Across Canada, the cost of housing is becoming more and more expensive. While working people struggle to keep up with mortgage or rent payments, big Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are buying up housing stock and making billions of dollars off the crisis they have helped create. Meanwhile, the government is giving these REITs hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks.
CUPE members see the impacts of these failed market policies every day. In homeless shelters, long-term care homes, and other social health care services, our members provide front-line support to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Only direct public intervention in the housing market can right the ship.
Public money should be spent on the public good, not on making private companies more profitable. CUPE has called on the government to prioritize non-market housing solutions by making significant investments in social housing. By ending tax subsidies for REITs and other predatory investors, and reinvesting the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue in social housing projects, we can ensure an affordable and dignified home for everyone.
