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Housing allowances are provided in the US by the federal government under Section 8 of the 1974 Housing and Community Development Act. This paper compares the design of Section 8 certificates and vouchers with that of Canadian housing allowances and with aspects of design in many other developed nations. Distinguishing elements of Section 8 are discussed: its minimum standards condition, its use of a three-way contract in which both the government housing agency and the tenant pays a private landlord, its availability to only a limited number of eligibles, the absence of a percentage-of-rent element in its formulas and the low required contribution of its recipients. It is argued on the basis of an array of diverse evidence that these characteristics lead to perverse housing consumption effects, stigma, rent inflation and unnecessary restrictions on recipient choice. The paper also addresses the standard objections to dropping the minimum standards condition and to incorporating a percentage-of-rent element in the formula.

This paper challenges the widespread view that there was a rental housing supply crisis in the late 1980s in Ontario and shows that the increase in rental during that period was far greater than the number of new purpose-built rental units. Conversions and investor-owned condominiums made a major contribution. Contrary to conventional wisdom, conversions came from the relatively new stock and tenure switches unassociated with structural change were important. The importance of the conversion phenomenon is underlined by evidence that the conversion sector of the rental market was far looser in 1989 than in 1971. This suggests that the official rental vacancy rate, for large buildings, is misleading as an indicator of overall availability. The paper argues that the rise in the relative importance of conversions and investor-owned condominiums is no fluke, but rather is the consequence of the interaction of the income tax system and the high rates of inflation and capital gains of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as certain details of Ontario rent regulation. It argues that these forces have encouraged conversions of units from ownership to rental, additions of rental units in small buildings rather than in large, and non-corporate ownerships.

Homelessness is a serious social problem that is unlikely to be solved by grand proclamations or a single policy initiative. It is, more likely, to be solved by the introduction of innumerable changes both in how we understand the problem and how we approach its solution. In this paper we examine the costs and benefits of tax measures that would promote greater involvement of the private sector in the provision of affordable housing. We also examine the costs and benefits of a variety of regulatory initiatives. In an earlier era, centrally directed federal-provincial grant programs for housing run by governments and non-profit organizations were the means of providing affordable housing. Most of the proposals in this paper, in contrast, aim to harness the energy and the efficiency-promoting competition of the private sector. The focus is on decentralized decision-making. Some measures would depend heavily on individual entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations. Others would depend on municipal governments, whose program capacities have grown greatly in recent decades and whose closeness to their constituencies makes them well-placed both to develop and to deliver supportive measures. Our assessment of possibilities suggests that a low-income housing tax credit best balances effectiveness with the need to minimize costs on strained government budgets. Tax measures aimed at investors in multi-unit rental buildings are also likely to meet these criteria.

AbstractOver the last decade there has been a mounting realization that the quality‐adjusted price of properties that sell may be quite different from the quality‐adjusted price of all properties (Gatzlaff & Haurin, 1998). The difference is apt to be especially marked during downturns. Dependence on price indexes based on transactions data could result in overoptimistic appraisals by mortgage lenders during the early quarters of downturns. This paper provides evidence on this issue by examining the residential real estate crash at the start of the 1990s in Canadian cities, especially Toronto. The plunge in prices estimated here for Toronto is 17%. We estimate the drop in the transactions price using MLS data, which are not quality adjusted, supplemented by Royal LePage data, which are. We estimate the drop in the price of houses in the stock using hedonic indexes based on home owners' valuations; outlier observations are cut from the sample on the basis of the DFFITS criterion. The hypothesis of equality of the drop shown by the two measures is strongly rejected, for Toronto, and is also rejected for several other cities.RésuméAu cours de la dernière décennie, on s'est progressivement rendu‐compte du fait que le prix, ajusté pour la qualité, des maisons vendues peut être différent du prix, ajusté pour la qualité, des maisons en général (Gatzlaff & Haurin, 1998). La différence entre ces prix est particulièrement marquée en période de marasme. La dépendance sur des indexes de prix basés sur des données transactionnelles peut amener les prêteurs hypothécaires à faire des évaluations trop optimistes durant les premiers trimestres d'une période de marasme. L'article qui suit s'interroge sur la justesse de cette hypothèse en étudiant l'effondrement du marché immobilier au début des années 90 dans des grandes villes canadiennes, en particulier, dans la ville de Toronto. Nous estimons que la chute des prix à Toronto s'élève à 17 %. Nous évaluons la chute des prix de transactions immobilières à partir d'une banque de données MLS, qui n'est pas ajustée pour la qualité, et nous ajoutons celles‐ci à d'autres données de Royal LePage, qui elles sont ajustées pour la qualité. Nous évaluons la chute des prix des maisons dans l'inventaire à l'aide d'indicateurs hédoniques basés sur les évaluations des propriétaires; les données excentrées sont enlevées de l'échantillon à partir du critère DFFITS. L'hypothèse de l'égalité des chutes de prix indiquée dans les deux mesures ne s'applique absolument pas à Toronto, ni à plusieurs autres villes.