The Housing Market Isn’t Racist. Blame Your Parents Instead

Commentary There’s no shortage of bad ideas about how to fix Canada’s housing crisis. But what if time is short and you need to access all the bad ideas in one convenient location? Then make haste for the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate (FHA). Over the past two years, Marie-Josée Houle, Canada’s first (and hopefully only) FHA, has established her office as Ottawa’s one-stop-shop for the worst possible advice on housing issues. Houle’s main obsession is with removing profit-making—or what she calls “financialization”—from Canada’s housing market. Beyond forbidding anyone from making a living supplying accommodation to people who demand it, she also wants to make it impossible for landlords to evict tenants for almost any reason, impose a nationwide system of rent control, and grant homeless squatters virtual property rights over public parks....