This type of article is really starting to bother me, because people of all ages are struggling with housing. Seeing the same theme repeated in mainstream publications seems like intentional industry stoking of misdirected anger. Of course, pointing the finger at the banking industry, real estate developers, and speculators isn’t as dramatic as stories about generational betrayal, class, and greed leaving large groups of young people feeling helpless, hopeless, and embittered.
Renters like Ullman and Ireland are shackled in place not by a mortgage, but by the certainty that moving will mean paying far more every month.
Those older “owners” mentioned in this piece could probably say the same thing. I put the term in quotes, because contrary to the wealthy homeowner narrative described most of them don’t own anything but debt. Skip a couple of mortgage or tax payments and the bank or municipality will be quick to remind people who owns what.
a home is one of the few investments Canadians can sell without paying capital gains tax. There’s also the small fortune available to many owners in home equity credit,
Yeah, that only benefits people who can sell and find something cheaper to buy, and the author made it clear why that is unlikely. Home equity is on paper because credit implies “owners” can get equity loans. Loans require qualifying and making payments to the lender. It’s not a gift. In fact, that can be a curse to those non-“nepo babies” whose elders die in debt. The bank and healthcare providers get the wealth in that scenario.
it’s hard to imagine that very many of those households shut out of homeownership have enough money to pay rent and invest as much as they’d otherwise spend on a mortgage.
Is this an assumption that a mortgage and tax payments are always cheaper? Would like to see a comparison of rate increases, but other figures throughout the piece left me with questions.
Nearly 89,000 Ontarians left that province in the first years of the pandemic, many in search of cheaper housing,
In a province of 13.5 million, is that high?
In the second half of 2021, more than 123,000 Canadians moved provinces—the highest rate of interprovincial migration since 1991.
I’m not gonna look up the population of Canada, but what that says to me is that folks in the US tend to change states/regions more often than Canadians. 
It would’ve been nice to see links to the studies mentioned as proof that housing is driving political polarization. Older does not mean wealthy, and conflating the two using rich pols as examples just serves the goals of those who profit by pitting the have nots against those who have less than they think. It seems to be supported by folks who, for some reason, have no idea what the finances/daily struggles of older people actually are vs. what they imagine them to be.
