Raising Our Voices

It might seem obvious that for our country to thrive we should prioritize bedrooms for kids, not cats. But not everyone agrees. Let's turn up our collective volume.

In today’s newsletter: a New Year’s resolution, looking back at an exciting 2023, and some admirable letters to The Globe & Mail by friends of Gen Squeeze.

Let’s get into it.

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Forget hitting the gym or eating more veggies. Gen Squeeze founder Paul Kershaw has more interesting goals for 2024.

Paul wrapped up his 2023 column in The Globe and Mail suggesting that “housing wealth should factor into how governments earmark retirement income benefits and raise revenue.” 

His suggestion triggered a torrent of angry comments. So in his first column of this year, Paul addressed the backlash and set out to convince affluent homeowners (including himself) that in 2024 they should “concede their relative privilege without being defensive.”

After I suggested that my housing wealth should be put to work when determining my eligibility for public subsidies, or the taxes I pay, [one Globe & Mail commenter] mocked: “My wife and I are finally empty nesters and are putting our home to work for us. One of the spare bedrooms is a reading room, another is my audio listening room and the third is the cat’s bedroom.”

A bedroom for the cat? Perhaps the individual means to be funny. But the housing crisis is no laughing matter for younger Canadians in cities across the country. Many have degrees and good-paying jobs, yet struggle to find – let alone afford – rentals with enough bedrooms for their kids.

Read more of “Is a bedroom for the cat a sign of Canada's new housing aristocracy?”

While it may seem obvious to us that drastic action is needed to tackle housing unaffordability, many people out there disagree – loudly (check out the nearly 800 comments here, but brace yourself for some toxicity). 

We can’t let these voices drown out our calls for change, or politicians won’t feel emboldened to act bravely on our housing policy solutions.

That’s why we need you to make yourself heard. You can start by supporting our new “Rooms for Kids not Cats” campaign:

We also encourage you to raise your voices in news opinion sections, which Paul’s columns demonstrate are a valuable arena for changing hearts and minds. Check out this recent letter to the editor by supporter Glen Brown, penned in defense of Paul’s recent controversial Globe & Mail columns.

Dr. Kershaw’s article - Is a bedroom for the cat a sign of Canada’s new housing aristocracy? - struck a strong chord with me. As a retired homeowner I too have seen the value of my house go up over the total value of my pension which I worked decades for. My undeserved gain was also why many of my retired friends have their sons and daughters living in their basements. Well-educated, industrious young people who can’t come close to being able to buy a house. 

Having read the Globe’s many excellent articles addressing the housing crises and reading Generation Squeeze’s proposed policies, I decided I was willing to do something about it. I donated $365 to support Generation Squeeze’s well thought out policies. I appreciate my house 365 days a year and sure don’t want its inordinate increase in value to close the door on owning a house for a generation of Canadians who are just as well educated and as industrious as I when I bought my house. That donation is to support far more substantial systematic adjustments needed to address the “colossal wealth transfer.”

My housing wealth should be put to work when determining my eligibility for public subsidies, or the taxes I pay. I am joining Paul Kershaw in his renouncing “room-for-my-cat aristocrats,” the belittlement of people who started in the housing market after the wages paid by good jobs became disconnected from the value of local homes. I am hoping that enough of us are generous enough to make the connections to the real costs of this unbalanced “colossal wealth transfer.”

— Glen Brown

We were also thrilled to see that two of our supporters’ letters made it into The Globe and Mail this past weekend: 

As a geriatric Millennial, the Gen X-Boomer beef in Paul Kershaw’s most recent article brought to mind the classic line from Disney’s The Aristocats: “Ladies don’t start fights, but they can finish them.” Younger Globe readers - if there are any - may recognize this vigilante sentiment from a certain Taylor Swift song. It’s pretty simple: numbers don’t lie. Younger Canadians have got the votes. We'll tell you how it ends.

— Nathan Hume, Vancouver

Many members of my generation know that we have amassed unexpected wealth simply because we bought houses when we were younger. It’s what young couples did in the 1970s and 1980s: We got married, lived in an apartment, then bought a house.

We also know that we were fortunate to be comfortably settled before the era of hyper housing inflation created an unprecedented number of millionaires amongst us. We are sitting on vast sums of untaxed wealth while the support systems upon which we rely are breaking down, because young and middle-aged workers can’t afford to live and work in our cities.

Many of us did not retire our sense of responsibility when we retired from the labour force. We should support contributor Paul Kershaw’s call to action.

— Michael Pennock, Victoria

To create the change we want to see, we need more people raising their voices like Glen, Nathan, and Michael. Letters to the editor are an important venue where our supporters can be heard by opinion leaders and decision-makers. And we need to be louder than people who brag about their Aristocat’s bedroom and push latte abstinence as a housing solution. Even if your letters don’t get published, it’s still critical for editors to see these audience opinions and support for our solutions, so they’ll continue to publish bold ideas that rankle other readers. 

As we’ve discussed previously, we didn’t end up in the mess we are in today by accident. Short-sighted government decisions made decades ago are causing many of the problems we’re dealing with today. We need governments to fix these policies to clean up the mess, but that won’t happen on its own. It will take a mighty, loud choir to shift public opinion and persuade elected leaders to boldly address generational unfairness.

Thanks for standing by us, Glen, Nathan, and Michael. You are an inspiration.

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Big Progress For Gen Squeeze In 2023

It’s hard to feel hopeful about the new year in Canada. The rising cost of living is keeping many of us up at night. Much of the country is having its warmest winter on record; the lack of snow has become a constant reminder of our deteriorating climate. 

It’s clear to us at Generation Squeeze that we have lots more work to do to solve these problems (along with all of the others caused by our broken generational system). However, looking back at our progress in 2023 gives us some hope that change is possible. Megan Wilde, our Strategic Communications lead, posted some highlights on our website, including: 

• Federal leaders sang from our songbook. This was the first year that we heard party leaders of all ideological stripes acknowledge the intergenerational tensions driving Canada’s housing, climate, medical, and affordability crises.

• Our glasses became more fashionable. Beyond our influence in the political sphere, more journalists and editorial voices have been scrutinizing Canada’s biggest problems through an intergenerational lens.
  

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That’s all for this time, thanks for reading!