Financialization of housing from cradle to grave: COVID-19, seniors’ housing, and multifamily rental housing in Canada

Abstract

This paper explores the links between housing, financialization, and inequality—as exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses specifically on seniors’ housing (retirement and long-term care homes) and purpose-built rental housing, exploring how government cuts and retrenchment in the late 1990s created an opportunity for private profits for financial investors in housing that catalyzed a dramatic rise in “financialized” ownership of care homes, retirement properties, and multifamily rental housing in the province. Financial business strategies then generated a series of crises exacerbated by COVID-19. In rental housing, a crisis of affordability has led to displacement pressures and a COVID-related flood of evictions. In seniors’ housing, a crisis of care has been exposed by disproportionate deaths in long-term care and retirement homes nationwide. In Ontario, COVID-19 death rates were highest in financialized and corporate-owned for-profit homes, pointing to the downsides of prioritizing investor profits over housing, good jobs, and high-quality care. This paper is part of the SPE Theme on the Political Economy of COVID-19.