 Welcome back to Think Tech, I'm Jay Fiedel and this is View from the North where we take a look at things from Canada and with our old friend Dr. Kent Rogers who's a retired Canadian businessman. And today we're going to talk about housing, talking about building housing, affordable housing, housing for the homeless, housing. And before we start, I want to tell you a story, Kent. So when I was a kid, I guess it was the 40s, the troops came back from World War II. And the city of New York had this really big open area called Flushing Meadow Park. And it was where the World's Fair was in 1939. Where they play tennis nowadays. That's nearby. Okay. And so when the troops came back, they didn't have housing. And they were being reunited with their families, their wives and children would have you. So the city, or possibly the state or the country, built housing for them in the form of quonset huts. And I remember when I was a kid, looking down into this huge valley in Flushing Meadow Park at the west end of it, there were virtually hundreds of these quonset huts homes all provided free by the government. So although there might have been a real crunch in housing at the end of World War II, for that part of the country, it wasn't. There was housing for them. The federal government or whoever made this project really stepped in. And I wonder if the same attitude could exist again. Because ultimately, we really need housing for a working economy, don't you agree? Yes, but your housing scenario requires basic understanding of supply and demand. You know, what is the supply of the housing and what is the demand for housing? Well, if you have, you know, thousands of people a day arriving at the southern border in the US or, you know, in Canada, we've had the 1.2 million people come in in the last year. Now, to put that into American terms, you'd have to multiply it by 10, you know, you'd have like 11 or 12 million. And even though you got that flood at the southern border, that's still not the same level, but it's getting close. Now, if you have that many people coming in or the change in the population, there's no way on earth you're going to have enough housing. You know, you could say, well, gee, the simplest thing is have zero immigration, let the housing catch up. Well, that's not a very good solution, you know, but you still have to watch, you know, the key factors, what's the supply of housing, what's the demand for it and cost to me. You've got to play with those three key factors before you can get any kind of solution or understand fully the problem. A few years ago, my wife and I went to Singapore. And what we found to our amazement and delight was that Singapore does control population. Singapore, you know, takes a lot of people in from the PRC. And the deal is it measures the number of people. I mean, there's a controlled immigration. And when they come in, this is so interesting. They are given two things. One is a job right away, day one. And the second is they're given an apartment on day one. And they pay for the apartment from out of their wages on the job. So they're never on the street. They're never without work. They're never without housing. And you've got to hand it to the Singapore government for setting it up that way. We are so far from that. Well, Singapore has one fantastic advantage over Hawaii or the United States or Canada, and that is it has one level of government. You know, in Canada, in a city like Vancouver, there's really four levels of government. You know, there's the federal government, the provincial government, but metropolitan Vancouver, which I call Vancouver, is made up of, you know, eight or 10 separate municipalities. You know, as the city expanded, it's gradually engulfed all of these former suburbs or former satellite towns into the metropolitan area. Are you saying that the only way or one clear way that we can solve the housing crisis, and it is a crisis, I'm sure you'll agree, is by reforming government? Well, I think there's a hopeless task. You know, I think, you know, that's like spitting up wind to say you're going to have, you know, you can't even get cooperation between the states and the federal government in the U.S., let alone municipalities and the states and the federal government, and you have some of these metropolitan areas, or many of most of the big cities in the U.S. are really metropolitan areas made up of a whole bunch of separate municipalities. It seems to me that, you know, housing has got to be one of the critical factors to civilization and to the whole quality of life, to, as I said before, an economy, but also, you know, a civil society. You can't have people living in hovels. It doesn't work. You can't have them living on the street. It certainly, certainly doesn't work. So what is our target? What is, what is our, you know, ultimate desire here? A house, it's like, you know, what's his name, Hoover, President Hoover, a chicken in every pot, okay? A house for every family, same thing. But query, how do you, how do you get there? Is that what we're trying to achieve here? A house for every family? Well, I think one of the great examples in housing of what not to do is in Cuba. Now, in Cuba, they, when Castro took over, they, you know, really, the public was the owner of every building, you know, and you kind of could have your, your suite inside the building. Well, if you go to, you know, Honolulu anytime in the last 10 or 15 years, you just wondered how come these gorgeous old buildings are all falling apart? Now, it's the outside that's falling apart because, you know, there's no pride of ownership that somebody's willing to spend a nickel to fix the outside of the building that they, they live in. You know, so the idea that the government saw three levels somehow would provide the housing, you somehow have to have it so that the house is owned by the person that's living in it, you know, or, or they're renting and there is a landlord that's worried about the feeling of the hallways and the stairways and the outside appearance of the building in the yard, etc. You know, your, your cities will be a mess and they'll just be a big junkyard. If you, if it's all publicly owned or let's say government owned, no, I think if you have some public housing, but I don't, I'm not a great fan for a major increase in public housing because the minute you have public housing, it sort of really breaks down. You know, Vancouver is, is one of the most progressive cities in the world in my mind, but they, you know, every time they have a bunch of public housing, you know, you wait one year and it's, you know, gone to hell in a handbasket, you know, it really breaks down quickly without that pride of ownership being there and they try really hard to keep it up. Now, you know, when Singapore is providing people housing, I just don't know how they do the ownership, you know, like they may provide somebody the house, but you either have a landlord that's watching over very closely. I'm not talking about they own it. Apartments that they own. And so there is a pride of ownership and they have to pay for it. And it's a transaction where they buy it, but it's financed from part of their earnings. OK, well, then you really got to get down to supply, demand and cost. You know, one of the, you know, Canada's been experimenting with improving their housing the same as the US, you know, every city is a little different. You know, well, I got a couple of examples that I think would give some clues to what one might do in the immediate future, what cities are trying to do now. You know, for the province in Canada that has the highest standard of living also has the best cooperation between the provincial government, the city and the municipal government. And that's Alberta, so that you take city. The the greatest increase in population in Canada has occurred in that province in part because it has the economic opportunity. But it has been just flooded with immigration. An awful lot of it going from other provinces to that province. Now, the way they've provided their housing is they have a mixture of the most ridiculous urban sprawl you could imagine. You know, that is, it's both Calgary and Edmonton, the two biggest cities there are just spread out and, you know, the governments have provided the financing for the utilities and so that the the cost of a new single family subdivision home in in the suburbs of either those cities is is half the price of what it is in either Toronto or Vancouver, even though those two cities have grown faster. So you get what have they done that the other the bigger cities have not done, even though those two cities have a million and a half people each. Well, they, you know, they have allowed government financing of the infrastructure fast enough that they were ahead of the of the growth rather than behind it. You know, most cities, you know, such as in Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal in Canada, those the three biggest cities we have. You can always you can tell which way the city is going to grow on the outskirts first, because there's a rationing of the utilities. You know, if there's no water, it's not going to go that way. If there's no sewer connection, it's not going to go that way. And accordingly, the price goes through the roof. Now, Vancouver picked a completely different approach to solving their their housing. You know, and they really have major constraints a little bit like Honolulu or, say, New York City, is the geography prevents too much urban sprawl. You know, you're so you really have how do you increase density? Well, they took neighborhoods that were let's say built up in single family homes after 19 between World War Two and 1980, you know, and simply rezoned what was a single family home a lot into a higher density. So you could knock down the single family home and build something on it. Now, in the case of of some cities in Western Canada, such as the one I live in or Calgary or Edmonton, that idea has has been a very good short term success. Now, I I emphasize the word short term because I think it's it's the right idea, but it's not quite aggressive enough to solve the problem. You know, for example, in the city I live in, they Kelowna has about a quarter of a million people. Now, they took single family home subdivisions that were built, you know, in the 40 years after the world after World War Two and they reasoned so you could build you know, a fourplex. Well, what happened was the price of the single family home was that they were knocking down to build a fourplex was worth enough money that the land cost for the for the fourplex was pretty high per unit. You know, for example, if the house is worth four hundred thousand dollars and you're going to put a fourplex on it, then the land component in the fourplex is a hundred thousand dollars. So right away, what was going to be built on it was going to be a more upscale fourplex. Mm hmm. You know, instead of, you know, can you build a a five hundred and fifty square foot two bedroom. Unit. Where, you know, a young family or, you know, a young couple that's planning on having one or two kids could move in and live there till the kids are up to elementary school. You know, well, instead, you know, they were like you know, thirteen hundred, you know, two thousand square foot units being sold sold at much higher prices. Now. This all suggests, Ken, that, you know, that government has to be involved, hopefully not too many levels of it because the more levels, the more bureaucrats, the more bureaucrats that slow the process and so forth. And in permitting, it gets to be a problem. But what I'm what I'm fishing for here is the dynamic of it. You talk about supply and demand. You talk about immigrants coming from far away. You talk about trying to anticipate what people will want and what they can afford. And it seems to me, for example, that you cannot build static. You cannot say, well, we expect we're going to have X people, X levels of income in this neighborhood. So therefore, we're going to do everything we can to have this kind of unit available in that neighborhood. The neighborhood will change. And when I'm when I'm thinking the old notion of project apartment buildings like in Chicago and New York in, you know, Upper Manhattan, that's what they got. That's what they got in Harlem, project buildings. And then the community changes and you've got to change with it. So a modern model, I don't know if anybody's written about this, but a modern model, you know, would be you only expect it to last for so long. And then you have to come in and do it again with due regard for the change in the demography, the change in the income, the change in the way the city is evolving. And I'm talking about city because I think that's ultimately where most people live. But the problem is I don't think cities care. It's the old motion of infrastructure. You build it, you're satisfied. The government officials change and they move on down the road. Nobody ever thinks about it again. And before you know it, it's old and decrepit. And, you know, it's just an awful experience to live there. So I think we have to have a new approach to reflect the changing community that I agree with you. And I have a problem with your idea that one level of government can solve it. You know, and I could use an example that if Honolulu chose to use the Vancouver method of providing housing, you know, and that was, you know, they ran a rapid transit system, but anywhere the rapid transit system ran, they increased the density to, you know, that would make Waikiki look like it had small buildings. You know, the, you know, you have, you know, 15 miles from the downtown of Vancouver, you've got, you know, 60-story buildings being built for apartments. And at a good price, you know, the good price for Vancouver, you know, it's still the highest price in Canada, but nevertheless, they're trying and they got some good success. Well, if you took Honolulu and you said, you know, an ideal neighborhood for high density would be Kahala. Now, who lives in Kahala? Oh, a single family, upper, upper, upper end. Oh, exactly. But if you have 10 aldermen or whatever the city council members are called, probably three of them live in Kahala. And you could not get Diddly Squat done at a city council meeting in Honolulu because of the wealth of the people that now live in Kahala. Would prevent anything being done other than leaving it as a single family neighborhood? Well, yes, that's true. But remember that they have to live in their district. So you wouldn't have, you know, an inappropriate number of council members from one district. The problem is, you know, we want to do it this way because we've always done it this way, right? You know, I think that's universal. And the other the other thing is, you mean, you mean, we're going to have to spend money on this? We're going to actually have to make a long term plan. We're going to have to knock down buildings that are perfectly habitable. You know, and so I don't think that government in general, I don't think government here, for example, recognizes the need to provide an ongoing supply of housing with regard to exactly how the community is going to develop. And, you know, with a big problem in Hawaii, I don't know if this exists in Vancouver or elsewhere. Is that if you could out of school and get a job you know, with whatever skills you may have, whatever education you may have, you probably can't afford a single family house. In fact, you can't afford a nice apartment either. Housing is simply too expensive. And the government isn't really doing anything significant to make it more affordable. I mean, for everyone, not just for the people, you know, who are at the borderline but to make it more affordable for the community. And as a result, some of the best and brightest consistently are leaving. And so, you know, you lose the strengths of your talent and your economy because you're not able to provide a supply of housing that will comport with their jobs and their income. Well, that explanation really leads me to the conclusion that I've always had that that there's no simple solution for the whole housing. You've got to break it into little, weak components and tackle that component. I'll use one component as an example is one of the major problems that Canada has, and I believe the US does, is you do not have enough qualified people in certain in certain fields. Therefore, universities are very important. But the universities, you know, have financial problems and therefore they're really, really anxious to allow foreign students to come in and in effect, squeeze out local students. Well, in Western Canada, the foreign students are one of our major problems causing our housing crisis. We don't have enough, you know, residences. So if you say, well, let's take a general theme, we would like to have more local people at university. We'd love to have foreigners come and help support the university, especially ones we could encourage to train here, learn everything about Canada or the US while they're here and then stay, you know, use that expertise, expertise they have, whether it's engineering with, you know, a techie engineer or whether it's, you know, for medical purposes. But then you've got, you need to have that housing. So say if you took one whole theme, a chain and say more universities, more foreign students, more local students to, you know, up the standard of living by and fill the gaps that we have in employment, but provide a ton of student housing, both married couple and single ones. And and so you can say, OK, there's one solution, you know, or one piece of the housing crisis is, is, you know, you start at the end that makes the economy churn the most. I always think that's the best place to start. And, you know, and the Canadian or use in the US, you know, why do people like to go to Boston? Well, Boston doesn't have the same housing crisis as, you know, Cleveland. And I thought all these years I thought it was the pizza. Oh, well, maybe they like pizza, but really the standard living in Boston is is so high that they can afford the housing. You know, we're in Cleveland, you know, the key jobs, the standard of living is just not as high. And therefore the housing gets more decrepit and people can't afford as much. And, you know, and yet, you know, I thought Cleveland was a lovely city in in many regards, but, you know, the economics are so key to it. I mean, you'd have why has the population in Honolulu or Oahu has been pretty stable for several years. It doesn't have any increase. And yet you still got a housing crisis. Yeah, that's because we're not building. We're not building housing for new families. We're not building housing for, you know, local people who are just, you know, coming into the housing market. And if you are, say, a professional or somebody who gets a job here, there aren't that many, but let's soon you get a job here. You have a headache trying to find a house that you can afford. It was always thus, you know, for as long as I've lived here, it was always thus we are not keeping up. And I think it is probably not limited to Hawaii, although Hawaii has a very high cost of occupancy because of the land system, you know, the limitation of the of the amount of land that's available. But I think, you know, what I get out of this discussion is that we really have to have better planning. And you're a you were a planner for what, a Caldery for a while. And we have to have planning that's comprehensive. We have that planning that looks down the road. We have AI now. We have all this data available. We can figure out who's coming, who's going. We can look at it on a periodic basis. We can achieve the tax incentives and other incentives, permitting incentives. Who knows what kind of if we if you and I sat in a room for a few minutes, we'd come up with a lot of incentives that would be able to incentivize housing where it was necessary. You know, I'm not saying, you know, that it's it's the kind of planning that would happen in a totalitarian society. But I'm saying that we don't we in the Democratic society. We really don't, you know, have enough planning and it should be planning not on a gross economic basis, although that would be nice, but on a on a housing basis. And after all, that is on the ground. That is where you live. That is where your quality of life is most poignant. And I don't think we're doing it. And one of the the metrics of that is all these people that are homeless. One of the metrics of that is all these people get thrown out of their homes because they can't afford the the mortgage that they signed or they can't afford the rent that the landlord, you know, charges them. It's out of sorts, isn't it? And it's a macro problem, isn't it? And it's ultimately a government problem if things are in disarray, isn't it? It is to a great degree. But if I were to make a cynical way to describe Hawaii's unique housing crisis, because it is not the same as other places, is that the the cost of living in Hawaii is sufficiently high that the standard of living is not high enough to cover the cost of housing. You know, that is my example of Alberta or Boston, you know, is where they have the economics come first and the economics are people are coming there, you know, kissing the ground to get a job there because they're just such wonderful jobs that I pay. You know, well, then you can afford the extra cost to ship stuff like Hawaii needs to devise high paying jobs to offset the the cost of living. Bingo, that's it. You have to improve your economy with better skills and high paying jobs and exporting, you know, either goods or services, intellectual property, what have you, because if you stay in, you know, that we do it this way because we always did it this way, mentality, what happens is people leave. They they they vote with their feet and they take off. And then you have a, you know, a declining community. And I suppose you deserve that because you didn't plan against it. You deserve that because you didn't, you know, incentivize sectors that were more profitable and more attractive to young people. I mean, Hawaii has that. I'm sure a lot of cities have that. And what's interesting is if you look at some cities, you will find they don't have that problem that they are, you know, producing a sector that is profitable for young people to buy houses. There is housing. It's I mean, this has got to be examined and and democratized, if you will. My problem is that I don't think that capitalism by itself solves this problem. I think we have clear indication that capitalism by itself creates a worse problem all the time. So you have got to get a benign carrying government in a government that will hang around for a while. A government that will not be, you know, skewed by politics and the like for, you know, immediate gratification. A government that will look over the horizon and figure it out, don't have that. Well, if I'm to look at the current mess in the U.S. Congress, you know, you certainly can't depend on one of the parties for any. And, however, the excuse me, the key, though, to to the housing is to try to get the public side of it to work well with private enterprise. That is, I think there is no industry that has as many entrepreneurs as, you know, real estate development. I mean, real estate development by its very nature is is entrepreneurship. And so the best of capitalism can come and the role of government, whether it's municipal planning or financing, can steer that. You know, there's there's no industry where if you stick out a carrot, they'll go for it faster than anybody else. You know, well, your situation where you're sitting in in Honolulu, if you could start from scratch, you'd say we're Alamoana shopping centers, one of the neatest shopping centers in the world. But if you could start over again, you know, you could have the the whole parking lot, including underneath all the existing buildings would be, you know, a couple levels of parking. And then, but you'd basically say we'd like to have maybe five thousand people live on that piece of land. You know, would like some whole project of how that project is built with modern technology, modern planning, you know, at the very cusp of the way you do planning now, instead of the way you did planning in 1950, you know, the world has changed. And so I mean, you take Alamoana. I mean, what they do is they add on to it. And it's worth several billion dollars, but they add on to it. And nobody nobody says, hey, we're going to have to, you know, take this down to grade and start again and all that. They always find a way Hawaii is really special about this. Always find a way to remodel something when really they should be rebuilding it, you know, is cheaper and you don't have so much permitting limitation. Well, I'm just trying to get the idea that that nuke commercial space should be designed as mixture. You know, if you if you want to have high density that really works like the city of Vancouver is accomplishing you know, way along ways from the city center, but rate on, you know, mass transit system. You know, you can say like when I first visited New York City, I was I was fascinated with the Rockaway area way out in the the far edges of Brooklyn were these absolutely humongous, gorgeous buildings. Well, they were at the end of the train line. You know, so even though it was a few minutes longer to make it to downtown Manhattan or to midtown Manhattan or to anywhere else in the metro for for wherever you work, what a great place to live. You know, you were on the ocean. You had great views, you know, and you could take the express train in. Well, Vancouver, they've kind of that's what they've been doing. Like they had come with virtually no cooperation from upper levels of government, the metro government, kind of the the city of Vancouver and the surrounding municipalities together, once they got the upper level of government's assistance to build the their light rail transit system, then they had these mega hubs. Well, you can a family can live in a high rise apartment as long as you have similar to Singapore, right near or, you know, underneath the building, there's a large supermarket and there's a park next door and on the roof, there's some amenity facility or down the street, there's one of these large recreation centers that have, you know, swimming pools and tennis courts and you name it. Let me hold you there, Ken. I mean, this is so delicious, this conversation. This is a planning conversation. This is a conversation about about answering the, you know, the original question. How do you improve quality of life? So it's it's affordable as it draws people that gives them a good life. They can afford is a wonderful kind of result. And I want to discuss this with you more. I hope we can do that next time. We've only begun a conversation that really is a very important one and beyond the boundary of most cities in this country. Anyway, we got to go now, though, Ken. Thank you very much. See you next time. Aloha from Canada. Aloha from Hawaii.