Why we need to tax million-dollar-home owners

Generation Squeeze's Hard Truths

We've proposed a modest annual surtax on homes valued more than $1 million as one strategy (among many) to tackle the housing crisis. The surtax could generate $5 billion per year to fund affordable non-profit housing. It would also disrupt a cultural problem that fuels the crisis: many everyday Canadians have benefitted from skyrocketing home values, creating wealth windfalls that are largely sheltered from taxation. Meanwhile those same rising values erode housing affordability for younger generations, whose earnings from work are fully taxed. Public opinion supports asking the country's wealthiest homeowners to chip in more to chip away at housing unaffordability, according to new polling data. In this episode, Paul Kershaw and Umair Muhammad chat about Paul's article on the housing surtax in Maclean's Magazine this month.

"Canadians see how harmful this growing gap between home price and earnings has become for society. We have witnessed what it means to lock out literally generations of younger, talented, hardworking, well-educated folks from thinking that home ownership might be in their reach in cities across this country. And they're a bigger part of the electorate," Paul Kershaw says. "Public opinion is changing. Over 60% of Canadians from coast to coast to coast are actually supportive of the idea of putting a modest price on housing inequity."

Dig deeper:

• "Why we need to tax million-dollar-home owners" in Maclean's Magazine
• A price on housing inequity - our full report on the surtax
• Housing wealth poll highlights
• More of our solutions to the housing crisis