Why Can’t We Build Housing in Canada?
With Chris Spoke
On this week’s episode of Craft Politics (YT, Spotify, Apple), Percy and I speak with Chris Spoke, a developer, housing policy thinker, advocate, and the host of the Hogtown podcast.
Chris has a natural ability to simplify complex ideas on such an important issue and I really enjoyed our chat. The three of us explore:
🏘 Why zoning—not greed or foreign buyers—is the real problem
📉 Why the incentives in municipal politics make it nearly impossible to build
🗳 Why “local democracy” might be the biggest obstacle to affordability
📊 What a well-designed federal housing policy should look like—and why Trudeau’s version was better (in theory) than Poilievre’s
🧠 How to bring communities onside
Chris also takes us through:
🌇 Why Canada’s post-WWII housing model doesn’t apply in 2025
🏗 The case for radical deregulation—and how Japan and New Zealand did it
💥 The rise of “BANANAs” (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything)
One of Chris’s most important takeaways:
“You can have more local democracy, or you can have more housing. But you can’t have both.”