I shouldn’t have to live in substandard housing while building and repairing homes for others. Everyone deserves housing and a decent quality of life, but there is a major paradox when the people who build the housing don’t make enough to live in it. The irony of being a construction worker in a housing crisis is not lost on me or my co-workers.

The level of political consciousness of unionized workers in Weimar Germany was very similar to that of current progressive workers and equity advocates. Tragically, German progressives failed to take concerted action to mobilize democratic forces against Nazism until it was far too late. The consequences of inaction this time could be at least as devastating and even more enduring.

What if the value of a mortgage could be collected today? What if the bank could sell your debt on the open market? They could use the cash to lend out even more money and collect even more interest on even more mortgages. Thanks to the National Housing Act, they can do exactly that. James Hardwick on how federal housing policy has turned our mortgage system into an engine of inequality.

Capitalism’s profit focus has often held back the distribution of products to drive up their prices. Patents and trademarks of profit-seeking businesses effectively slow the distribution of all sorts of products. We cannot know whether capitalism’s incentive effects outweigh its slowing effects. Claims that capitalism promotes rather than slows progress are pure ideological assertions.

Let’s be clear: while we might be able to make some improvements here and there through clever initiatives, we almost certainly cannot solve the housing crisis without dealing directly with the land question. The private extraction of land value doesn’t just produce a crisis for housing, but virtually everything across the political spectrum that can be useful.

The financialization of housing is a result of policy choices made by successive federal and provincial governments over decades. The Federal Housing Advocate points to three major policy drivers: the retreat of the welfare state in Canada, the removal of rent control and tenant protections, and financial liberalization and deregulation.

When Pierre Poilievre talks about homelessness as a public safety issue he brings forward implicit and explicit solutions that simply will not work. Criminalization, forced recovery, and institutionalization will not end homelessness. These ‘solutions’ do not address the economic root of the crisis—they seek only to punish its victims.

With the Conservatives headed into disintegration or irrelevance, the incoming Labour government may prove the penultimate stage in the collapse of the UK political establishment. The brightness of its success in fashioning Starmer’s Labour into its instrument is the gaseous brilliance of the supernova, the efflorescence that precedes a star’s death.

Different approaches are needed to counter today’s containment strategies. Governments are less likely to be moved by displays of our potential power. Huge rallies and days of action are an essential part of building movements and campaigns, but this is a period when ongoing social action and indefinite strikes will be needed to turn back attacks and win our demands.

One could spend much time and effort dissecting Poilievre’s 20-year parliamentary track record and conclude, correctly, that he offers nothing to workers and cannot be trusted, but this does nothing to explain the populist strategy he is pursuing and why it appears to be succeeding, as it did recently in the European Union elections.