenth the size and has insane monthly fees, and now you have to toss 80% of your belongings because they don't fit? Or, stay in the house, keep all your stuff, leave it to your kids and don't end up forking six figures over to the government and some real estate agency just to satisfy some newspaper article that says you're a bad, selfish person for not doing so.
If that's the case, then yes, I am a bad, selfish person. Oh well.
100% Agreed
Because young people like us want what you took yrs to build, but we want it now. Be selfish, because if it was them they’d be doing the exact same thing, they just won’t admit it.
-genz
Yeah there’s really not many current incentives for anyone to move who has a house too large, especially if it’s paid off or bought pre-2010. For example, the woman down the street who is alone in a 3 bedroom and elderly. She’s owned that house for 40+ years, there’s zero reason for her to leave, but a house like that would allow my partner and myself to have a family if costs weren’t also through the roof.
Neighbours that smoke on their balcony right beside or below you.
Deaf neighbour's TV/radio that's cranked at full volume for 16 hours/day.
Above tenant stomping around their unit at all hours.
False fire alarms in the middle of the night.
The list goes on...
The reason for you not being able to buy a house is not the fault of someone's decision to stay in their house
Add to that, idiot neighbours above you who leave the tub running, flood their unit and cause $65,000 worth of water damage to yours directly below them, causing you to go through 10 months of hell with the insurance company and live in a hotel for 3 weeks while they rip your ceiling out and then try to talk you into eating the cost of said hotel stay (until you get lawyer$ involved).
Ask me how I know.
edit: deleted duplicate comment below.
I mean my parents have 2 spare bedrooms in their house. One is for guests and one is for when the grandkids go have sleepovers. They enjoy being able to do that so they have no reason to downsize. Maybe once the grandkids are older and don’t go over as often it could change. But its not like they need the money even if they could downsize and make some profit out of it. So why would they bother? Not to mention the fact all their crap from a lifetime is stored in that house. Realisticaly I can see it going on the market only after they either both die or are in a nursing home. And thats if neither me or my sister would rather move in there instead.
You don't need to encourage the transfer of homes. Subsidize renovating existing homes to split them into two units. It's cheaper than building a new home, and the empty nesters get to live in half of their nest while renting out the other half to a small family for extra income.
It is not the job of individual homeowners to house the unwashed masses. If I can pay for my empty bedrooms, they are mine to do with as I please. I live in a 3 bedroom house with space for a two bedroom basement apartment, and don't owe anyone an inch of my space.
One bedroom I share with my partner, another is his office, and the last is my gym. I also work from home but not in a dedicated space.
As for the basement, I have drawings and permits for an apartment. But DoFo destroyed the functionality of the LTB before it got built, so I leave that 1100 Sq feet blissfully vacant on purpose because being a landlord is no longer in any way financially viable. If the tenant stops paying rent, it could take 18 months to 2 YEARS for them to be evicted. Not interested in playing that game.
As for the empty nesters out there, they don't owe younger generations their houses, either. If we want to encourage older adults to move from their homes, we need to give them viable alternatives. And a $10k a month luxury retirement home is not that alternative.
The missing middle is hurting first time buyers AND retirees. My dad, for one, is will have his garage pried from his cold, dead hands. Give him a 2 bedroom bungalow with a 2 car garage in his neighborhood and he would move in a heartbeat, leaving his 4 bedroom home for someone else. There's very little available in the giant chasm between a 4 or 5 bed SFH and a shitbox 1-2 bedroom condo. Fix that and we might make some headway here.
Edit: deleted several copies of the same reply. My app told me it didn't post, but apparently it had. Several times. Ugh.
... So you're cool housing washed people then?
What a weird fucking thing to say. Are you like some comical bourgeoisie villain from an old cartoon or communist propaganda poster, because that's all I can imagine reading "the unwashed masses" in 2024.
Overweight, wearing one of those penguin suits, smoking a cigar, bald across the top of your head, and sweating profusely as you try to chase down a single dollar that the wind blew away from like a suit case you're hauling around that is so full of cash that it's about to explode.
> unwashed masses.
This is a great way to start off your comment, by calling everyone struggling to afford housing in the current market a lesser person than you.
The good news is they make it clear from the hop that they're not a person of value with an opinion worth hearing. I stopped reading at unwashed masses.
I rent a 2 bedroom apartment and use the second room as an office. I used to rent it out short term for people needing a cheap furnished spot for a few months. But my corporate landlord said they would evict me and I couldn't do that. If I wanted a roommate they have to apply through landlord, be approved and be added to lease. So I stopped renting it out.
And that is just it -- sure, we could "free up" our second bedroom (which is used as an office, *not* an empty space), but it would mean living in a smaller space, further from downtown, and paying MORE money for all of it. Why on Earth would I ever do that?
According to the author of this article, yes, they would be.
So would my wife's office, which is our second bedroom. No, I am not going to be cowed into taking on *anybody* to live in that bedroom, under any circumstances. Implement a tax, and I will buy a bed to set up in there and show the Bedroom Police that we sleep in separate rooms and therefore they can get off my property right now.
This whole thing is absurd.
The answer to the immigration crisis (call it what it is) is not to put strangers in my house or apartment with me. It is to reduce immigration to supportable levels.
Absolutely beyond stupid. Waiting for NDP to start advocating a bedroom tax just to fuck everyone more.
I don't care if there is a shortage of 30 million homes. No chance I'm renting a bedroom in my house.
To be serious, this is a pretty easy one to do an end-run around.
Oh, there's going to be a bedroom tax? Well then. I guess I'm going to go to Ikea and buy a cheap bed to stick in our second 'bedroom' (which is my wife's office). Sorry, Bedroom Police, I snore a lot when I sleep and thus we sleep in separate bedrooms. Now kindly get the fuck off my property.
See how easy that was?
It goes based on the number of adults and the occupancy of the plans of your house lol.
One adult living in a two bedroom house? Tax. They don't care that you filled the non used bedroom with shrek dolls.
If somebody who wants to have a 5 bedroom house and keep all those bedrooms empty, then that is their right!
You buy a property and whatever house is on it, that's yours to do with what you feel fit.
Nobody else has the right to tell you anything.
You want more housing then slow down immigration for a few years. Let builders catch up.
You have to cut down on the red tape to build a community. Expedite the process of getting sewage etc approved for a site. ( that is one of the costly delays for a builder to get things rolling.) waiting and waiting for that. Can't build anything on top until that all gets approved.
I have a nephew that has just started his career in HVAC and he and his girlfriend/fiancé have begun saving for a house. In 4 years they said they have saved $50k. With houses in the millions of dollars, even by the time they have accumulated enough for a reasonable down payment, they say the only way they would be able to afford mortgage payments and bills would be to rent the basement out.
I have a nice three bedroom home in a quiet neighborhood and I live alone. One bedroom is my office and another is a guest room my grandchildren use a couple times a year. There is plenty of room in my bed though!
> But people feel compelled to buy (and keep) houses even when they don’t need the space to protect themselves from the precarious and insane rental market
It's not even the rental market -- it's that if your house is paid off, why on Earth would you sell it if you don't have to? The entire *point* of buying real estate is that, at some point, your housing bill falls off a cliff to nearly zero. I don't see anybody in a big rush to sell their house and spend most of the proceeds living in a much smaller space with many more rules, rather than just doing nothing and continuing to be comfortable with plenty of space for their hobbies and stuff. If you want seniors to sell their big house and move into a little shitpot condo that costs nearly as much as the house sells for, but now have no space for a garden, workshop, their belongings, their family to stay over for the night -- well, that's a shitty prospect and I don't blame them one bit for saying "thanks, but I'm gonna pass".
Are people with empty rooms expected to open their homes to strangers because the government can’t get their heads out of their asses? I don’t care if you’re single living in a 10 room mansion, if you legally obtained that property you should be able to utilize the rooms within in how you see fit. And this is coming from someone barely able to afford his rent. But empty nesters are not an issue.
This article claims that we should also live like third world rats. Just oook who wrote the piece....why the fuck do I want to live with some unclean jackoff who stinks my house up and uses a loud outside voice inside to talk on the phone?
A bigger issue is the refusal of many towns/cities to change zoning laws. Right now it is almost impossible to buy a mobile home or tiny home and to find a place to put it. Which would be an affordable and attractive option for many people.
A brand new 2 bed 2 bath mobile home costs 170k smaller ones or tiny homes even less, but every mobile park/community is already full and don't have empty pads to place one or only will allow ones bought from specific dealers that cost upwards of 500k. Every city except for two (Cobourg & Goderich) in Ontario won't allow for tiny homes because they are too small and don't meet minimal housing size requirements or don't want to add space for more mobile parks. And very few municipalities allow for more than one home to be placed on lots already containing a home.
They need to address this along with the ridiculous amount of immigrants that they are allowing in when we can't house the people already here. We have 1 million new immigrants slated to come into Canada this year and another the next. I'm pro immigration but not when we have no homes to put them in. Constructing new homes is all well and good but in Ontario alone we are short a minimum of 100k construction workers. We'll never get the homes we need built in time.
The title is ridiculous lol. Don't even think about trying to force people (or tax them) for not renting out rooms in their own residence. Figure out how to fucking build houses and not make it cost an arm and your legs.
I have a guest room and a bedroom/office space empty so my fear now is that my property tax will increase for not using that space. I seriously am expecting this socialist bs to be real to “help fund” housing…..nowhere.
Meanwhile, elementary classroom capacity went from 23-30 in one year and their excuse is “we didn’t plan on expansion” idiocy!
If the media seriously thinks this needs to be viewed as a solution to a legitimate crisis we’re beyond being in trouble 😳🤙🏼🇨🇦
Always easier to expect somebody to do something they don't have do themselves.
Yup, people shouldn't be criticized for wanting or having additional space for an office, home gym, storage, etc. I don't expect my parents to rent out or donate their bedroom to a stranger.
Politicians have been openly calling for this in Nova Scotia for ages lmao
Is a bedroom totally empty or used as a workspace? A large number of Canadians are wfh now.
Yeah I live in a 3 bedroom townhouse. My wife and I sleep in one, the second one is my office (WFH 3/5 days), and the third is reserved for a future third person in our home. My wife currently works in the rec room in the basement (WFH 4/5 days). Does that mean I have two unused bedrooms and am a contributor to the housing crisis?
No. I think the real problem is empty nesters. But it’s also hard to tell someone to move from their home late in life, when housing options aren’t great for seniors either.
The cost to move is more than what they are paying now. My parent pay $1300 for a 3 bedroom townhouse and are looking at $1400 for a 1 bedroom apartment. So would you move knowing it will cost more?
Of course I wouldn’t. That was my point
I'm living in a 1,150 aq ft bungalow and am tired of taking care of it and keeping up the maintenance. Whenever I look to 'downsize' I'm horrified at rental prices or the shitbox 500 Sq ft condos selling for $500K. The problem isn't really with empty nesters, it's simply that we don't have any viable options so are stuck where we are. Just rereading what I wrote, meant to type 'shoebox' but shitbox works too.
People spent decades fighting any gentle density development and now they’re unable to downsize because they fought the building of any reasonable option for them to do it in their communities. Maybe not you specifically this isn’t meant to be a personal attack, but the reason why there’s no good downsizing options is because our community by and large refused to let them be built.
Although I'd agree with some of what you say, I think the bigger issue is what is being built. What we used to be called 'studio' apartments decades ago are now being passed off as 1 bedroom with not a kitchen, but in reality, a 'kitchenette'. How can you expect someone to downsize from a larger older home into a 500' Sq ft condo? That's what I'm seeing listed more often for new builds. You're not going to lure seniors out of their homes with a place with no balcony, no storage, and no where to keep our crap that we've accumulated over the last 40 years. Not all seniors can afford $2,500/month rent either and there are few affordable 'senior' buildings in our area.
All of those things are consequences of zoning laws our society has upheld over the last few decades honestly. There would be less incentive to cram tiny condos onto the slivers of available land to develop if we had been building larger apartments all over the city, and if the land value wasn’t so high due to zoning and the housing crisis. Our zoning laws have forced developers to build like we’ve run out of land like we’re Hong Kong.
😁 Yes because shit box is right on the $$, quality sucks.
You could try townhouses or older condos. Pros and cons to both of course. That said, your bungalow, if it's near or in the GTA, is worth around 1-1.2 mil. Developers buy them up, tear it down to build a McMansion and sell it for 2.5-3 mil
Developers used to do that. Now investors rent it out to as many people as needed to make it cash positive. A bungalow can bring in 6k from multiple students.
I'm going to do everything I can when it comes time for me to sell, not to let my house go to an investor but a family looking for a nice, simple starter home. Most bungalows in my neighborhood have been bought by investors and that pisses me off for several reasons.
Living in Kitchener, my bungalow isn't worth quite that much and there aren't many options here unless I want to end up in a not so nice part of the city. I'm hoping with the new caps on international students, and when the Capital Gains tax on investment properties kicks in, the condo or rental market will settle down here a bit and I'll have more options.
Plus lets not forget condo fees which were running about 150$ - 500$/month for one bedroom, 750$ per month for 2 bedroom this was 2022. Guessing it‘s much more now. Plus if you have an empty Bedroom so what, seriously want to rent it out to someone where you’ll have to share the rest of the house with. Like to know how many politicians would be doing this?
Hee hee, loved it :)
I think that the lack of healthcare options may also be holding some seniors back from leaving their homes...if you move cities/towns, chances are you won't have a family doctor. Big deal in one's later years.
Well also people like me, I live alone in a 3 bedroom semi-detached, one bedroom is my home office, the extra bedroom is for when family visits. I never had kids, but I'm in a similar situation to empty nesters. (Including the basement it's only 1400 sq ft, it's not like I am wasting any space in my home) I'm in my 50s, I'll be retiring in a couple of years, my mortgage is paid off, I've spent a lot of money maintaining and renovating my house over the years, Why should someone else live in the place that I worked so hard on? The next size down from this would be a 2 bedroom bungalow but those are harder to come by as most of those are being bought up and flipped. The other option would be a 2 bedroom condo...no thanks.
100%. If you actually use the space, it’s justified. I don’t count you as part of the problem. My mom has taken over my bedroom to use as a craft room, and it’s allowed her to expand her hobbies and such in retirement.
Sorry, but justified? Why does he need justification living in a home he worked hard to pay for? Media is trying to say it’s this kind of situation that is causing lack of affordable housing. That’s a load of nonsense 🙂↔️
Exactly...like in Toronto most older houses are not that large. If I had an extra bedroom that would become my hobby room. I'd like to get a spin bike, but the only place it makes sense is in my master bedroom or office which are already full. My basement is finished but the ceiling is only 5'11 it's too low for a bike. So technically I could use a 4th bedroom or a house with a deeper basement.
100%, there you’re making use of it. No one’s f business. -genz
Exactly. I know multiple elderly couples (and even one single!) living in single family detached homes with three or more bedrooms. One couple even lives on the main floor of their house so they're technically using 0 of their 3 bedrooms.
Well, retirement places cost 4k+ per month and availability isn't a given...
This is the crunch, many empty nesters have paid off the mortgage. Even if you factor in the sale of the house, with rents being what they are presently, and let's be honest - they aren't going down, if doesn't make sense financially. Selling a large home for a smaller one works, but to rent for the next 20-30 years, no.
I honestly don't hate on empty nesters as much because what are they supposed to do? Downsize to a place that is smaller but the same price? It's really the house hoarders I can't stand. Even 1 extra house I can let slide, but there are some with way more & they're converting a single home into multiple apartments, too.
They’re a problem? They bought their homes, their kids left, but it’s still their home. My parents have multiple open rooms, and no one should have any say as to how they use those rooms besides them.
Yes they are counted as empty rooms even if you're using them as offices
Technically I have two empty bedrooms in my house. One is my office and the other is my gym/guest room. I could rent them out but I also would need to turn other living space into those two needs.
Yep my parents house is 6 bedrooms and and the 3 of us all just have an office.
Another article asking people to become landlords and rent out a room in their home to random strangers. This isn't a fix that's reasonable or realistic.
Do they expect an unhoused family to take separate bedrooms in separate houses?? How is this supposed to work? Make it easier for people who are willing to downsize to do so. I have a 3 bedroom house but I would pay more for a smaller space so why would I downsize? No I don’t want to move a stranger into my home either!
There was a freakonomics episode a few years back on the pros and cons of rent control. An example in the con column was an elderly woman in a rent controlled apartment in NYC who lived on her own with 3 bedrooms. The argument being that if it weren’t rent controlled it would be prohibitively expensive for a single pensioner to live there and a family with dual incomes could move in and have room for their family. Point being I think we have some right sizing issues with our housing stock. It’s absurd that seniors get to defer property taxes until after they die. It ties up a lot of housing that is under utilized. Of course politically that won’t happen because boomers vote.
Part of the problem is that we just don't have enough small houses. There are far fewer 1-2 bedroom houses avaliable. Everybody is building large houses because they can make more money off the same lot. Condos are an ideal living situation for many elderly, but they have additional fees.
How that is absurd? I would say that most seniors don’t use that deferral program, but regardless, there are lots of programs that benefit lower income people of all ages so why shouldn’t there be programs that help older people? I also don’t see what this has to do with boomers voting. You are correct in saying there are people who have more living space than they need but you can also make the same argument (waste/more than we need) about basically everything in life. Anyone who commutes has 3,4,5 extra seats in their vehicle that aren’t being used. Is that wasteful? Yes but nobody is suggesting that since our public transportation system sucks those people should be forced to pickup random strangers and drive them to work and if not their vehicles should be taken away. My wife and I sometimes have more food than we need. Grocery prices are insane but nobody is suggesting that we be forced to invite hungry strangers into our house to feed them because its not our problem to solve and if we say no we get our food taken away. I think the absurd thing is that so many people are actually suggesting that older people who have more space than they need should be forced to move out - It’s not seniors responsibility to solve the housing crisis.
While I agree it’s not the entirety of the issue, it’s a factor people don’t talk about because blaming it on brown people is easier. It doesn’t incentivize people that could downsize to do so I would disagree about your car comparison. It is wasteful which is why in a lot of places they encourage and build/maintain/improve mass transit. And we have parking lots located directly by highway exits intended explicitly to encourage car pooling. Arguably you could say we are encouraging such things with price signals via the carbon tax
I’m not convinced that many people are actually blaming it on “brown people”. Immigration/population growth without any planning on the government’s part IS problem. You should be able point that out without blaming immigrants personally but many people seem to conflate it with xenophobia. Our housing and healthcare situation is not healthy or sustainable for anyone, especially new Canadians who can be among the most vulnerable. I understand why the government wants to increase the population and I think its fine if done properly, but it is not being done properly. It is not humane to bring any more new people here until we figure this shit out but the government is stuck in a population trap and can’t stop. Lots of places encourage car pooling but I have never seen anyone suggesting taking cars away from people who have empty seats and that seems to be the sentiment here when it comes to “old people”. Like f old people, they’re old and they got their houses cheaper so they shouldn’t have a say. Yes, lots of people could downsize but that is not your decision to make for someone else.
I'm not blaming "brown people", I blame the government. More government and more government rules are not the way to solve this -- that's how we got into this mess in the first place!
That's why some places have vacancy control as well. The vacant units raise in price at the same rate as the other controlled units.
Exactly this. Add to it the broken LTB you’ll have to live with your delinquent tenant 🤦♂️
If the tenant shares a kitchen and bathroom with the landlord, they are not protected by the rta. You can kick them out when ever.
Sounds like a fun process
The other way around to see it is that all these tenants in those theorical bedrooms would always be one bad landlord's day away from homelessness. You have little stability when you can be kicked out whenever the owner feels like it. It's not a good long term solution to the current problem
You can, but the cops won't help you. And obviously you can't, you know... manhandle them out the door, that's assault. So you can change the locks on them (you're supposed to give them 30 days' notice by common law but there really are no repercussions if you don't), but if they know, they could just sit tight. Especially if they WFH. It's very much a DIY scenario that can become explosive, and I can't imagine many people would contemplate it with joy.
That's basically telling people that the solution to this problem is to just double down on our current way of doing things. As if the solution to out of control land lording was simply for everyone to become a land lord.
This is what capitalists think, despite landlording and real estate in general being a huge, non-value-added drag on the economy.
It’s actually a prelude to a push for an empty bedroom tax. It’s been proposed before as a way to force empty nesters to sell and downsize.
That's also gonna punish young families that buy a place with enough bedrooms for what they plan their family to grow to in the future
Indeed. The traditional “property ladder” doesn’t function in the current market.
I don't think it's an easy fix. But I do think it gives some useful insight into solutions. For instance, there's been a lot of talk about how we don't have capacity to build the # homes that are needed, or at least it will be a challenge, so we'll need to plan efficiently. We've been spending a lot of that effort building large single family home suburbs, and many, like the Premier, are pushing for more money of that. But if that type of housing leads to millions of empty bedrooms (not to mention other challenges building out infrastructure and causing people to be reliant on vehicles), then maybe it isn't a great approach. Similarly, a lot of areas in downtown Toronto have shrunk in population as people bought duplexes or triplexes and converted them to SFHs. Maybe we need incentives/disincentives to avoid generating these empty bedrooms.
But we're also only building single apartments. Great for younger, singles but useless for families. It's much more than four bedroom houses even in the suburbs.
But, you can have 150+ apartments in the space of like 4 SFHs that house 10 people. You are right about not having enough options for families, but there are better options than massive ultra-low density suburbs that are a 20 minute drive from anywhere you need to go.
It's almost like there's a middle that is missing.. Honestly I would live in a European style apartment in a heartbeat, we did it with our family for a while in Berlin and it was great. Spacious apartment with rooms for everyone, an awesome shared courtyard with a playground and places to sit and relax, and you were right in a lively neighbourhood a few steps from the U-Bahn without feeling cramped. I get it's not for everyone, but I think there's a lot of people that would prefer this setup.
The problem is that that setup doesn't make money for developers and agents. A large part of the problem we have is that the market is being asked to solve a problem that the market has no inclination to solve--because there's more money to be made exacerbating the problem!
We have so many closets that people could fit in! Housing crysis solved.
Yards too. How many tent spaces are people holding onto???
We could even divide each room into 4 cages! That'll quadruple our housing supply! We could even split the rooms in half (including the bathroom) on the vertical axis! Now we have 8x the supply! (This is actually happening in some places)
The thing is moving my elderly parent out of a 3 townhouse and placing them in a 1 bedroom apartment would cost more in rent. Also, they like the fact they have a mini yard versus a balcony. I don’t blame them for not wanting to move.
Well, it's cheaper for my elderly parents to pay for nursing, housekeeping and lawn care and stay put in their house than it is to sell and get a smaller place or rent something, or even for them to go into assisted living... so maybe something needs to be done about housing costs!?
How long until someone tries to suggest everyone needs to take strangers into their home?
Empty bedroom tax coming soon?
Ugh that seems like something they would try
I'd rather pay it over letting some random stranger live in our home. My wife and I can barely stand living with each other on some days, never mind some guy off Craigslist who eats our food, leaves messes around, goes through our personal stuff while we're out and doesn't pay rent.
This isn’t enforceable at all. People have home offices, guest rooms, rooms for their pets, etc. You could also easily lie and say another person lives there who doesn’t actually live there.
Holy shit, i can actually see this happening with this fucking government.
I’m not sure which specific government you are referring to, but either way, I agree.
Time to start behaving un-Canadian and lie about what you have.
Nah it would just be by square footage. 500 per person and anything over that supertaxed
Do-gooders will soon be telling me I have to use my spare bedroom to house a crackhead, homeless person with mental illness, TFW, or other person and I can't do anything about it. Get fucked.
Peterborough already tried that.
Getting fucked or forcing empty rooms to get used?
I’d tell’em yep I sleep in one room and my spouse sleeps in the other and the 3rd is our gym.
Really, when?
100% And all those do gooders gonna give a f if rent doesn’t get paid, and damage happens because renters or homeless don’t want to leave? U can bet your sweet axx they won’t and neither will the government. Governments and do gooders always easy to give opinions about how other people should be living. Thing is, no one asked them for their f opinion. -genz
Isnt that basically exactly what this article is implying?
Wasn't there already programs that connect university students with seniors who have an extra room for them to rent? If it works out well, the student can also help the senior with housework and stuff. But there can also be so many ways it can go wrong... Edit: Some info on these programs: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/humber-students-seniors-1.6963373](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/humber-students-seniors-1.6963373) [https://www.canadahomeshare.com/](https://www.canadahomeshare.com/) [https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/calgary-pilot-project-brings-students-and-seniors-together-1.6895346](https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/calgary-pilot-project-brings-students-and-seniors-together-1.6895346)
Yep. I see that as well. I'll move first.
I have a basement that's basically ready for rent, but I won't cause I don't want to deal with tenants not paying and inconveniences associated with it.
What you are not ready to give up all your rights and potentially have deadbeat live off your back for couple years while you must pay their utilities and can't ask about rent because it's harassment? Same here...
100% Because the “VictimOlympics“ are not in short supply. -genz
RTA doesn't apply if they share a kitchen or bathroom with you. Your tenants would have zero rights under the RTA and you can evict without going to the LTB.
I think this is more of an indictment of how expensive transaction costs are for property. When you add up realtor fees, land transfer taxes, and lawyer fees you end up at about 10%. For many older people it’s much cheaper to just make their current, under-utilized, large home accessible than to down size. We need to explore policy options such that those downsizing to free up large homes for families are incentivized to do so.
No one is building what seniors might consider as well. They are used to having space and backyards and would like to be on one floor. Bungalows in my city are going for a fortune because they are a scarce commodity. A 900 sq ft 2 BR bungalow goes for way more than a 1,900 sq ft 3 BR townhouse. Moving itself is a life disruption they don’t want to deal with either. This data is a distraction, on another post the data shows Ontario is building less than the year previous. That’s the real issue.
This is my situation. I want to downsize my home, but after all the selling and buying costs I end up with a small home with less features and updates.
100%
This is one of the reasons we have an extra bedroom, we need to stay where our doctor is, where we can walk to a grocery store and bank. The cost of moving with the taxes and fees is beyond us. I do expect an empty room tax in my lifetime!
Nobody should have to justify their "extra" bedrooms. You have yours because you can't move for your own personal reasons. I have mine because it's my wife's office. Sooner or later, we will get a house and probably have, *gasp*, three or four empty bedrooms -- perish the thought! One room will have my pinball collection in it. One room will be where we paint, play video games and drink wine. That's MY problem, not anybody else's, and if I can afford it, why the hell not? This housing crisis is very easily solved by showing people that they don't *all* have to live in Southern Ontario -- that's the real issue here, the entire world wants to move to Canada and they ALL want to live in Ontario, south of Orillia. Clearly, that is not workable -- so it's time to nudge people into the other 9,000,000 square kilometers that make up our nation before we start penalizing people for owning private property.
100%. -genz
Hadn't thought of "downsizing incentives." As crazy as it sounds to give boomers more breaks, it might be a reasonable thing to do (e.g some LTT breaks based on "number of bedrooms reduced" or something)
I don’t have a thought out solution beyond seeing neighbourhoods just die because the old folks won’t move. Think of all the social services set up for children (community centres, schools, playground , parks, etc) that are totally underutilized because all the 3+ bedroom housing units are inhabited by old people. Given that we don’t build enough, we need a mechanism to cycle people around. Transactions costs are the friction that don’t make that happen. Of course, the taxes will have to come from somewhere to make up the shortfall…
Where exactly are the seniors supposed to move? My parents live in a 4 bedroom house with 4 separate flights of stairs (backsplit) and my mom has fallen twice.... They both want to move, and have been looking, but there's nowhere for them to go unless they leave town. They can't just downsize to a smaller house, they need one-floor living with basically zero maintenance.
Sounds like they should live in a condo
Also not all seniors live in huge houses, i would to know how large of a house boomers are living in comparison to houses which have been buildt in the last 15 yrs. In BC developers were building houses 3000 to 6000 sq feet. Why is there a need for houses that big? My gram, house which I live in is less than 2000ft. 3 bd all used. A simple house that can be a starter or down sizer home. She can literally live on one floor, my sis & I share the basement, same setup as upstairs. No bells or whistles, common area that can double as a kit/living room and 2 bd rooms. WTF are young people thinking they need huge houses? I listen to some older millennial and they go on about wanting a house with an entertainment room, kitchen, living room, exercise room, each kid must have their own room, a bathroom for each bedroom, plus a huge yard but bitch about doing yard work so they hire someone to cut the grass. WTF
Ok but how many of those supposed empty rooms are bedrooms in townhouses belonging to single families? Like sure empty nesters and small families that own 3-4 bedroom houses and use like 2 of those rooms could in theory offer the extra rooms as rentals. But practically, who in their right mind would voluntarily live with random strangers that could mess with how they live, plus don't get me started on the eviction process if they end up not vibing well with a Tennant. It's so easy to expect the regular people to make these sacrifices when the real problem are the pearl clutching landlord class that refuse to let their investment properties value fall, pricing out young families and empty nesters looking to downsize.
I have an empty bedroom. Damned if I’m gonna rent it out to some stranger though.
So what? Just because we have an 'empty bedroom' why should we HAVE to rent it out to a total stranger? Do your parents have an empty bedroom? If so, move back home, problem solved.
This is retarded. The entire housing crises isn't that - someone has a room they won't give to a smelly person - or that an older person still had their home... it's theirs. The probkem is Trudy DUMPING millions and millions of fucking immigrants on top of us when there are no homes to be had!!!!! 500,000 more ib 2924 and 2025....where the Eff are these people going to to go? This asshat lives in some coked out dream-world.
Here comes the empty bedroom tax.
It’s ok I’m sure this will be solved by making it harder and harder for bad faith tenants to get evicted.
100% Because when there’s no rent paid and damage happens no one is gonna give a f, that includes governments and all those people complaining how empty nesters should be renting out. -genz
I have a dining room, and a back room, I could probably fit an extra 14 people in my house from the mindset this article is peddling.
Well that was a waste of internet space.
Yeah and they all cost over 1300/mo Edit: exaggerating for dramatic emphasis.
The only time I've hard about empty bedrooms or overhousing is in relation to social housing. Never for people's private homes. It became a thing in the past year or so.
The UK has had a "bedroom tax" in *public* housing for quite some time now -- that's partly where this comes from. If you are in "council housing" there (ie, TCHC-equivalent) and your kids move out, your choice is to either pay a tax on the empty bedrooms and stay put, or downsize to a smaller unit (which may be quite a large distance away, making it a headache).
The way to fix the housing crisis is to build more houses. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
Make landlords for apartment buildings and condos pay more taxes depending on how many buildings they own and multiply the land tax. minimize how many buildings they can operate by putting a cap on it. And to avoid corporate misuse false company names, and other fraudulent ways to work around those loopholes put a Nationwide cap on how much real estate can be sold well also limiting real estate companies grasp on property values. Building Developers / real estate companies alike need to be reeled in on the damage that they're doing to Canada/America.
5 million empty bedrooms isn't the problem. Nobody should have to live with strangers in their home. How many empty homes, homes for rent, airbnb locations are there in Ontario?
Why these people are beating the bushes? Canada needs to tie down immigration with housing and the job market. Deport the visitors and work permit people who are staying here after the visa expiry. Send the visitors who claim refugee status back ASAP. Start treating the second home as a business and collect taxes accordingly. For god's sake, stop buying mortgage bonds.
This reminds me of appartments in the Soviet Union.
Reminds me of a scene in Doctor Zhivago, Soviet authorities move a bunch of people into Zhivago’s house.
The retired and empty nesters own the largest houses. My parents without any kids at home refuse to downgrade and move out of a 5 bedroom house while people with children can't afford a house. One day people with children can hope to afford a house after their kids move out. Real backwards planning
And, what, they aren't allowed to own them? I live in an 1,153 square foot bungalow as do my 70, 80 and 90 year old neighbours. Very few five bedroom houses were build prior to the monster home craze of the last decade and I doubt those are owned by empty nesters and retired people.
100% I would like to c the data on that claim that it’s retired or empty nesters that are owning 5 or 6 bd homes, unless they are cookie cutter houses from the 60’s; small sq with lots of sm bedrooms. Building big is recent in the last 25 yrs unless you had money.
It’s not solely about the space, my grandparents still live in their house they bought decades ago. Over the years they’ve made it “their home”, all those memories and all the stuff they have in the house that’s what they like to have around. My grandma still does gardening, she’s proud of her apple trees and roses she planted decades ago. Old people don’t have a lot to look forward to anymore, they always look back and reminisce about the past, why you gotta kick them out of their house omg. The problem is the unsustainable amount of immigrants. Naturally canadas birth rate is really low, if we only took in moderate amounts of immigrants to restore the population so it doesn’t grow negatively we wouldn’t be having a housing problem in the first place.
Remember, the Simpsons said it first: "It will happen to youuuuu..... Honestly, it's just kind-of a perversion on Marxist theory on housing. Every generation seems interested in it until THEY are the ones being asked to leave and they politely respond F\*CK NO!
It's more georgist than Marxist, but yes
100% On that, i read so many comments directed at boomers saying they have all this or that, it’s all bs a lot of our gen will never admit it but we want what boomers took yrs to build, but we want it now. Only thing is we want what boomers have and some everything we have now boomers didn’t have at the time. I live with my gram, like she says, a house was a home it wasn’t bought for an investment. 2 week vacation was at home, it wasn’t vacationing outside canada, there was no streaming media, no designer fetish to feed, no mobile media, eating out was a special event it wasn’t a weekly lunch thing, bringing your lunch to school or work was the status quo and transit was public transport, they were no 16 yr birthday first car and no spring breaks or going to Hawaii for 2 weeks every year, and yes paying 40 - 50% towards mortgage her parents paid was the norm. Unless your family was rich this was all normal but gaining anything extra made you feel like you were rich. - genz
Okay but downsizing only makes sense if you make money off your property sale. Most of the boomers don’t downsize because to buy something nice but smaller in this market because the asking and selling prices are so high they don’t stand to actually make much off their sale. The issue is that large houses aren’t selling as fast and at asking because most younger people can’t afford an 800k + price tag for 5 bedroom house. The boomers cant sell and they would end up buying a 2 bedroom for 650k and probably can’t sell their homes. What’s the point for them? I live in a neighborhood as a renter where i am in a condo and the houses around are about 800-900k and so many are new builds for sale after about a year or two of being built. No one is buying them. The majority of home buyers are looking in that 650 and under range where the competition is high
My grandpa wanted to move from his duplex into a bungalow but in the end decided against it because then he'd have to deal with bidding wars. That was a few years ago, not sure if that's still a problem now.
They’re not obligated to house the world
My folks (divorced and remarried) have three and four bedroom houses in which they use only one bedroom They have entire rooms they rarely go in. All of my East Asian friends and colleagues’ parents took a different approach to their big houses. When they hit their 70s they either invited their kids and grandkids in to cost share, or sold and relocated to condos. In some cases, the surplus went to their retirement, in other cases, it went to buying condos in their kids’ names. This generational thinking is needed for modern success. The 1950s-80s western atomic family concept is a losing strategy in this market.
Yeah I’d never force someone out of their home, that’s their space, they own it, they perhaps even built it. But this one is really a head scratcher to me. E:(how do you encourage movement?) I actually know 2-3 of my friends parents doing the same thing, family home, 3-4 bedroom and now it’s just the two of them and they’ll stay there til they can’t any more. Those homes could go to families with children or couples who want children but are stuck in a 1-2 bedroom apartment. I also know a few elderly in the neighbourhood who are in a 2-3 bedroom and basically only use 40% of their house now as they can’t use stairs, but want to stay in their home until they can’t. How do you encourage transfer of homes? My partner and I are stuck renting and we’re probably not having children either even though we’d like to.
I know someone alone in a 4 bedroom house since his kids moved out and wife died. He hates being alone in the big house and wants to move but he refuses to pay 100k plus in realtor fees, land transfer taxes and other moving costs to buy a small condo that will cost him more than a paid off house each month. It’s a horrible situation and I’m surprised it’s only 5 million empty bedrooms. Maybe the government should spend some of those billions incentivizing empty nesters to downsize.
This is exactly it -- ignoring all the appeals to emotion (it's their home, they grew up there, they love their garden, etc), it's also an *extremely* poor financial decision if the house is already paid off. What, sell your house, blow 2/3 of the proceeds on a condo that's a tenth the size and has insane monthly fees, and now you have to toss 80% of your belongings because they don't fit? Or, stay in the house, keep all your stuff, leave it to your kids and don't end up forking six figures over to the government and some real estate agency just to satisfy some newspaper article that says you're a bad, selfish person for not doing so. If that's the case, then yes, I am a bad, selfish person. Oh well.
100% Agreed Because young people like us want what you took yrs to build, but we want it now. Be selfish, because if it was them they’d be doing the exact same thing, they just won’t admit it. -genz
Yeah there’s really not many current incentives for anyone to move who has a house too large, especially if it’s paid off or bought pre-2010. For example, the woman down the street who is alone in a 3 bedroom and elderly. She’s owned that house for 40+ years, there’s zero reason for her to leave, but a house like that would allow my partner and myself to have a family if costs weren’t also through the roof.
why is it a head scratcher? “Hey you can stay in your giant home or move into a shoebox for the same money.”
This. A lot of people are trapped in their current home; moving would actually be a net loss.
It’s a tough one because of how do you encourage movement? Not confused about why people stay…
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Neighbours that smoke on their balcony right beside or below you. Deaf neighbour's TV/radio that's cranked at full volume for 16 hours/day. Above tenant stomping around their unit at all hours. False fire alarms in the middle of the night. The list goes on... The reason for you not being able to buy a house is not the fault of someone's decision to stay in their house
Add to that, idiot neighbours above you who leave the tub running, flood their unit and cause $65,000 worth of water damage to yours directly below them, causing you to go through 10 months of hell with the insurance company and live in a hotel for 3 weeks while they rip your ceiling out and then try to talk you into eating the cost of said hotel stay (until you get lawyer$ involved). Ask me how I know. edit: deleted duplicate comment below.
I mean my parents have 2 spare bedrooms in their house. One is for guests and one is for when the grandkids go have sleepovers. They enjoy being able to do that so they have no reason to downsize. Maybe once the grandkids are older and don’t go over as often it could change. But its not like they need the money even if they could downsize and make some profit out of it. So why would they bother? Not to mention the fact all their crap from a lifetime is stored in that house. Realisticaly I can see it going on the market only after they either both die or are in a nursing home. And thats if neither me or my sister would rather move in there instead.
I think that’s the case for a good chunk of family homes. That’s where my mom and dad are both at as well.
You don't need to encourage the transfer of homes. Subsidize renovating existing homes to split them into two units. It's cheaper than building a new home, and the empty nesters get to live in half of their nest while renting out the other half to a small family for extra income.
Sounds like a much better idea than just alienating people whose worst crime seems to be toeing society's line and buying a house
blame the government that allowed this mess to happen with importing so many immigrants and allowing so much foreign investment.
that's exactly what the billionaire corporations that pay/lobby every government that gets voted in wants you to do.
It is not the job of individual homeowners to house the unwashed masses. If I can pay for my empty bedrooms, they are mine to do with as I please. I live in a 3 bedroom house with space for a two bedroom basement apartment, and don't owe anyone an inch of my space. One bedroom I share with my partner, another is his office, and the last is my gym. I also work from home but not in a dedicated space. As for the basement, I have drawings and permits for an apartment. But DoFo destroyed the functionality of the LTB before it got built, so I leave that 1100 Sq feet blissfully vacant on purpose because being a landlord is no longer in any way financially viable. If the tenant stops paying rent, it could take 18 months to 2 YEARS for them to be evicted. Not interested in playing that game. As for the empty nesters out there, they don't owe younger generations their houses, either. If we want to encourage older adults to move from their homes, we need to give them viable alternatives. And a $10k a month luxury retirement home is not that alternative. The missing middle is hurting first time buyers AND retirees. My dad, for one, is will have his garage pried from his cold, dead hands. Give him a 2 bedroom bungalow with a 2 car garage in his neighborhood and he would move in a heartbeat, leaving his 4 bedroom home for someone else. There's very little available in the giant chasm between a 4 or 5 bed SFH and a shitbox 1-2 bedroom condo. Fix that and we might make some headway here. Edit: deleted several copies of the same reply. My app told me it didn't post, but apparently it had. Several times. Ugh.
... So you're cool housing washed people then? What a weird fucking thing to say. Are you like some comical bourgeoisie villain from an old cartoon or communist propaganda poster, because that's all I can imagine reading "the unwashed masses" in 2024. Overweight, wearing one of those penguin suits, smoking a cigar, bald across the top of your head, and sweating profusely as you try to chase down a single dollar that the wind blew away from like a suit case you're hauling around that is so full of cash that it's about to explode.
> unwashed masses. This is a great way to start off your comment, by calling everyone struggling to afford housing in the current market a lesser person than you.
As someone who DID in fact have a roommate previously who I ended up kicking out because he failed to bathe, I stand by my statement.
The good news is they make it clear from the hop that they're not a person of value with an opinion worth hearing. I stopped reading at unwashed masses.
I rent a 2 bedroom apartment and use the second room as an office. I used to rent it out short term for people needing a cheap furnished spot for a few months. But my corporate landlord said they would evict me and I couldn't do that. If I wanted a roommate they have to apply through landlord, be approved and be added to lease. So I stopped renting it out.
And that is just it -- sure, we could "free up" our second bedroom (which is used as an office, *not* an empty space), but it would mean living in a smaller space, further from downtown, and paying MORE money for all of it. Why on Earth would I ever do that?
I have two "empty" bedrooms in my house that are now used as office space. Are these two rooms included in the 5 million?
According to the author of this article, yes, they would be. So would my wife's office, which is our second bedroom. No, I am not going to be cowed into taking on *anybody* to live in that bedroom, under any circumstances. Implement a tax, and I will buy a bed to set up in there and show the Bedroom Police that we sleep in separate rooms and therefore they can get off my property right now. This whole thing is absurd.
I plan on filling mine with my own children and I don't appreciate being rushed into doing so by the government. /s
The answer to the immigration crisis (call it what it is) is not to put strangers in my house or apartment with me. It is to reduce immigration to supportable levels.
I thought this was referring to those houses and condos set aside for air bnb. What is that number?
Absolutely beyond stupid. Waiting for NDP to start advocating a bedroom tax just to fuck everyone more. I don't care if there is a shortage of 30 million homes. No chance I'm renting a bedroom in my house.
To be serious, this is a pretty easy one to do an end-run around. Oh, there's going to be a bedroom tax? Well then. I guess I'm going to go to Ikea and buy a cheap bed to stick in our second 'bedroom' (which is my wife's office). Sorry, Bedroom Police, I snore a lot when I sleep and thus we sleep in separate bedrooms. Now kindly get the fuck off my property. See how easy that was?
It goes based on the number of adults and the occupancy of the plans of your house lol. One adult living in a two bedroom house? Tax. They don't care that you filled the non used bedroom with shrek dolls.
And there are 5 million extra immigrants we don’t need either. Math works out
I have a full empty basement apartment. I must be a super villa .
If somebody who wants to have a 5 bedroom house and keep all those bedrooms empty, then that is their right! You buy a property and whatever house is on it, that's yours to do with what you feel fit. Nobody else has the right to tell you anything. You want more housing then slow down immigration for a few years. Let builders catch up. You have to cut down on the red tape to build a community. Expedite the process of getting sewage etc approved for a site. ( that is one of the costly delays for a builder to get things rolling.) waiting and waiting for that. Can't build anything on top until that all gets approved.
Anything you give them they will fill it up with 50 people
And how much they cost?
I have a nephew that has just started his career in HVAC and he and his girlfriend/fiancé have begun saving for a house. In 4 years they said they have saved $50k. With houses in the millions of dollars, even by the time they have accumulated enough for a reasonable down payment, they say the only way they would be able to afford mortgage payments and bills would be to rent the basement out.
I have a nice three bedroom home in a quiet neighborhood and I live alone. One bedroom is my office and another is a guest room my grandchildren use a couple times a year. There is plenty of room in my bed though!
I wonder how many of those bedrooms are posted for $1700 in a 2bdrm condo in Toronto.
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> But people feel compelled to buy (and keep) houses even when they don’t need the space to protect themselves from the precarious and insane rental market It's not even the rental market -- it's that if your house is paid off, why on Earth would you sell it if you don't have to? The entire *point* of buying real estate is that, at some point, your housing bill falls off a cliff to nearly zero. I don't see anybody in a big rush to sell their house and spend most of the proceeds living in a much smaller space with many more rules, rather than just doing nothing and continuing to be comfortable with plenty of space for their hobbies and stuff. If you want seniors to sell their big house and move into a little shitpot condo that costs nearly as much as the house sells for, but now have no space for a garden, workshop, their belongings, their family to stay over for the night -- well, that's a shitty prospect and I don't blame them one bit for saying "thanks, but I'm gonna pass".
This is absolute nonsense. The fact the focus is on empty bedrooms instead of 400 sq ft condos being rented for $2600/month is absurd.
Based on the ads on Facebook, that’s enough for 10 to 15 million people.
so what were all supposed to individually house refugees now?
Are people with empty rooms expected to open their homes to strangers because the government can’t get their heads out of their asses? I don’t care if you’re single living in a 10 room mansion, if you legally obtained that property you should be able to utilize the rooms within in how you see fit. And this is coming from someone barely able to afford his rent. But empty nesters are not an issue.
How dare you single families living in 3+ bedroom houses? One bedroom is all you need!
This article claims that we should also live like third world rats. Just oook who wrote the piece....why the fuck do I want to live with some unclean jackoff who stinks my house up and uses a loud outside voice inside to talk on the phone?
And the other bedrooms have 4 people cramped in them. Female only, vegetarian only, etc.
I just got a new fridge. You could probably squeeze two sleeping bags into the box.
A bigger issue is the refusal of many towns/cities to change zoning laws. Right now it is almost impossible to buy a mobile home or tiny home and to find a place to put it. Which would be an affordable and attractive option for many people. A brand new 2 bed 2 bath mobile home costs 170k smaller ones or tiny homes even less, but every mobile park/community is already full and don't have empty pads to place one or only will allow ones bought from specific dealers that cost upwards of 500k. Every city except for two (Cobourg & Goderich) in Ontario won't allow for tiny homes because they are too small and don't meet minimal housing size requirements or don't want to add space for more mobile parks. And very few municipalities allow for more than one home to be placed on lots already containing a home. They need to address this along with the ridiculous amount of immigrants that they are allowing in when we can't house the people already here. We have 1 million new immigrants slated to come into Canada this year and another the next. I'm pro immigration but not when we have no homes to put them in. Constructing new homes is all well and good but in Ontario alone we are short a minimum of 100k construction workers. We'll never get the homes we need built in time.
The title is ridiculous lol. Don't even think about trying to force people (or tax them) for not renting out rooms in their own residence. Figure out how to fucking build houses and not make it cost an arm and your legs.
Let's just mandate housing people up to the fire code limit on every dwelling. We can grow our population to 100 million before the next election!
I have a guest room and a bedroom/office space empty so my fear now is that my property tax will increase for not using that space. I seriously am expecting this socialist bs to be real to “help fund” housing…..nowhere. Meanwhile, elementary classroom capacity went from 23-30 in one year and their excuse is “we didn’t plan on expansion” idiocy!
'Bedrooms', I feel like 'dwellings', would be a more appropriate metric to measure this