A plan to solve the rental crisis needs governments to coordinate. Can they?

In today’s Big Story Podcast, Canada’s housing crisis is bad and getting worse, and a huge part of it is a lack of rental units in major cities. Every government has its own proposed solutions, but none of them work without the others.

A detailed report last week outlines ways that every level, from federal to municipal, can work together to speed up the process, eliminate lengthy delays and actually get shovels in the ground. The only catch is it requires everybody in power to get on the same page.

Dr. Mike Moffatt is a co-author of A Multi-Sector Approach to Ending Canada’s Rental Housing Crisis. He an assistant professor in business, economics, and public policy at Ivey Business School at Western University and the senior director of policy at the University of Ottawa’s Smart Prosperity Institute. He said that even in the same level of government, here might be departments at odds with each other — let alone at the different governmental levels.

“It’s just a big, big coordination problem at the heart of this,” says Moffatt.

How likely is it that all levels of government will be able to coordinate this effort? And what happens if they can’t?

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