Photo: King Charles III reads the Speech from the Throne on May 27, 2025, to open a new session of the Canadian Parliament, as new Prime Minister Mark Carney looks on.
The “financialization of housing” encompasses relatively recent structural changes in housing and financial markets, where housing is treated as a commodity or asset for wealth accumulation and serves as security for market-traded financial instruments…
— from a report, “Brief on the Financialization of Housing” delivered to the Canadian House of Commons, May 2023.
Yesterday, one of our Daily Post humor columnists, Louis Cannon, gave us his reaction to a speech by King Charles III, delivered on Monday at the Canadian Parliament.
It was unusual to have King Charles travel all the way to Ottawa to give “The Speech from the Throne” — a speech which is required to be delivered at the start of any new session of the Canadian Parliament. For the past 48 years, the British Monarch has authorized the Governor General of Canada to deliver the speech.
But times change, and sometimes, change rapidly. We can assume (if we are so inclined) that the appearance of King Charles at the opening of the Canadian Parliament as a reaction to things going on in Washington DC… as an indication, perhaps, that the rest of the world is looking for avenues of economic cooperation, in the face of proposed American tariff policies.
Be that as it may, we can note that the Speech from the Throne — which was written at least in part by Canada’s leading political party, the Liberal Party of Canada — described a number of social priorities that the Liberal Party hopes to address in the new session.
The speech was delivered partly in French, the primary language of about one-quarter of Canadians.
To quote King Charles:
Il nous faut confronter la réalité : depuis la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, notre monde n’a jamais été aussi dangereux et instable. Le Canada fait face à des défis qui, dans nos vies, sont sans précédent.
[We must face reality: since the Second World War, our world has never been more dangerous and unstable. Canada is facing challenges that are unprecedented in our lifetimes.]
Despite the dangers and instability, however, there’s plenty of work to be done at the local neighborhood level, where the people live. Building homes, for example.
And apparently, the Liberal Party sees Canada’s housing crisis as one of the key priorities.
Here’s the King again, describing the goals of the Liberal Party government:
Critically, the Government will undertake a series of measures to help double the rate of home building while creating an entirely new housing industry – using Canadian technology, Canadian skilled workers, and Canadian lumber. The Government will introduce measures to deliver affordable homes by creating Build Canada Homes. This mission-driven organization will act to accelerate the development of new affordable housing. It will invest in the growth of the prefabricated and modular housing industry. And it will provide significant financing to affordable home builders. The Government will make the housing market work better, including by cutting municipal development charges in half for all multi-unit housing. The Government will drive supply up to bring housing costs down.
Speaking as a long-time housing advocate, this seems to me like a nearly impossible task: to double the rate of home building across an entire nation. The rate of new home construction in Archuleta County is currently about one-quarter the rate we saw in the late 1990s, even with the arrival of new Colorado grant programs.
But maybe the Canadians are serious? Maybe they will stop building cars to sell in the U.S. and switch to building houses for their own population?
We are seeing a different set of priorities, coming from the Trump administration.
The current White House budget request seeks $33 billion in cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including cutting HUD staffing by 50%. The White House has also proposed the elimination of Section 8 housing vouchers, cutting rental aid by 40%, and repeal of the Fair Housing Act. The administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down an agency created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. The overall effect will be a dramatic reduction in federal oversight of mortgage lending, servicing, and consumer protection, essentially returning to a regulatory environment of pre-2008 financial crisis standards.
It would appear that Colorado communities dealing with a lack of safe, affordable housing cannot expect much help from the federal government over the next four years. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Canada is looking better by the day.
Unfortunately, it’s not only federal government policies that result in a lack of safe, affordable housing in the U.S. If we are interested in laying blame, much of it can be laid on America’s financial industry — the industry that the Trump administration apparently wants to deregulate once more.
The “Brief on the Financialization of Housing” delivered to the Canadian House of Commons in May 2023, outlines the “financialization” of housing, which has converted what we once viewed as human shelter, into profit centers for capitalist corporations.
International human rights law guarantees the right to adequate housing, which is understood as a place where one can enjoy without discrimination, security of tenure, and decent conditions at an affordable cost based on household income.
[This mention of “International human rights law” may be a reference to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the U.S. and 47 other countries — including Canada — in 1948. The human rights principle has also been recognized in Canadian Law, courtesy of the National Housing Strategy Act of 2019.]
A financialized housing business model undermines these requirements necessary to enjoy the human right to housing.
The financialization of housing is a key cause of spiralling unaffordability in cities across Canada. Those involved in financialization commonly acquire properties, increase rents for existing tenants, engage in often needless modernizations to justify inflated rents, impose increased fees, and remove services, diminishing the value tenants receive.
Financialization can also fuel gentrification, repositioning buildings for higher income earners, and thus attracting businesses and amenities tailored to them. Consequently, local rents and house prices rise, displacing communities, and deepening unaffordability.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
So the question becomes — lacking any assistance or protections from the federal government — how can the isolated, rural town of Pagosa Springs cure its core economic crisis?
Read Part Four, tomorrow…