When home prices rise faster than earnings, the result is that too many young people and renters of any age can't afford a place to call home. That's why any responsible housing plan must answer the most important question for fixing our broken housing system: What is our goal for home prices?

Politicians like to cling to the fiction that we can achieve greater housing affordability without home values dropping, because it's an easier story to tell voters. But it's a mathematical impossibility. 

So long as our political leaders remain unwilling to say that home values should stall (let alone fall), Millennials and Gen Z will be faced with unaffordable rents and mortgages. They are obliged to carry this burden to protect the wealth that homeowners who've come before them have already gained from decades of high and rising home prices.

This intergenerational housing inequity is the quiet bargain on which our housing system is based. It's a trade-off we must confront, with honesty and empathy. Yet political leader will keep dodging the question so long as they fear backlash from older homeowners whose wealth is tied to high home prices, or some recent younger owners who risk going under water if prices fall.

Reasonable people can disagree on how much home prices should fall, or whether long-term stalling is good enough. But this disagreement belongs in public view – so Canadians can weigh the options, and politicians can find a path forward that balances generational fairness with financial stability.

Join us in calling on politicians to stop dragging their feet on the central question for fixing our housing system. Do we want home prices to rise, stall or fall?