mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Founding Director, PLACE Centre. Co-Host, "Missing Middle". Husband. Father. Brother. Son. Economist. Housing guy. I used to do other stuff. Details in link.
Tonight's entertainment: The girl and I are at the Weird Al concert in Ottawa.
Given Canada's aging population, it's not surprising that the fastest growing household sizes are 1- and 2-person households.
The 3rd fastest? Households with 6+ people. But when was the last time you heard an urban planner discuss housing options for this group?
It's weeks like this where I fear for Canada's future. We have governments putting out housing plans they can't explain, and a media that struggles to report even basic facts, and won't correct their errors.
I'm not sure how Canadians can be expected to trust our institutions.
New episode! In "Why Suburbs Will Stay in High Demand for Decades," we show how 20+ years of low construction, immigration, and demand from Gen Z have created a massive market for suburban homes that Boomers will vacate.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7xqgTkr22M
New report! Canada needs gentle-density housing that works for families of all shapes and sizes. But regulatory barriers and other issues prevent it from reaching scale. Here is how we can change that.
Read here: https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/from-policy-gridlock-to-housing-growth
New piece on our Substack: We've Been Measuring Homeownership Wrong.
A better metric shows that homeownership is even less common among younger Canadians than official statistics suggest.
Read here: https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/weve-been-measuring-homeownership
New piece at the Globe. We look at who is moving out of the City of Toronto (along with Vancouver, Montreal, and Peel Region), and how it is negatively impacting our economy and productivity, and increasing political polarization:
Today in mixed feelings. My daughter and I went to the used book store today. I saw a book that I'm in.
That was nice. Less nice: It was in the history section.
This is one of those things I wish I had said. We see it here in Canada as well, as large parts of the political spectrum have decided that the welfare of the middle class is, at best, a secondary concern.
I often hear from planners that big homes aren't needed as family sizes are shrinking. Yet the number of families with 3+ kids is rising. Those families are disproportionately made up of people of colour and new Canadians, groups underrepresented in the planning profession.
New episode! The federal government's well-intentioned 500K housing-start goal is outdated given changing immigration policy and fails to account for the need for a diversity of homes.
Watch "Canada's Housing Goal No Longer Makes Sense" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSfqhQEOiAA
Markham just lost $7.36 million of their $58.8M (12.5%) federal Housing Accelerator funding for violating their requirement to legalize fourplexes. Not massive, but honestly, a bigger cut than I thought it would be.
New episode: Why Gen Z Can’t Find a Summer Job.
How the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, rising competition, and policy choices are reshaping Canada's youth job market.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spib0lJQ_cM
New episode! Cara sits down with Jasmine Steffler of Walkable Parenthood and Oh The Urbanity! to explore why Canada’s parental leave system is among the most generous in the world, yet still leaves many new parents struggling.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5QAt9Z5lZc
New episode! Large parts of Canada stopped building family-sized homes over the last 20 years. Today, we examine the regulatory and market conditions that led to that outcome.
Watch "Why Canada Stopped Building Homes for Families" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDIvAY7F1oo
My latest at the Globe on the increased brain drain from Canada and how countries like Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Vietnam are now actively poaching our young talent. This will only escalate, and taxing the "leavers" only adds insult to injury.
Governments force young middle-class homebuyers to pay 100K+ in HST, DCs, LTTs etc. on an entry-level townhome, because homeownership is a "luxury", while also paying seniors over $80 bilion a year in OAS/GIS, the vast majority of which goes to homeowners. Make it make sense?
New episode! A Flames fan (me) and an Oilers fan (Cara) discuss Calgary's reversal of blanket upzoning, Edmonton's permissive regulatory culture for multiplexes, and all things low-density infill, with the occasional hockey reference.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uKWhM-nrpE
The 2025 election was a year ago. So Profs. Maddeaux and Moffatt decided to give an end-of-year report card to the federal government. We look at 5 subjects of interest to Missing Middlers, and assign a grade to each.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQyRuU-Wxq0
New episode! This past Earth Day brought a sobering headline: only 13% of Canadians now say climate change is a top personal priority, down from 1 in 3 in 2019. But the data tells a complex story, and that Canadians still do care.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IicERB3V3KA
In today's episode, we do a deep dive into the rental housing market and look at some changes Manitoba's government is making to rent control rules.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIZAmtvfc8k
Jared Zaifman, CEO at The London Home Builders' Association and I were guests on the Matt Brown podcast today, talking about all things housing.
Listen here: https://the-matt-brown-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/mike-moffatt
In today's episode, we examine "The Collapse of Youth Happiness in Canada". Is social media really to blame? Or is the bigger story about expectations, affordability, and “option freedom”: the ability to make meaningful life choices.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUyJyf4MJM
New piece! The root cause of our middle-class housing failures stems from governments enacting policies without a clear goal. Today, we provide a goal for governments to use in policymaking, centred around choice and children.
Read here: https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/the-one-question-governments-wont
We often hear that falling birth rates are simply a matter of “changing preferences” that modern couples just don’t want as many children as their parents did. Turns out, it's not that simple.
Watch - The Illusion of Choice: Why We’re Having Fewer Kids
New piece at MMI! We examine the recent Fed-Ont HST and development charge moves, and show how they reduce the price of an entry-level townhome in Oshawa from 730K to 615K, and question why new homes are taxed so heavily in the 1st place.
Read here: https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/correcting-a-decade-of-over-taxing
New episode! The 2026 FIFA World Cup is finally here, but there's a question that needs to be asked: will this massive event actually deliver the economic win that was promised?
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnrAWc80Kb4
The City of Toronto charges a five-figure Land Transfer Tax on homebuyers. They also charge a Ticketmaster-like $102.56 "processing fee" on that tax, which is subject to HST.
A tax on a fee on a tax to buy housing, a human right.
New piece at the Globe, on how the combination of enhanced HST rebates and 50% development charges will lower the price of new homes by 15-20%, and why the savings will be passed along to buyers.
Read here:
The Federal Housing Advocate has advised the government to set a target date to resolve the middle-class housing crisis by... 2060. 34 years from now. This means a Grade 10 student will have to wait until they're 50 to afford a home.
Our latest GTA/GGH housing report card is out, and the numbers are bleak. In 2025, pre-construction sales of both apartment condos and ground-oriented housing all but evaporated. The decline will lead to 46,000 fewer employment-years of work.
Read here: https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/fewer-homes-fewer-jobs-46000-employment
This is mostly an artifact of how Statcan defines boundaries, but I find it hilarious that Canada's most densely populated metros/agglomerations include Stratford, Ingersoll, Tillsonburg, and Woodstock.
New episode! We look at Canada's lagging productivity; specifically my views on how productivity increases can be driven by either fear or greed, that fear is a better motivator, yet public policy tends to overfocus on greed.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGu_lZVE8gU
New episode! In the past, a luxury car or an expensive watch was a public signifier of wealth. In recent years, a new status symbol has emerged: Having 3 or more children.
Watch "The Third Kid is Becoming a Luxury Status Symbol" here:
Housing items in today's federal economic statement. Delighted to see they're planning to move on reforms to make it easier to build multiplexes! This is aligned with one of our recommendations from our January report.
Looks like I'll be a witness at the House of Commons #HUMA committee meeting on Thursday morning, talking housing, Build Canada Homes, and Bill C-20. Should be fun!
https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/HUMA/meeting-32/notice
New episode! Should governments focus on homelessness first, or can they tackle all aspects of the housing crisis at once? We discuss the Federal Housing Advocate's proposal to set a 2060 target for making housing attainable for all Canadians.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kMkxiRqyhg
I'll be a witness this morning at a House of Commons committee, talking about housing. Here are my opening remarks, titled "Transparency, Targets, and Family Housing: Strengthening Bill C-20"
Read here: https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/transparency-targets-and-family-housing
New piece from Cara and me, on how the affordability crisis is shrinking family sizes.
Read: With a record-low 1.25 children per Canadian woman, stop dismissing falling fertility rates as a choice
Most of Canadian housing policy is predicated on the idea that seniors will downsize and use that money for retirement. Yet nearly *half* of all households aged 85 and over live in a single-detached or semi-detached home they own.
Stevenson is right that wealthier neighbourhoods get favoured treatment on infill decisions. Happens everywhere in Canada. Municipalities are highly regressive and it's telling that a populist right-wing politician points this out, rather than the left.
New piece at the Globe: If Canadian governments expect seniors to downsize, and capital gains taxes on primary residences are off-limits, Canada will need to adopt Australia-like tax-advantaged savings plans for seniors who sell their homes.
New piece at the Globe and Mail! Despite their reputation, young people aren't more spendthrift than past generations. They drink less, they smoke less, they spend less on clothes, and housing takes up an increasing amount of their income.
Today's episode is on "Bracket Creep" - how large parts of the tax code aren't indexed for inflation, which pushes middle-class taxpayers into higher tax brackets.
Watch: "The Stealth Tax: How Governments Are Secretly Stealing Your Paycheck" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoHsE_QwoJY
Tomorrow should be interesting. Polymarket has 2 of the 3 by-elections being slam-dunks for the Liberals, while giving them a less than 2/3 chance of winning Terrebonne. Not quite a coin flip, but it should be a nailbiter.
The City of Toronto made this guy pay over 200K in development and planning taxes in order to build supportive housing for his kids, allegedly told him he could get those taxes refunded, and is now telling him he can't.
What a mess.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-family-sues-city-over-housing-project-9.7252717
I was delighted to be invited on the Culture Lab Podcast (@CultureLab_Pod) to answer the question on everyone's mind: "Why do big cities hate millennials?"
FWIW, the framing of that question isn't entirely fair. Cities also hate Gen Z.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlHxIKeQ8E0