You can buy a house way faster than you can build a new one. According to Rousseauian liberalism, a proper government exists for the good of the people whom it

You can buy a house way faster than you can build a new one. According to Rousseauian liberalism, a proper government exists for the good of the people whom it represents, and foreign oligarchs do not represent the people in the cities where they are buying property. It’s bad for democracy. I hear that Vancouver looks well-built, with lots of huge buildings, but come evening, and a whole lot of the windows in those high-rises remain stubbornly dark. In other words, I can’t afford to couch-surf until all the foreign capital has been exhausted buying luxury condos. I need housing right now. Besides restrictions on supply so that it doesn’t match demand, I think the problem here is the whole idea of your house as your major investment. It seemed nice to the earlier generations, who could buy a house with 1 year of earnings and sell it for 10 years of earnings, and they in turn could sell it for 40 years of earnings, but this pyramid scheme eventually has to collapse. When only the bank can own a house, then housing prices have to go down, and the poor people who put all their investment into home equity will be the ones who suffer from losing their money.