Get ready for house shaming
None other than the CMHC president himself wants to dismantle the dream of home ownership
You may have heard about the latest Swedish linguistic export — Flygskam, or flight shame.
It’s a word directed at people who fly and is intended to make them feel bad about their travel choice due to its environmental implications.
With this in mind, allow me to make a reckless prediction about the next crusading phrase meant to make people feel guilty about acting in their own best interests: Ensamfamiljhemskam.
This is my attempt at a Swedish word for “single family home ownership shame.” (I used Google Translate; apologies to any Swedish readers if it actually means something rude.) It may not have reached common usage — but keep an eye on your dictionaries.
Last month, Evan Siddall, president of Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC), gave a speech to a Toronto housing conference that might be considered an early warning sign of approaching Ensamfamiljhemskam.
Before we get to what he said, let’s remind ourselves that the CMHC is a federal Crown corporation that helps Canadians buy homes through mortgage insurance and the securitization of mortgage bonds. It also operates as a sort of adjunct federal Department of Housing.
So what does Siddall think about home ownership? He seems to think it’s a very bad idea.
“Our ‘dream of home ownership’ is static and regressive,” he told his audience. “We need to call out the glorification of home ownership for the regressive canard that it is.”
The often-combative Siddall expressed his desire to dismantle the dream of home ownership, and in particular put an end to Canadians’ aspirations of owning single-family homes — what he calls “the wrong sort of residential construction.” Rather than build 10 single-family homes on any particular plot of land, he said municipalities should favour “a 100 or 200 multi-unit development” of rentals.
Given the significance of home ownership among Canadians — 67.8 per cent of Canadian households currently own ahome — Siddall admits he has his work cut out for him. “The dream of a singlefamily home in the suburbs still burns strong for many,” he said, blaming this on a “real estate industry drunk on its excess.”
It has long been fashionable in urban planning circles to lament the supremacy of single family homes for a long list of environmental sins, including suburban sprawl. Siddall’s comments represent a dramatic escalation in this campaign by seeking to kill the notion of home ownership entirely through a combination of regulation, policy and cultural disapproval.
From Siddall’s perspective, everyone should live in massively-dense rental apartment complexes because that way we can cheaply fit more people into less space. (Stalinist Russia just popped into my head for some reason.) Single-family homes are thus the selfish option because they prevent other denser options from occurring. Feeling shame yet?
With his provocative stance, Siddall has put himself rather far offside his federal bosses. It is his job, for example, to implement the Trudeau government’s new First Time Home Buyers Incentive program that has as its explicit goal helping young families buy houses. In fact, every major party in the last federal election had at least one platform item dedicated to making home buying easier.
Despite Siddall’s best efforts, Canadians continue to demonstrate a deep affection of home ownership. Amid all the talk of an affordability crisis among younger generations, a recent KPMG poll found 72 per cent of Canadian millennials, aged 23 to 38, say their longterm goal is to own a home, even if that’s tougher today than it was for their parents. Given a choice, most people prefer to own their home.
“These comments reflect an elitist and dramatically out-of-touch sentiment,” says Tim Hudak, CEO of the Ontario Real Estate Association and a former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader, of Siddall’s speech. “It’s a shocking approach for someone who’s position is to encourage people to have a place to call home.”
Siddall announced this week he will step down from his post at CMHC by the end of the year.
Hudak argues the solution to any affordability crisis lies in basic economics. If excess demand is the problem, increased supply will resolve it. His ‘all of the above’ list includes opening more land to new development, reducing red tape to allow for higher density projects and permitting innovations such as laneway homes and co-ownership — all policies recently supported by the Ford government.
And he offers a lengthy list of private and public benefits from home ownership, including forced retirement savings and stronger communities.
“Ontarians are on our side,” Hudak says, “the dream of home ownership is as strong as ever. And it provides an essential stability and strength to our social fabric.”
He’s right, of course. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be hearing more about Ensamfamiljhemskam in the future from folks who simply don’t care about Canadians’ dreams.
Peter Shawn Taylor is a freelance writer and editor based in Waterloo.