cco. You are from Montreal,right?
Yes.
So you can't ignore the constant condo projects. You can't ignore all the shitty apartment buildings being renovated into high priced luxury apartments.
Talking about renovations, what do you think of 'renoviction'
Down the street from me, tenants have been evicted so the landlord can renovate and make it a bed and breakfast.
Have you also noticed all these condos that are rented out as hotel rooms? Have you seen all the tents popping up here? Have you taken the metro and see all the people sleeping on the ground?
I've noticed all these things, and I'm as outraged as you are. The word "foreigner" is doing heavy lifting here, though, and I want to distinguish between people who don't live in Canada and buy condos here as a form of investment for their (often dirty) overseas cash and people who do live in Montreal but were born in another country.
Since the housing market now basically exists only for money laundering and all levels of government are keeping wages suppressed to the extent that people my age and younger can kiss the idea of ownership goodbye, federal and provincial governments need to invest massively in public housing. At the same time, these governments should look into some sort of landlord-to-work program to help landlords transition from living off others to the dignity of productive work. Or do those clichés only apply to the poor? (Not aimed at you, alan.)
The Canadian housing market is an utter failure. But yelling "It's the foreigners' fault!" seems largely untrue, completely unhelpful, and likely to bring altogether the wrong kind of allies onboard.