‘We’ve tackled this issue before Camp and the problems and solutions are not any different from the one previously addressed. I’ve just read a report in the Globe & Mail about the recent trends, needs and promises in housing. Also, how several levels of governments have failed to adequately foresee and solve the housing crisis despite plenty of demographic and economic indicators over the last couple of decades.

            ‘Who needs housing?’ Camp asked. I thought it was a rhetorical question and didn’t respond. He then went on to answer his own query. ‘It’s the young who want to start or have a family, the newcomers, migrants and immigrants who cannot find adequate and affordable shelter, the ones unable to organize their own lives and hold down a job and the drug addicted and mentally ill. All of them found in the catch basin of the homeless or the euphemistic ‘unhoused’.

            ‘Wasn’t the lack of housing always like that Camp? It’s a question of supply and demand except these days the demand outstrips the supply which is unaffordable and out of reach, even for working class people.’

            ‘Yes, and housing may be the most obvious component of a healthy life but to supply an apartment or house to those who cannot maintain them is futile. In the old days those who fell through the ever-widening weave of the so-called safety net were either institutionalized or taken care of by their families. Neither of those solutions seem to be available nowadays. Take those camped out in parks and the woods in makeshift shelters, tents or even cars and campers. They don’t only miss proper housing, many of them don’t have the ability to maintain a house, meaning paying the bills, fixing and repairing their dwellings or even shopping and cooking their own meals. Many of these living on the margin of our complicated society cannot lead a life regulated by routines and responsibilities.’

            ‘Yes, there is also the discrepancy of those not wanting to work and those who are unable to hold down a job. Nobody wants to be a plumber, a welder, a pulp-mill worker or work in an abattoir or on a farm or a restaurant. No young Canadians dream of working in the service industry; they want to be computer programmers and work from home in their pyjamas,’ I said.

            ‘That’s a bit crass but you’re right. On one hand we have an unaffordable housing crisis, on the other we have all these unfilled physical and menial jobs; jobs that don’t pay enough to rent or even buy into this lopsided real estate market.’

‘Tell me this my friend, why do insurance companies, banks, pension plans and municipalities not build and own co-op housing as they do in Switzerland and Scandinavia? Thousands of people live in very nice and affordable co-ops; housing stock that is rent-stable and not for sale and outside the real-estate bubble that is so prevalent in North America?’

            ‘I don’t have the answer to that but it would make total sense. Here it is still everybody’s existential dream to own a home, even if the banks own it and only lend the money to buy it.’ 

            ‘Unless you own your home free and clear the only difference between owning and renting is the fact that you have to fix and repair your own home while the tenants just call the landlord if something goes wrong.’

            When Vicky brought around our second round, I asked her about her rental situation. ‘I’m living with my mom who takes care of my son when I’m at work or school. If not for her I would be out on the street or asking you two if you’d take us in.’

            Neither one of us said anything.

            ‘Just kidding,’ Vicky laughed.