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A review by takecoverbooksptbo
Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada's Housing Crisis by Gregor Craigie
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.0
I honestly don’t know why this book exists. Craigie uses chapters that alternate between examples of broad problems in the Canadian housing crisis (region by region) and how international locales have attempted to solve these problems.
While the book’s form creates some interesting political juxtapositions, Our Crumbling Foundation has a larger problem: while it acknowledges the exigent state of Canada’s housing crisis, the solutions put forward will always be inadequate because it leaves the housing market intact. As a result, the book wastes a lot of words and pages on the crisis without ever naming the core problem that needs to be fixed: the marketization of home ownership. As long as we see housing as a commodity and not a right, nothing will be fixed in Canada.
Craigie wrote a pretty depressing book here, but not for the reasons he probably thinks. As a watermark for where mainstream Canadian liberalism stands in our age of rising inflation, as well as a benchmark for the political desire to legislate change, this is pretty pathetic.
While the book’s form creates some interesting political juxtapositions, Our Crumbling Foundation has a larger problem: while it acknowledges the exigent state of Canada’s housing crisis, the solutions put forward will always be inadequate because it leaves the housing market intact. As a result, the book wastes a lot of words and pages on the crisis without ever naming the core problem that needs to be fixed: the marketization of home ownership. As long as we see housing as a commodity and not a right, nothing will be fixed in Canada.
Craigie wrote a pretty depressing book here, but not for the reasons he probably thinks. As a watermark for where mainstream Canadian liberalism stands in our age of rising inflation, as well as a benchmark for the political desire to legislate change, this is pretty pathetic.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction and Alcoholism