Commodity

I live in a walkable neighborhood which was settled largely during the mid 19th century by Irish immigrants. This is an area that mixes the residential and commercial and where access to bus and metro discourages car ownership. It is why I gave up mine as it was 95% of the time sitting there parked.

Today these neighborhoods are illegal to build in Canada and, as urban sprawl and car culture began to take over in the 1950's, the extremities of Montreal Island began to resemble every other North American bedroom community where one had to use their car to go and buy milk.

Housing slowly became a commodity and people speculated and made money playing with real estate. We saw it as an extension of our wealth portfolio and with each successive move we topped up our net worth.

Today there is a crisis (in part artificial) which sees people struggle to find and keep affordable housing. We are no longer talking about speculation but rather about keeping mortgages and rents below 50% of income. We are beginning to talk in terms of housing as a basic human right rather than as a commodity to be played with.

As more people fall off the grid it might be time to act before things get steadily worse.