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Canada Needs a National Housing Plan — The Housing Crisis Is Getting Worse!

303 views · Published 1 February 2017 · 10:08 · Indexed 21 October 2026

Channel: Mike Martins · 2017 · News & Politics

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“I’m leaving the city. I’m moving to a small town because I don’t want my kids sucked into that trap.” — Mike Martins

In this January 2017 video, I’m looking at an article laying out 10 reasons Canada needs a national housing strategy and asking a basic question: how did housing get this far out of control before governments seriously started talking about a national plan?

At the time, I was already talking constantly about housing affordability, homelessness, young people being priced out, and people being forced farther away from major Canadian cities just to find somewhere they could afford to live. I was preparing to leave Vancouver myself and move to a smaller community because I didn’t want my family trapped in the same affordability crisis I was watching unfold around me.

The article raises some major issues: homelessness among young Canadians, women fleeing violence and ending up in shelters, Indigenous homelessness, income inequality, rental affordability, and the enormous amount of money being spent dealing with homelessness after the fact instead of addressing housing availability directly.

One statistic discussed in the video says 235,000 Canadians could experience homelessness during the year, while another says roughly 20% of Canada’s homeless population was made up of young people. I also discuss how dramatically adulthood was changing. A generation earlier, a 25-year-old might already have a career, a home, a spouse and children. By 2017, housing costs were making those traditional milestones increasingly difficult for many young people.

I also connect Canada's situation with housing problems I was following in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States. My argument at the time was that housing affordability was becoming one of the defining economic issues across much of the English-speaking world.

This video captures exactly what I was seeing and questioning in early 2017, before leaving Vancouver.

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