True Patriot Love - Chris Chopite on Canada’s Housing Crisis Is Bigger Than Ownership ｜ with Jessica Barrett

00:00:00.000 all right we're here for another incredible segment of true patriot love and we're going

00:00:10.880 to be talking on behalf of the pillar of housing and we have the wonderful pleasure of having

00:00:17.400 jessica barrett here and she's an author of an incredible book that just launched march 3rd

00:00:23.820 we're going to give you more info at the end of this but before we get into the book we have to

00:00:27.780 know about the author and about the mind of the author and how it all came to be jessica thank

00:00:32.300 you so much for being here with us oh thanks so much for having me yeah so look we're gonna we're

00:00:37.820 gonna get right into you your personal story and i want to understand a little bit what what did

00:00:42.740 leaving vancouver as far as i know you were born in vancouver correct okay so actually no i was

00:00:48.580 born in edmonton but i found my home in vancouver ah okay but you left vancouver and you went to

00:00:54.160 Calgary I did okay so so there it is I need some clarity and in fact our

00:01:00.400 viewers and everyone we need some clarity in terms of your your your your

00:01:04.780 stops and and how it all came to be give us a little bit of a of a of a of a

00:01:09.700 snippet of what happened there and what was the turning point for you sure you

00:01:13.900 know I think I want to start off I think I think my story is the reason I

00:01:17.380 included it so much in the book is because I know that a lot of people can

00:01:20.080 see themselves in it it is not a unique story by any means

00:01:24.160 What I did was flesh it out with some research as to why this has happened to me and so many other people.

00:01:29.120 So I was born in Alberta. I grew up in Edmonton, but I left fairly early on.

00:01:34.980 Like, you know, I think I was 19 when I moved to Vancouver for school.

00:01:40.400 Didn't really know if it was going to be a long-term thing or not.

00:01:45.860 But then unexpectedly, unabashedly fell in love with the place and really found a home there and built a career there.

00:01:52.780 I had actually expected to leave, to have to pursue journalism as a career.

00:01:57.260 But as it turned out, I got work there.

00:02:00.260 I started in community newspapers.

00:02:02.140 I worked up to the Daily newspaper, The Vancouver Sun, and then eventually Vancouver Magazine, which is the big lifestyle magazine.

00:02:09.920 And all throughout that time, I was covering housing.

00:02:13.620 It was just this perennial issue in Vancouver in terms of, you know, the downtown east side, if you know the city at all, and the homelessness problem there.

00:02:22.140 but then it started being not just a downtown east side problem it started being an everybody

00:02:27.100 problem it started being a student problem it started being a young professional problem and

00:02:32.460 so as i was progressing in my career and i was getting older i was really looking to settle down

00:02:39.580 find a place that i could be stable maybe think about having a kid one day maybe have a pet

00:02:45.020 you know things that are pretty hard to do when you're in an unstable rental situation

00:02:49.180 and um about the time that i had decided that you know what maybe i am going to stay in vancouver

00:02:54.480 forever this is my home i have great friends here my career is here i have a sense of place here

00:03:01.260 is when the housing crisis got really bad and i ended up having to leave because i just couldn't

00:03:06.580 see a future for myself there um so so i'm gonna i'm gonna pause you right there sorry this is

00:03:12.760 getting really interesting i'm just gonna i'm just gonna grab a few things um you didn't leave

00:03:18.080 because you wanted to just correct me if you you you because what I what I what I got from there

00:03:24.260 is that everything was perfect but then it's almost like your tone change in in like a way

00:03:30.020 like you almost got forced to leave would I be mistaken or is that correct yeah I think in some

00:03:35.200 ways I did um at the time I really tried hard to make it seem like I was making you know I called

00:03:41.560 it an empowered choice yeah yeah yeah and i was also very influenced by a lot of the conversation

00:03:47.320 that we have around housing in canada which is kind of boils down to well if you can't afford

00:03:52.280 to live where you love and where you work and where your friends are just move just moved where

00:03:57.640 the housing is cheaper and i did that i moved to calgary where the housing was indeed cheaper

00:04:03.880 and i discovered two things um first of all housing is not the same thing as a home having

00:04:09.800 a roof over your head that you can afford is a big pillar of home for a lot of people but it's

00:04:16.280 not the feeling of belonging it is not the feeling of inclusiveness it is not a sense of connection

00:04:22.120 to the landscape to place um it may not even be stable it may not even give you the time that you

00:04:28.280 need to settle in because the other thing that i discovered when i moved to calgary is that our

00:04:33.000 housing crisis isn't just a vancouver thing or a toronto thing it's a canada thing uh because i

00:04:38.600 got dem evicted from the first place i rented in calgary which essentially they were going to

00:04:44.120 redevelop the lot that i lived on and at that point i was really lucky i was able to get into

00:04:51.880 the housing market and purchase a home a single family house with my partner and once we moved we

00:04:57.720 moved into an area that has a lot of development pressure and it actually really affected our

00:05:03.880 ability to settle into this neighborhood so even though we were stable in our housing we were going

00:05:09.560 to we could stay here long term but we could afford it it ticked all the boxes in terms of

00:05:14.440 a walkable neighborhood and close to you know coffee shops and all those things that i thought

00:05:19.560 made a home for me we were having a really hard time settling in and feeling at home here in part

00:05:25.640 in large part because the neighborhood was very divided over development and over what we should

00:05:30.760 do about more housing and so then the penny to kind of drop for me as well that you know even

00:05:36.200 once you are in the market even when you are secure in your housing our housing crisis and

00:05:42.040 our economics of market housing can really still deplete your idea of home and your sense of home

00:05:49.240 now um i i have i have a question that keeps um coming into my mind does does home equal ownership

00:05:56.440 like is that is that the the thesis here um uh explain i mean we're gonna get into deeper this

00:06:03.000 into a little bit we're gonna get into this a little bit deeper but does home equal ownership

00:06:09.080 it does not it doesn't equal ownership in a legal sense but you do need to have a sense

00:06:15.080 of ownership if you kind of get the difference there oh we're gonna dive we're gonna dive right

00:06:19.880 into that one don't you worry i i need a deeper explanation of it but yeah but it's interesting

00:06:25.000 so you can you can feel at home this is it you can feel at home of course you have to check off

00:06:30.280 certain things we're not going to go into the depth of it just yet but you can feel at home

00:06:34.200 without necessarily having to own the home absolutely that's what you're yeah yeah copy

00:06:39.000 that okay i would say one of the major things that i discovered so in the book i write about

00:06:43.240 the seven elements of home so these are seven things that need to be in place for most people

00:06:48.760 to feel at home some people prioritize some over others but one thing that really needs to be there

00:06:54.920 for everybody is the element of time because time is stability you can't feel at home in a place

00:07:01.640 that you don't spend time in you also can't feel at home in a place where your time is limited like

00:07:07.160 you know you're going to be evicted or you think that the neighborhood is about to change drastically

00:07:12.760 and so you're kind of like eyeing the way out and in our culture by and large the only way that

00:07:18.840 that people can get that stability,

00:07:20.600 that time is through ownership.

00:07:23.300 And so there's a big problem here in our society

00:07:25.800 where about 70%, 66% of Canadians are homeowners.

00:07:31.120 So they have, I'll call it the luxury of time

00:07:33.960 and a bunch of people don't.

00:07:37.020 Okay, so I'm gonna focus on geography right now.

00:07:40.880 So you're in Calgary, you bought your house,

00:07:44.100 you're feeling stable, you can afford it.

00:07:47.160 Where are you right now?

00:07:48.160 Where are you in the world right now, Jessica?

00:07:49.980 Where are you in the world?

00:07:51.220 In the world right now, I'm in Calgary.

00:07:53.020 I'm in my house in Calgary.

00:07:55.180 Yeah.

00:07:55.540 Beautiful.

00:07:56.200 So you ultimately left Vancouver.

00:07:58.780 You went to Vancouver when you were 19.

00:08:00.180 Ultimately, you left Vancouver, you went to Calgary,

00:08:01.860 and you stayed in Calgary.

00:08:03.500 But while you were staying in Calgary,

00:08:05.260 you experienced a bunch of different things.

00:08:07.540 And that's what got you where you are today.

00:08:09.320 You felt like you wanted to tell your story.

00:08:11.320 And of course, you're a journalist.

00:08:13.060 Writing is in your blood.

00:08:14.500 And you're like, ah, I know exactly how to do it.

00:08:16.780 I'm going to write a book.

00:08:17.540 i love it okay so did i get that right so far did i summarize that correctly yeah i mean i think you

00:08:23.300 made the idea of writing a book a lot easier and simpler than it is but yeah essentially yeah

00:08:28.500 absolutely no i know exactly how difficult it must have been speaking of that um uh let's let's

00:08:35.700 talk to me about just that for for the authors for the authors that might be listening right um

00:08:41.780 maybe maybe we'll leave them with a little bit of inspiration um uh how how were you able to

00:08:48.100 focus and dive in and get the book completed really because there's writing there's editing

00:08:56.260 there's cover design front back there's talking with the editors and the publishers and there's

00:09:00.740 a lot of stuff so how did you what did you what inspired you um well what inspired me to write

00:09:06.980 this book is that i've been writing about housing but then also i was just living it you know like

00:09:12.100 it just every time i thought i was through with the chaos and the drama of our housing market

00:09:17.300 nope there it was again and even if it was you know playing with my son on my front lawn and

00:09:21.940 having realtors drive by asking if we were willing to sell our house and the pressure that comes with

00:09:28.900 the kind of you know investment mentality i just couldn't escape it and i realized it was a book

00:09:34.580 um how i wrote the book i would say with tremendous support from my partner and family and a lot of

00:09:41.300 encouragement and a couple of grants from the canada council and the alberto foundation for

00:09:46.340 the arts and um just a lot of support and connections uh also from the writing world other

00:09:52.260 other writers and journalists that i know that were really encouraging of me and a long a

00:09:57.380 definitely longer road than we thought it was going to be um i really do feel like this book

00:10:01.940 is my second child in a lot of ways um absolutely yeah yeah yeah you know um they say raising a

00:10:09.620 child takes a village i know you've heard this before it takes a village i'll tell you

00:10:12.540 it's the same with a book it takes a village to write this thinking thing it it's a lot it's a

00:10:17.460 lot of work so again congratulations um this is amazing so march 3rd it just launched um i can

00:10:24.000 imagine there was tears of joy as it finally it finally launched so so that's um that's pretty

00:10:29.020 cool okay so the next thing we're going to talk about jessica is so you i i saw a lot of countries

00:10:36.940 i saw a lot of comparison i'm uh i was reading and and the word vienna came to so so sure we're

00:10:44.300 in canada geographically but i think you've done you've done a really good job of analyzing

00:10:49.980 other housing markets and how it's being done in other parts of the world and i want you guys i

00:10:56.380 want you to take us a little bit deeper into that so you know canada versus the world now so what

00:11:03.340 are what are we doing wrong what are we getting wrong well i would say i would say what we're

00:11:09.020 getting wrong is sort of um endemic to the english-speaking world if you think about it

00:11:13.660 if you can actually stop to look around the world the countries with the biggest housing crises right

00:11:17.260 now are are you know the commonwealth countries um so they're like you know canada the us they're

00:11:23.660 australia new zealand um and a lot of this comes down to like you know my own ancestry my own

00:11:29.980 british ancestry and the idea of private property and private land ownership as being the pinnacle

00:11:36.780 of social success really of being you know a productive member of society and a lot of other

00:11:46.140 countries in the world don't see property ownership that way so you have in you know a lot of countries

00:11:52.860 in western europe you know um austria vienna being one of them uh also germany also france

00:11:59.420 also scandinavian countries where having to legally own your home is really not a priority

00:12:05.340 for people it is an option for some people but you do get lifelong renters you get a lot more

00:12:11.100 co-op housing which is a form of collective ownership you get a lot more sort of non-market

00:12:17.580 housing and people don't really look at housing as an investment i mean there are still people who

00:12:24.140 are real estate investors that's what they do there there are people like that in every country

00:12:28.460 that's fine but regular people who are just looking to keep a roof over their heads and

00:12:33.500 raise their families and be part of a community don't rely on their real estate assets for

00:12:40.380 retirement they're not looking at it as a money maker and in many places in the world there is

00:12:45.820 actually a cap on what you can sell housing for it doesn't it isn't allowed to go up as much as

00:12:52.540 we allow it to here with market conditions it's sort of you know you can recoup your inflation and

00:12:58.140 maybe some of your investments in the structure but not more than that and

00:13:02.940 get coming back to canada and what we did wrong here um wrong is a way to i think it's where we

00:13:09.260 have room for improvement if i can kind of put my positive spin on that is if we think about

00:13:14.860 how we think of housing in the context of pretty much every other system we have in canada

00:13:20.780 it's bananas it makes no sense so let's think about um housing as infrastructure critical

00:13:28.780 infrastructure for just a society you just need to have people living in homes in a northern country

00:13:34.300 you just have to so let's think about if we treated roads or hospitals or schools or any

00:13:41.660 other kind of infrastructure that's critical to the success of our society the way that we treat

00:13:46.780 housing where one year it's going to be exorbitantly exorbitantly expensive and nobody will be able to

00:13:52.300 afford it you don't know if nothing if it will sorry if enough of it will be available another

00:13:57.100 year it's collapsed and everyone's pulling back so we're not building any more roads we're not

00:14:02.140 building any more schools we're not building any more hospitals because we just can't make a profit

00:14:07.500 at it you know if we think about it that way it doesn't make very much sense or we're going to

00:14:12.860 allow hospitals or roads or schools to charge as much as they feel like they can for people

00:14:19.820 to access those services a society really falls apart very quickly when you treat it that way

00:14:25.660 on the other hand we look at housing as this kind of discretionary consumer good this is how we

00:14:32.220 treat it as a commodity so it will fetch the the price that the market will bear but it also doesn't

00:14:38.940 operate to any sort of laws that we understand think about you know the closest thing to a

00:14:43.580 house is is a car it's probably the second biggest thing people are going to spend money on in their

00:14:47.340 lives you don't drive your car around the city expecting it to increase in value as you're

00:14:53.660 driving it around you don't it's the opposite right you don't take it to the mechanic and spend

00:14:59.820 a few hundred a few thousand dollars getting tuned up expecting that to add to the price you're going

00:15:05.400 to sell it for down the road the purpose of your car is that it gets you from point a to point b

00:15:11.060 and enjoying the car enjoying the ride is the return on investment and we need to start looking

00:15:16.760 at housing that way as well housing is like the experience of living in our homes the utility of

00:15:24.020 having a safe home in a nice community where we feel connected that is the return on investment

00:15:30.500 of housing and that's what we need to get towards okay that was i'm not that was heavy that was

00:15:38.820 heavy okay so so basically what what i got from it um uh every time you you kept you kept sharing

00:15:45.540 and you can't i i just there's there's there's a phrase or or two words that come to my mind and

00:15:51.380 it's wealth creation like that's that's that is the ideology of of the residents and of the people

00:16:00.180 that of canada but even the the the the folks that are migrating um when when my mom i was born in

00:16:09.140 venezuela so we came we came uh we came from venezuela when we were uh in 19 when i was uh

00:16:14.340 uh, 11 or 12, anyway, in 1992. And, um, and I remember that it was like, we were, we were

00:16:22.720 renting and, um, we, we stayed at my aunt's house. Then, then we rented and then we rented and, um,

00:16:30.300 and she figured out how to buy a house because that was the ultimate, like it needed to happen.

00:16:34.860 It was the only thing that mattered. And, um, uh, it was, it was all about that. And all it was,

00:16:41.220 it was we got to make sure that we pay the rent and that was the ultimate status symbol kind of

00:16:45.700 like okay as long as i own a home i uh i i i made it right so where where are people getting this

00:16:53.580 from you know and and i believe i believe in it too but that's based on you you said it actually

00:17:00.000 a commodity right so the the if we have less then we can sell it for higher um if we have more and

00:17:07.220 the demand is the supply and demand right so now there's some laws of economics here right and

00:17:11.140 that's how it's treated it's treated like um hey you know we're in the sahara this is a bottle of

00:17:16.940 water you know i'm gonna i'm gonna you want it it's gonna be 40 dollars right but but if you're

00:17:22.140 you know if you're somewhere where water is abundant and you don't then you can sell it for

00:17:26.160 50 cents so um what what happened i mean it because that to my in my mind it's just that

00:17:33.260 it's it's it's supply and demand and people are using it in this economic law of hey there's not

00:17:39.320 enough, I'm going to jack up the price. So what happened there? Can you explain a little bit more

00:17:44.200 about human psychology on that perspective? Yeah, absolutely. So again, this is another

00:17:48.840 kind of like double track answer. So on the one hand, what happened there is our housing policy

00:17:55.400 has encouraged this line of thinking from the very beginning. So if you actually look at the

00:18:01.340 National Housing Act of Canada that was brought in around 1938, its stated purpose is to protect

00:18:08.000 the role of of the housing industry of real estate in the canadian economy it is not to house canadians

00:18:16.800 it is not to ensure that every canadian is how imagine that yeah and so from the beginning i

00:18:22.560 read a lot about you know the beginning of our housing policy right through the 20th century

00:18:27.840 um there was an ideological belief of the people in charge who set the policy that market economics

00:18:33.920 would be the most efficient way to house all canadians and encouraging explicitly encouraging

00:18:39.280 canadians to become home owners was the way to do this right away from about the 1950s onwards

00:18:46.400 problems with that started to arise there has been from the outset at least 30 of canadians

00:18:53.120 who've not been able to access home ownership and the way that we have

00:18:58.960 the way we've financed homeownership has been through a lot of public subsidies most people

00:19:02.880 don't realize this but we put billions of dollars every year into ensuring that people can continue

00:19:10.080 to access mortgages i mean the very first mortgages in canada were financed by the government

00:19:15.760 then we moved to allowing banks to sell mortgages to people and now we insure them but whenever the

00:19:21.680 house whenever housing costs get too high and people can't really access them you'll see the

00:19:26.720 sort of fleet of federal programs that will come in whether it's tax sheltered savings accounts

00:19:32.080 whether it's um sometimes there's things like interest rate relief programs or sort of like

00:19:40.000 you know the government can buy a share in your home there's all of this money that goes into

00:19:44.400 ensuring that people can afford these mortgages it also has the effect of ensuring that housing

00:19:50.240 costs remain high because they're never actually allowed to bottom out so we say that housing is

00:19:56.320 supply and demand and free market in canada but it's actually not there is a tremendous amount

00:20:00.800 of manipulation of that market on the back end to ensure that housing prices only ever trend up

00:20:06.800 because so much of us myself included our government where we have so much money tied

00:20:11.760 into the housing market we cannot allow it to fail but the problem is the natural trajectory

00:20:17.760 of that is where we have gotten now and the last few years since the pandemic especially

00:20:23.280 where it is so high the amount of money that it takes now just to keep the whole thing afloat is

00:20:29.040 quite literally bankrupting us you know we owe collectively owe more money than our gdp

00:20:34.320 produces and 75 of that is our mortgages yep yeah absolutely um that's interesting i didn't know i

00:20:42.400 didn't know that detail about the national housing act um uh now so i drew a picture here um uh of a

00:20:51.040 little house and um and then i i that my error goes down to construction and then another error

00:20:57.120 goes to sales and then another arrow so i'm just i'm just thinking that um just i'm just devil's

00:21:02.440 advocating it here but were they entirely wrong to think that one house can generate so much

00:21:10.840 economic push financially you know like like economic push to the country like were they

00:21:17.120 necessarily wrong and if they didn't do that how would have we grown to where we are today like

00:21:23.940 i think it helped a lot so it's kind of like oh man i get your point at the same time it's like

00:21:28.920 they had something right but but maybe not all of it so is there is there like is there a halfway

00:21:34.560 point yeah absolutely and i think you're right like if i'm not saying that our housing market

00:21:40.340 needs to disappear or that the people who participate in it are bad actors by any stretch

00:21:45.600 of the imagination um you know our housing housing has become very lucrative in canada you are

00:21:51.780 correct it isn't it doesn't feed back into our communities though in many of the ways that we

00:21:57.060 wish it would you know you talked before about how you know people feel financially secure in

00:22:02.940 their housing and i'm sure that they do but if you think about the return on investment people

00:22:07.300 expect to get when they sell their homes um where does a lot of that money go you know it often goes

00:22:12.840 to purchasing the next home which will have gone up in price as well so it gets eaten up there by

00:22:19.040 the sale of or by the purchase price of the next home or it goes to helping your children get in

00:22:23.200 the market because they're not able to buy themselves and what this does is it kind of

00:22:28.920 keeps going into feeding this perpetuating cycle of prices going up and up and up and up and up

00:22:33.220 and the more money we feed into those that pricing structure that means the less credit we have 0.53

00:22:39.020 available to lend to small businesses who might be creating jobs and hiring people or purchasing

00:22:44.520 intellectual property or doing other things that allow them to scale it means the less money we

00:22:49.240 have to spend on those local businesses and the less money we have to save and invest in other

00:22:54.600 things that could create real money that we actually get to put in our pockets so what you

00:22:59.880 know i think we just overstated the belief that the market could really shelter everybody there

00:23:06.440 is a certain sector of society for whom it works very well there is a lot of society for whom it

00:23:12.040 does not and where we kind of you know if you want to use the word wrong where we've where we've aired

00:23:16.040 where we have not done the things that a lot of other countries that have a better handle on

00:23:20.520 housing have done is that we have relied almost exclusively on the market and we haven't produced

00:23:26.600 a non-market sector or a non-profit housing sector and you know when you say right now like you know

00:23:32.680 when we're hearing a lot of developers a lot of builders say like it's too expensive to build

00:23:37.720 affordable housing or even market housing it's just too expensive to build

00:23:41.880 um because land prices have gone up building costs have gone up you know the quiet part

00:23:46.280 people aren't saying out loud is it's too expensive to build housing that still turns

00:23:50.200 a 15 to 30 percent profit yeah if we can take away that profit margin go more towards a break

00:23:56.120 even model or a sustainable model then we can start to actually build more housing that people

00:24:00.920 can afford interesting um can can the government have a bigger hand in that so just the same way

00:24:08.120 as they're building um like how about how about not privatizing the the the home building process

00:24:14.760 and just you know just sending out people tendering and and sending out tenders and actually building

00:24:20.920 houses like they build roads and just building houses with that break-even model so that that

00:24:26.120 private money doesn't need to yield a return but rather we're building houses to solve a catastrophe

00:24:32.760 where people don't have houses is that is that a possibility i'm just spitballing here i'm not too 0.96

00:24:36.760 sure if that makes any sense yeah only government officials will be like no you're silly why would

00:24:40.680 you even say that but i'm just you know you know more about the topic i mean that is that is one

00:24:46.840 solution that has been like really underutilized in canada and so part of it is you know consistent

00:24:52.600 funding for non-profit housing and non-profit housing i think people need to understand it

00:24:58.040 doesn't mean you're giving housing to people for free that don't need it although there are some

00:25:03.400 people that do need that but it doesn't mean that you're giving things away doesn't mean that people

00:25:07.640 aren't being paid it just means that you know like you know like roads and hospitals and other things

00:25:12.040 the fee structure of all of the professionals who work on those things are built into the cost and

00:25:17.160 there isn't this additional profit on top of it that kind of you know this nebulous profit that

00:25:23.400 gets you know oftentimes carved away and leaving the country in you know multinational corporations

00:25:28.520 and so yeah we could have a lot of that and we have done that before so we we have a success

00:25:34.680 story in canada for building affordable housing that is sustainable and lasts for generations

00:25:41.000 and they're called housing cooperatives and our housing cooperatives yeah so co-op housing

00:25:46.920 was built through federal programs in the 1960s 70s 80s and during those decades we built between

00:25:55.640 12 to 20 000 units of non-profit affordable housing per year for about three decades and those

00:26:04.200 affordable places to live are still around today there are 250 000 canadians that still live in

00:26:10.840 those co-ops and that's affordability that lasts for generations and in a lot of cases the government

00:26:17.480 grants that allowed those things to happen were paid back because why people pay for housing they

00:26:22.040 pay housing charges they might just not be paying market rents that you could get today they're

00:26:27.160 paying off in a third of that in co-ops but it is actually revenue generating and the money that it

00:26:33.080 generates can go back into more affordable housing and what we don't have in canada that other

00:26:38.680 countries do have that have better housing structures is this method of putting consistent

00:26:44.740 funding out there for non-profit housing, taking the revenue from that housing and putting it back

00:26:50.360 into the creation of more affordable housing. That's exactly what I just drew up. I'll tell

00:26:56.620 you what I drew. I'll tell you what I drew. I'm thinking as you're talking, I'm like, what if

00:27:01.620 we just build, I mean, here we are thinking that we're solving all the problems, but this is good.

00:27:06.320 this is good um what if we build houses right and then we sell them at you know we by by we i mean

00:27:13.320 the government the government sells them just at like 10 15 under market value as a as like a way

00:27:19.720 to get people in but then there's going to be a profit and that profit could go back into

00:27:24.720 infrastructure and building you know infrastructure so that we you know better roads and and you know

00:27:30.160 more programs for children and better facilities and and and soccer fields and and football fields

00:27:35.440 and like the stuff that actually is going to keep us healthy and provide that I'm going to circle

00:27:40.440 back but provide that feeling of home I think there's more of that that we need the soccer

00:27:46.120 fields the parks the that type of stuff I think you know I haven't read the book yet I'm going

00:27:50.180 to read it I haven't read the book but you know I'm sure you probably talk a little bit about that

00:27:54.440 right um you know just fitness and and health and and and trees and and more of that around your

00:28:00.820 community you know programs and and so forth so now why not is the question like why not why not

00:28:08.260 this is there is it is it the lobbyists is it the the corporations is it all you know greed and and

00:28:15.140 money that's doing this or or do they just not know how to do it or like what what's happening

00:28:19.540 what have you found oh that is a great question and a very big question um yeah so i mean a lot

00:28:27.060 reasons i think the simplest reason right now is that we just have been doing the same thing for

00:28:32.900 so long that we haven't realized or forgotten there's another way to do things yeah um and so

00:28:38.180 there are a lot of people you know i've talked to people in you know cooperative housing or

00:28:41.780 community land trust is another model that also works um that talk are talking to government and

00:28:47.540 government just has no idea how these these things work they have no idea how these structures work

00:28:53.060 they haven't they're not familiar with it even though in terms of have housing co-ops in canada

00:28:58.580 we were we were held up as an international example of how to do housing right in the 1970s

00:29:04.900 but it's been lost over generations um and so part of it is just a lack of familiarity

00:29:11.300 part of it is you know i'm going to use a bit of political jargon here so you know in the 19

00:29:17.780 late 70s early 1980s you know the western world really took a hard shift towards what's called

00:29:22.740 neoliberalism which is this idea of you know government small government deregulation cutbacks

00:29:30.900 and this idea that government is really inefficient at things like public programs for things like

00:29:35.300 housing but that's also when we got to the point where we started to kind of change our views on

00:29:41.460 things so we you know we have kind of Ronald Reagan to thank for this idea that homelessness

00:29:46.500 is a moral failing and a personal responsibility as opposed to a structural societal thing that we

00:29:51.780 we can all have responsibility over

00:29:54.020 and can all fix together.

00:29:55.620 And so those sort of neoliberal mindsets

00:29:57.520 have really taken hold in our culture

00:30:00.060 over the last 40 years.

00:30:02.460 And they guide governments both on the left and the right.

00:30:05.400 There's sort of this idea that collectivism

00:30:09.160 of people working together to own things cooperatively

00:30:12.440 or build things cooperatively can't work.

00:30:15.540 But what I found in my research

00:30:17.600 in all of the places that I traveled to,

00:30:19.580 it's actually the only thing that works.

00:30:22.520 Wow, that's a big statement.

00:30:25.100 It is, yeah, it is.

00:30:27.800 Okay, and that takes us to the solution

00:30:32.960 that hopefully we solve everything here.

00:30:36.480 Wink, wink.

00:30:37.320 Let's do it, housing is solved.

00:30:39.380 Right now, we're gonna get this all solved right now.

00:30:41.760 So what does real change look like, Jessica?

00:30:47.560 What do we need to do?

00:30:48.440 what can we do as individuals, right?

00:30:51.540 Because in most cases, there's gonna be homeowners

00:30:54.120 that are listening to this and they're gonna say,

00:30:55.700 hmm, what can I do?

00:30:56.620 I have my home, but what can I do to help the future?

00:30:59.020 And there's gonna be some people that say,

00:31:00.980 well, I don't have a home because I can't afford it.

00:31:02.580 What can I do to change the future?

00:31:04.340 And there's gonna be some government officials

00:31:05.860 that listen to this and say, man, this really hits home.

00:31:08.380 What can I do?

00:31:09.220 So how do we start as individuals and as entities?

00:31:13.660 Well, I think as individuals,

00:31:15.880 I'm gonna speak to the majority of Canadians,

00:31:17.680 ones who own a home or more and i think you know what you can do first is start to sit down and

00:31:23.040 like really think about am i getting does this value proposition work for me am i really getting

00:31:30.480 what i want out of my home so people do all sorts of insane things with their houses because they're

00:31:37.440 holding off on decorating the way that they want because they're gonna you know they want to

00:31:41.840 impress some future buyer that might be 20 years down the road and you're actually holding yourself

00:31:47.040 back from enjoying your home or getting to know your neighbors because they're renters and they 0.99

00:31:52.080 might leave you know so we need to kind of set sit back a little bit and and look at you know

00:31:58.000 is this system really working for me in terms of maybe there's a financial payout at the end

00:32:04.560 but also where is that money going to go but is it helping me in my life right now feel at home

00:32:10.720 in my home and if the answer is no or maybe let's start looking at alternatives and let's start

00:32:17.840 looking at them seriously i think there are so many people i know there are so many people out

00:32:21.920 there who would love to find ways to take their housing wealth and invest it in something that's

00:32:28.640 a little bit more equitable and a little bit more affordable so for instance you know co-housing is

00:32:34.080 an option that i really like it's private market housing at the moment where people take their

00:32:40.560 private households pool their money together and they build multi-family housing that is

00:32:45.440 designed very thoughtfully to encourage community cohesion but there is absolutely no pathway to

00:32:51.520 that and no support for that at any level of government anywhere in canada that i could find

00:32:57.360 could you imagine if there was something like a matching grant at a government level to to

00:33:02.240 encourage people to put their housing wealth into something that's more community-minded

00:33:06.240 with the caveat that 25 50 of those units are affordable rental or under market and there's

00:33:13.040 a covenant on them and they have to stay affordable for generations right there there are ways to take

00:33:18.720 the the housing wealth that we have right now in private hands that's been subsidized by the

00:33:24.320 government and bring it back into the public good so that's one thing if you are you know if you are

00:33:32.000 not a homeowner and if you are a renter getting to know your neighbors joining a tenants union

00:33:38.400 is a huge thing that you can do um one of the examples that i write about in the book is a

00:33:44.080 group of tenants in hamilton ontario who saw that their building was up for sale and they were

00:33:49.120 really concerned of course that they were going to be evicted and and that they would turn into

00:33:54.720 higher-end market housing they were able through grit and determination and some luck fundraise

00:34:01.200 to buy the building and they turned it into a co-op and so there's a phrase out there the

00:34:07.360 cheapest housing we have is the housing that we already have um so people who are already living

00:34:12.960 in tight-knit communities or where there's potential to be tight tight-knit communities

00:34:17.200 and housing that's already affordable we need to find a way to keep those communities intact and

00:34:22.400 keep that housing affordable and in lots of ways that means actually removing it from the market

00:34:27.520 and turning it into co-ops or some type of public housing

00:34:32.180 or publicly administered housing.

00:34:35.940 Okay, so I wanna go to the renters

00:34:40.580 for one second here, Jessica.

00:34:43.520 Should you enjoy or should you have,

00:34:50.080 you know, if you're renting, you know, what can they do?

00:34:54.280 I know a lot of people, they're renting their units.

00:34:57.520 and because they feel that sense of it's not mine they fail to decorate a wall or

00:35:03.880 they fail to get the furniture that they want or they don't get the area right

00:35:07.180 because it's like ah screw it like I'm not gonna get it so what do you say to

00:35:10.480 those people what do you say to the people that are renting and they're

00:35:13.360 failing to turn their their place into home because well it's not mine at any

00:35:18.940 given time we can decide to go somewhere else so what would you say to them well

00:35:22.720 you know like I mentioned before I don't think that's just a renter thing I think

00:35:26.460 people are doing that in housing that they do own now because they are holding out for the you know

00:35:31.820 the highest bidder whenever or wherever that might be yeah um you know i think this just goes back to

00:35:39.180 home is more than your housing it is more than your shelter and so the thing is people's housing

00:35:45.260 needs change throughout their lives right whether you're a renter or an owner you may come to a

00:35:51.260 point in life where you need an extra bedroom or you need to live in a single level house um you

00:35:57.420 know we need to be able to be building communities that have a variety of housing types at a variety

00:36:03.900 of price points for people who need to change their housing needs throughout their lives but

00:36:09.180 they don't want to lose their sense of home they don't want to leave their neighborhood they don't

00:36:11.900 want to move their kids from that school they don't want to have to rethink how they get to work

00:36:18.300 um you know there needs to be more options for everybody i mean for renters i don't know it's

00:36:24.140 tough you know in the absence of like really strong renter protection and sustainable affordable

00:36:31.500 rental across our country you are kind of at the mercy of the market and that's really a shame

00:36:37.100 because one of the things i write about is that you know that time element not having that

00:36:41.500 stability really is detrimental to your sense of home um and so you know i guess banding together

00:36:47.660 with other renters joining the tenants union you know working with municipalities or municipalities

00:36:53.500 working with renters to try to find ways to take some of that rental housing out of the market so

00:36:58.860 it is sustainable forever um or affordable rather forever i think these are pathways that we really

00:37:04.380 need to be pursuing and and we haven't been doing that and another thing i really want to talk about

00:37:09.580 which is sort of sort of related sort of not is we have this kind of false dichotomy in canada

00:37:15.180 where we think that there's only two entities or two ways that we can manage housing it's either

00:37:20.620 the government does you know public social housing or the market does private housing

00:37:25.900 um and they're both problematic right the market is going up and down and you know is there at the

00:37:30.940 end of the day to make money and that doesn't work for a lot of people governments are really fickle

00:37:36.060 governments change you know you elect a different party in your province and suddenly the rental

00:37:41.580 protections change or the you know housing funding changes and so the model that i really hit upon

00:37:47.340 that i think has so much potential is called community-led housing and that's when actual

00:37:52.860 neighborhoods people in buildings people in their neighborhoods find a way to come together

00:37:57.900 and own and manage housing for the good of that community in perpetuity and that is their one

00:38:04.620 and only mission and so that means that can mean things like managing and stewarding affordable

00:38:10.620 housing building affordable housing but it can also mean um offering things like affordable

00:38:15.740 retail for small businesses and community spaces and recreation spaces those things that you were

00:38:20.540 talking about ensuring that the money that we do make from housing that we can make from housing

00:38:25.580 goes into community needs and is sustainable in perpetuity and not subject to the whims of the

00:38:31.420 market or the government i just want to confirm what you named this so it's community lot housing

00:38:38.860 community led housing led okay okay like leadership yeah also collaborative housing

00:38:47.180 because there's a lot of ways to do it where you can you could maybe have some investment from

00:38:52.720 private homeowners who have some housing wealth that they would like to contribute back to a

00:38:56.320 community or some land that they would like to contribute you can have matching grants from

00:39:00.560 government and you can have investment from private industry and this model works really

00:39:05.320 well in a lot of places in europe and it's been cited by you know a number of have housing

00:39:10.840 organizations as something that really needs to be explored worldwide um but we're just very

00:39:15.560 wow it's very new in canada we really haven't been talking about it a lot no no not at all i'm gonna

00:39:21.480 i'm gonna do some some research to to understand i just want to have i want to have you know the

00:39:27.160 the awareness to to be able to have these conversations and you know and say what what

00:39:32.280 should be the the fix what should be the fix how can we how can we help fix um i'm sure have you

00:39:39.240 examined this deeper to to see like what could be the challenges of uh collaborative or community

00:39:45.660 led housing or or like how how deep have you gone in the rabbit hole pretty deep yeah pretty

00:39:51.500 really actually like yeah um so this is a this is like one of the major conclusions of the book is

00:39:56.820 that this type of housing and this type of building housing needs to be explored robustly in canada

00:40:01.360 it's what we see in Vienna it's what we see what I saw in Berlin it's what I saw in Zimbabwe where

00:40:07.660 I went and it's just a really underutilized thing and I think you know we're up against a few things

00:40:13.560 here which is that we are really trying to fix fix our housing market to get back to a state where

00:40:21.220 we feel like it's going to house everybody adequately and affordably and when we look

00:40:25.820 back at the history of Canada there it has net we've never achieved that so it's unlikely we're

00:40:31.060 going to achieve it now. Our housing market has led us to where we are. So putting all of our

00:40:36.060 resources into more of the same is a bit, you know, the definition of insanity, doing the same

00:40:39.680 thing over and over again, expecting the outcome to change. So we do need to shift gears and where,

00:40:45.020 you know, where Canada can follow the example of other countries in the world is taking more of

00:40:51.280 our precious housing, publicly funded housing dollars and putting it into avenues that are

00:40:56.580 shown to actually work and create affordable housing in perpetuity brilliant um uh extremely

00:41:03.140 extremely powerful um discussion really it was uh it was more it was very discussion but of course

00:41:09.220 we talked about the book congratulations the book is out uh so folks if you if you love this chat

00:41:14.420 and if you want to know more i'm going to pick up my copy and i'm going to read it because i want to

00:41:18.500 know more about how we can be uh the solution how we can help right so community-led housing

00:41:23.860 collaborative housing um jessica thank you so so so much for taking the time and um anytime you're

00:41:30.100 in toronto you got a home here in the studio come on by let's chat um you you may hear from me

00:41:35.540 because i want i want to be part of the solution so um let's stay in contact and thank you so much

00:41:39.620 again for your time that's great thanks so much yeah and i think that's what we need we just need

00:41:43.140 more people to be part of the solution because it's good for all of us absolutely thank you okay

00:41:49.220 Thanks. Have a great day.

True Patriot Love - March 13, 2026

Chris Chopite on Canada’s Housing Crisis Is Bigger Than Ownership ｜ with Jessica Barrett

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