Politicians vs. Millennials: The Battle for Housing Affordability

The government need to find its ethos

Meredith Martin

Mike Moffatt

, and

Sabrina Maddeaux

Jun 18, 2025

In this episode of the Missing Middle podcast, Sabrina Maddeaux and Mike Moffatt discuss the lack of clear housing goals from political parties, examining the Liberals' National Housing Strategy's lack of policies and vision to support the middle class, as well as the NDP's ineffective communication with younger voters.

The conversation highlights the struggle of middle-class individuals to afford housing, the disconnect between political messaging and the lived experiences of young Canadians, and potential political upheaval due to these housing frustrations.

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Below is an AI-generated transcript of the Missing Middle podcast, which has been lightly edited.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Housing policy in Canada, particularly from the Liberals and NDP, seems laser-focused on low-income earners and social housing. And those are important things, but this feels like it's rooted in a decades-old understanding of the housing crisis and not what it looks like today. Meanwhile, Millennials and Gen Z, many of whom are middle or even upper-middle class, are struggling to rent or buy homes at all, let alone ones that actually match their expected lifestyle.

Despite how frustrated young Canadians are that they've been priced out of housing, we just saw the federal Housing Minister, Gregor Robertson, comment that housing prices don't need to decline. And he's said it again and again, which has angered a lot of young Canadians.

You published a Substack piece that we'll link to in the show notes that argued this wasn't really a case of cabinet ministers going off message, but part of a larger structural issue, that the government actually doesn't know what it's trying to accomplish when it comes to middle-class housing. And I thought that was pretty interesting. You wrote, it lacks clear goals and objectives. So, can you tell me exactly what you mean by that? And why is it that you think politicians are so out of touch with this group's housing needs?

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, it is a little bit strange. So if you look at what the Liberals have done over the last decade, they have their national housing strategy, which is very focused on housing as a human right and the lower end of the market, right? So they look at ending chronic homelessness, ending core housing needs, and making sure that low-income families don't fall through the cracks. That's a fantastic thing. And they have a really strong vision of what they're trying to accomplish. And that helps because if you have that vision and know where you're trying to go, that helps your communication because you can say, “Okay, this is what we're trying to do and why.” And it actually informs your policy as well.

Different think tanks, like us and others, will always be feeding politicians ideas. And you could go, ‘Okay, this actually moves us closer or further to where we want to be’.

But weirdly, the Liberals have never really set any middle-class housing vision. They don't have any targets or goals. They don’t say ‘This is what we want reality to look like for middle-class Canadians in their 20s and 30s.’ It's not there. They don't really seem to know what they're trying to accomplish. And because of that, I think it infects their communications. I think they genuinely don't know if they want home prices to go down or not.

For instance, are they moving towards a goal where we're just making rental affordable, or is it a middle-class vision where middle-class families can own a home anywhere in Canada? And at the Missing Middle, we actually have that as our North Star. We include that middle-class Canadians should be able to own or rent a home anywhere in Canada. They don't have that vision. And I think it infects the way they design policies and the way they communicate the policies.

I wouldn't say it's all politicians. I think Poilievre actually does this relatively well. He talks about the dream of homeownership…(and gets himself in trouble occasionally talking about biological clocks. And you and I discussed that in a different episode.) But I genuinely think that the federal Conservatives do a better job of articulating that vision. That doesn't necessarily translate into better policy, but I think it can.

And interestingly, I think the one politician who does this really well is Doug Ford. He went to Ford Fest a couple of years ago or gave a speech in Kitchener where he said, ‘Look, our goal is that you should be able to buy a single detached,’ I think it was like ‘1,800 square foot home with a basement, a paved driveway, white picket fence for under $500,000.’ You can agree or disagree with that goal.

And I know many environmentalists will say, ‘Well, no, that's not realistic. That's just too much sprawl.’ That's fine. But you can't argue that it's not a vision. As they say in The Big Lebowski, like, ‘At least they have an ethos’, right? At least they have a vision that they're trying to get to.

So I think it is a problem. And I think it may come from the fact that on the left, we have a tendency to triage and go, ‘Okay, we have to help those most in need first. And then when they're helped out, we can focus on everyone else.’ I get the instinct. But in my view, this should be a conversation that’s yes-and. Yes, we need to help low-income folks. Yes, we need to address homelessness. We need to do all these things. But we also need to create a compelling vision for the middle class. So that's my viewpoint on it.

You've been thinking a lot about this, too. You wrote a Toronto Star column recently about how the NDP's housing communications often fail to resonate because they lean so heavily on a social justice framing, which can alienate a lot of young, middle-class voters who just want practical solutions to buy or rent a decent home, right? They just want a place to live. They don't want a political science seminar.

Why do you think it is that the NDP struggles to speak to younger, middle-class families and individuals on housing? And how do you think that's hurting their broader appeal?

Sabrina Maddeaux: Yeah, like you said, the Liberals are certainly fumbling this issue, but it surprises me less that they don't know where they want to go on it being a centrist party and [because of] their voter coalition. But it's really the NDP that I think has fumbled this in the biggest way. And they've cost themselves a generational opportunity and perhaps the continuation of their party, depending on how the next few years go.

This really should have been easy pickings for the NDP when you look at their traditional voters, which are workers, middle class, lower middle class, and young people. And here you have this perfect storm, or what should have been a perfect storm for them, where affordability, housing are the biggest issues of the day, right? And that young people were really looking for someone to speak to them on this and provide solutions, and they just basically didn't speak about it for a very long time. And then when they finally got around to doing it, it wasn't in a really effective or realistic way.

The focus was so heavily on just that lower income bracket or homelessness, [with a] heavy focus on social housing. When they did put out numbers, their numbers were this magical math that never really made sense. And even when they started plummeting in the polls, rather than take the opportunity to say, ‘Oh, where's this big, bold vision? Now's the time we can do something really ambitious to prove that we're serious and pivot.’ They never did.

I think there are a few things…One, I think Jagmeet Singh as a leader was never very interested in economic issues. He became the leader during a time when the focus was on social justice issues. And some of those, in a day and age where Canadians can't pay rent or own a home or start a family, become really luxury beliefs that younger Canadians can't afford to spend their time thinking about because they can't afford to actually put a roof over their heads.

The NDP is, in some ways, their voter base is two parties right now. You do have more comfortable older Canadians or urban downtown dwellers who are still focused on that social justice side because they're not as impacted by the affordability crisis. But then the other part of the party, that is younger and more economically unstable and desperate, has been pushed to the side and ignored. And I think that will be a real tension coming up in a leadership race for them, because which side is going to win out? How will a leader bring them together if they can? And what's that vision for what the NDP is going forward?

There's still an opportunity there. I don't think it's too late, especially since a lot of young people tend to be orange, blue switchers. So we'll see what happens over the next few years. But it's certainly not something they can afford to ignore.

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, and I think you highlighted something really important, and it's that older voters, particularly the Liberals and NDP - it’s a little bit easier for the Liberals and NDP to focus on social housing because those left-wing Boomers who live in Cabbage Town in Toronto or the Glebe in Ottawa think social housing, ‘Okay, well, that's a great thing.’ And subconsciously realize ‘Well, that's not going to affect the value of my home, right?’ Whereas if we build more middle-class housing, now, all of a sudden, that $2 million home in the Glebe might only be worth 1.7 million. So there is this tension.

And I think it does show the fact that both the NDP and the Liberals have a coalition, which includes a lot of higher wealth voters. And particularly higher wealth voters who may not have earned huge incomes in their careers. Maybe they were a teacher or worked for a municipality or worked for a university and earned a decent living, but bought a home in like 1987 for $250,000 and now it's worth 2 million. And their home actually earned more in their career than they did. And now they're going, ‘I'm not overly comfortable seeing the value of that home depreciate.’

Sabrina Maddeaux: Yeah, there, there hasn't been that willpower to have those tough conversations and actually acknowledge that, yes, there will have to be some trade-offs. And I think there's also a lack of acknowledgement that middle-class, and even upper-middle-class young people, by being so priced out of the market or rentals, has a trickle-down effect. Because now you do have young professionals, maybe making low six figures, but they're renting the one-bedroom or the basement apartment that would have gone to someone with a lower income in the past. And then what happens to that person with the lower income, right? They're pushed further and further down the ladder, and perhaps out of a home entirely.

It's not something you can solve by just focusing on that one segment. And by making it so unaffordable and competitive for the middle class and upper middle class, it's really had a downward effect that leads to these issues. So I really think there does need to be a more holistic approach there.

Which leads to my next question, because when we look at the data, middle-class millennials and Gen Z are on the whole earning pretty decent income, say $80,000 to $120,000 a year for a household. But they're still priced out of urban markets like Toronto and Vancouver.

In your mind, is this a failure of policy to address supply for this demographic? Or is it something else, like a misunderstanding of what, quote unquote, middle class even is today?

Mike Moffatt: I honestly think it's a bit of both. I think it is a misunderstanding of what the middle class means, but it is also clearly a lack of housing supply. And this has been an issue for a while.

So you probably remember the Trudeau years. For the first time in history, we had a Minister for Middle-class Prosperity. The first one was Mona Fortier. And I love Mona. She's a good friend, great person. But I think she got hung out to dry a little bit because they never actually defined what that role was. And I don't think she ever got good talking points because the very first question she was asked as minister was, “How do you define the middle class?” And she was unable to give an answer.

And I think that comes straight from the center. If you're getting your notes from the Prime Minister's office, that should be the thing on page one. Like, ‘Here's how we're defining what your role is and who you're helping. ’ And that never came. That was never part of any mandate letter. So I absolutely think that's an issue that is not clear in the minds of the federal government or even many provincial governments about who the middle class is.

And again, not to toot our own horn, but we actually define it at the Missing Middle Initiative. We have a definition of it, which is pretty broad, but it's everybody outside of the bottom 20% of incomes and the top 10% of incomes. So it's a wide swath of people. But at least we can focus on going, ‘Okay, these are the people that we're thinking about. And this is the type of individual or the type of family we want to make sure has a place to live.’ So we've defined who that is in a way that a lot of governments haven't. And I think that's a problem because I think it infects policy, that if you don't know what you're trying to accomplish, you're not going to design a good policy.

Sabrina Maddeaux: 100%. And I think there's this real problem politicians haven't sorted out yet, where you do have young people making good incomes that, again, can be six figures, but they don't live traditional middle-class lifestyles. They're living in very small apartments. They're struggling paycheck to paycheck. They have massive debt.

And then especially when they talk to older generations who look at their career and they say, “Oh, well, I made so much less than you.” However, they've been comfortably housed for years, with probably a lot of equity. Now they have a hard time reconciling that you can make what appears to be so much as a young person in this country and still be in a very precarious position financially. So there's a disconnect there.

And I think governments shy away. They're scared if we give a tax advantage, or cater policy to workers who are making above a certain amount, that they're catering to the elites when especially for younger people, these aren't elites. They're struggling.

And another thing that strikes me is how often politicians talk about affordable housing as if it only means subsidized units for low-income earners, when it's really housing affordability that's driving this entire issue.

What about young professionals who want to own a condo or townhouse that reflects their career success, not just get a bare minimum place to live? Why aren't we seeing policies that prioritize market housing for this group?

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, we really aren't, particularly for the federal government. And again, it comes to this definition, vision-type thing.

The CMHC, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, depending on the program, has seven different definitions of affordability. Sometimes it does mean social housing. Sometimes it's just any home where the expenses are 30% or less of a family's income. So it can mean a variety of different things.

And I think oftentimes politicians will exploit that ambiguity. If nobody knows exactly what they're talking about, nobody can be truly offended. And say, “Oh no! You're making my home price go down,” or what have you.

But I do think it does infect policy. And I tend to, when I look at what governments are doing, I put it into three broad buckets. The first is that social housing - non-market, below market, not for profit side. And we see a lot there. The federal government has done that with their national housing strategy. It's a big part of their Build Canada homes. So there's a lot of attention there at the federal level. Provincially, some provinces are doing more than others. Ontario doesn't do a lot in this area. PEI does quite a bit. So there's a lot of variation.

The second pocket is rental, market-based rental. The federal government's done a ton there. There are a lot of programs like the MLI Select Insurance Program, the Apartment Construction Loan Program - ACLP. Part of the problem of doing housing policies is an alphabet soup of abbreviations. But the CMHC has all of these policies that are working pretty well.

The federal government eliminated GST on purpose-built rentals. And we've seen a boom in apartment construction. In fact, the federal government's going to do even more. [They are] reintroducing the old MIRB program of the 1970s, [which is] a tax incentive to get investors to invest in newly constructed rental housing. So they've got a lot there.

Then, when I look at the ownership side, it's not much. The federal government has announced this GST rebate for new home buyers, [but it] is very, very limited. It is not really going to ramp up supply.

So you look at what they've done. It's not much. And most of it tends to be on the demand side. Some things like immigration, but also foreign buyers’ bans and cracking down on short-term rentals, that kind of thing.

There is very little in there that is focused on new ownership supply, particularly new ownership supply for the middle class. And I think it is a real, real problem.

So, Sabrina, you've been vocal about how housing frustrations are shaping political attitudes among young Canadians. This is something that you've watched closely for years as somebody who has a foot in both politics and policy.

How do you think this disconnect on housing policy is affecting trust in parties like the Liberals and NDP, especially among middle-class millennials, and now going down to Gen Z, who feel ignored, particularly those who would like to own a home someday?

Sabrina Maddeaux: Well, it's having huge impacts.

Younger Canadians have traditionally supported more left-wing parties, Liberal or NDP, and they've really abandoned them and jumped ship and gone to the Conservatives in a large part. And that's because under Pierre Polyev, the Conservatives were the first ones to really acknowledge the housing crisis and the pain young people were feeling and have really good claims on that issue.

You can talk about whether policy could have gone further and should it in recent years, but at least they were speaking the language that young people wanted to hear, and they felt they were being seen.

For a long time, the Liberals and NDP didn't even acknowledge the issue, let alone come up with any potential policy solutions. Right? And I think the Liberals and NDP in particular are still struggling to talk to young Canadians on that issue. Like they say, housing prices don't need to go down when we know the only path to housing affordability within decades is that housing prices do need to decrease to some extent.

So there's a lack of acknowledgement of basic realities there. Of course, like before, you even get into policy solutions, if there's not that, you're going to lose faith that your leaders are interested in you, understand you, represent you and that there's any hope.

So, for now, we've seen this young shift to the Conservative Party. But if this issue continues to get worse and if politicians don't figure out how to better speak and legislate for young people and make change, I think you're going to see young people become even angrier, more disillusioned and more disconnected from our institutions and systems and the existing political parties.

Part of me wonders, does this show up in another upstart party at some point? Is there some sort of outside movement, or do young people just disengage and they don't vote because they think, ‘Oh, well, nothing's ever going to change?’

Whenever you have a large part of society feeling like they're not part of society and the contract's been broken and they have no investment in our institutions and systems, that's a problem. That's a recipe for a lot of potentially dangerous things.

Now, recently, the new federal Liberal Housing Minister and Mark Carney have made statements suggesting a big push for government-owned rental housing is the best solution to the housing crisis. And this sounds like it's geared toward lower-income earners, almost creating a separate housing class for younger Canadians. I have to ask, doesn't this approach risk sidelining millennials and Gen Z from participating in the housing market, not to mention the economic and personal finance implications of just deciding to lock them out of homeownership forever?

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, so I definitely think we need more social housing, more below-market housing. So I wouldn't suggest that these programs are naturally problematic. But I think we have to recognize that they're only going to help a small sliver of the population. Right?

So you get into the situation where young people are going, ‘Okay, best case scenario is I get on one of these lists and maybe someday in the future I can get one of these discounted rentals and then I'm not able to build up any equity because I'm renting forever.’ And that's the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is you just rot on a waiting list for decades.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Probably the much more likely one based on the government's track record or any government's track record.

Mike Moffatt: This is, and to be fair, this is a hard problem.

Social housing tends to make up like three to four percent of the housing stock, even on the most ambitious but realistic plans. We might get to seven or eight percent, maybe ten in a generation. That means that 90 percent of the population is not living in one of these homes. So it really is focused on the lowest income. So, yeah, absolutely, that a lot of people can find themselves on one of these waiting lists for decades.

I think you have identified an important tension here where governments don't want to come out and say it. But I think they've accepted the fact that a growing proportion of young people are going to be forever renters.

Okay, that's fine. But then they haven't created any savings vehicle or any replacement for the equity that other generations have built up in housing. So it's like, ‘Okay, yeah, I'm renting forever and that's fine. And there are benefits to renting. But if all my paycheck is going to rent and I don't have any other savings vehicles to plan for my retirement and the days of defined benefit pensions are over…Nobody gets those anymore. Yeah, I can save a little bit for my RRSP, but there's not much left at the end of the month.’

I think this is highly problematic, and I think it's going to cause some of that political discontent that you've written about so much. I think this is hugely problematic. I would put it at the point of a ticking time bomb. And governments need to take this more seriously. And in particular, the left and center left need to take this more seriously, because I do think that level of populism is probably going to manifest itself in people turning to the far right.

I know there is a cohort of people on the left who think that this is going to turn into some glorious socialist revolution. And Canadians are going to overthrow the bourgeoisie. I don't think that's going to happen. I think what's more likely to happen is that younger people are going to turn to parties like the Reform Party in the UK, like the AFD in Germany and so on.

Sabrina Maddeaux: And I want to emphasize that young people have every right to feel angry because they are getting screwed over by the government in older generations. And the fact that politicians, a lot of them, seem to think that they don't have a right to be angry or that their anger is overblown is a problem. And if we are going to say, ‘Okay, a large number of younger Canadians are going to rent for either a very long time or forever…’ I mean, I have feelings about that. But then you have to institute policies that make renting not-so-crappy in this country. Because renting doesn't have to be as inherently of a poor experience as it is for many renters.

And those longer-term financial implications…you have Millennials who are in their 30s, their early 40s - already halfway through a traditional career lifespan - and they don't have the savings vehicles. They don't have any equity built up. So what happens in 20 years? We're going to have half the population be able to retire because their parents were wealthy, and then the others just have to keep working until they die? I mean, the issues are going to compound and get worse and worse. And sow more discord, like you mentioned.

But let's wrap up with a big picture question. If you were advising policymakers, what would a housing policy look like that actually speaks to the middle and upper-middle-class millennials and Gen Z who feel rightfully ignored? And going back to that issue of lacking goals and objectives, what should those look like?

Mike Moffatt: Well, I think they need to have a vision which includes both renting and owning. I think, particularly, the federal government can take a lot of the policies that are already done, turn it into a coherent vision, have some additional policies that fill in the blanks and go, ‘Here, this is what we're going to do on renting.’ And, hopefully we get to a place where renting is less crappy.

But the big [issue], I think, is on the ownership side. They need to have a coherent vision for the future of home ownership for the middle class. And a lot of it is just driving down costs. We've written about this at The Missing Middle. We have what's called a cost-of-delivery crisis. It's just too expensive to create new homes. So we have to look at all of these costs, like permit costs, approval times, construction costs and so on. We need to get them all down.

Now, a lot of that is going to take time. A lot of that is going to have results, but in the medium to longer term. So I think governments also need to have some immediate wins. And there are some really obvious things that governments can do.

The federal government, I like their vision on the GST, increasing the rebate. But I think limiting it to first-time-home-buyers nerfs it.

We need to get the cost down across the board to create new supply, because one of the things that is missing is for young people, it's often the second home that is the hardest to obtain. You might have been able to get that small condo, but then you want that three-bedroom home, and you can't make that work. Governments tend to conflate young middle-class families and first-time homebuyers, but they don't perfectly overlap, and we need to have a system that works for second-time homebuyers as well.

So, having a GST rebate that covers all new homes for owner occupiers - we'll leave out investors - just for owner occupiers. And then if the federal government encouraged the government here in Ontario to do the same, that would knock 13% off the price of a home just overnight. 5% GST, 8% PST. That would be absolutely transformative. We would get a lot of shovels in the ground quickly. Prices would come down. We could resurrect our condo markets. That would be an instant win.

And then I think we also need to look at development charges. We've got a piece of the Missing Middle talking about one of the things that governments can do to actually lower the cost of that is to take those development charges and take them out of the cost of development, and actually have them all as a separate line item when you buy a house. So when you get a bill for your house, the development charges are actually assessed directly to the buyer rather than to the developer. And what that does is that it substantially lowers interest costs and carrying costs. It increases transparency, but it also avoids tax on tax.

Right now, you might pay $200-250 thousand in development charges, which you never see. The developer pays. It is just buried in those costs. So you're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in development charges, which you never see. And then governments are charging GST and PST, and land transfer taxes. So on that $2000,000 of development charges, you might be paying an extra $30-35,000. That is a huge problem.

So that would be my thing that, yes, you need to do all these medium and long-term things. But if we address GST, address PST, and address development charges, we can really help restore the dream of home ownership for middle-class Ontarians.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Now, one of the most interesting things in there for me was talking about young people who might have been able to make it into the market, but they bought a bachelor condo or a one-bedroom condo. And that's obviously not going to serve them for the rest of their lives. And especially now that we do see some prices going down in the condo market. How do we help young people who are stuck there, not to be stuck there forever? Because they're also going to be incredibly impacted and frustrated by that.

And then, yeah, having some wins for right now. Even if we are able to build a lot of housing or housing prices decrease, this is going to take a while to work itself out of the system in the best-case scenario. So you're still going to have many young people who, best case scenario, probably won't get into home ownership for 10, maybe 15 years. So what do we do for them in the meantime?

How do we make it better for renters right now so that being a long-term or forever renter doesn't mean being forever poor?

So I think there's a lot more attention that could be paid to both of those demographics. And we'll certainly keep tabs on it here at The Missing Middle. Thank you so much, everyone, for watching and listening and to our fantastic producer, Meredith Martin.

Mike Moffatt: And if you have any thoughts or questions about the Minister for Middle Class Prosperity, please send us an email to [email protected].

Sabrina Maddeaux: We'll see you all next time.