Imposed from above during an economic emergency, rent control played a significant role both in curbing out-of-control inflation and solving the housing crisis Canada was experiencing at the time. A combination of robust rent control and concurrent investments in public housing saw housing prices fall by as much as 30 percent in real terms between 1975 and 1978.
Why are things like housing coops and other kinds of off-market housing (eg council housing) not a solution to affordable housing? Georgism to me sounds like too many hoops jumped to protect private ownership, when social/municipal/public ownership is a more straightforward solution.
And on the other end, Canada is big. There is still a lot of space to go off into the boonies and construct new transit oriented towns.
If done at massive scale then yes that would also work, but I don’t believe the Canadian government is willing to go there either. It would truly need to be a huge scale to be able to bring housing back to affordable levels.
I think that is a second best solution, but would take a huge investment from our government.
It would still tank a lot of people’s retirements, because at its core more affordable housing means people can sell their houses for a lot less.
At its root I think Georgism is actually quite socialist. You are effectively saying nobody really owns land anymore, but instead have to rent it from the state for the value that you would get if you rented out just the land.