Millions live in cramped and overcrowded conditions or sleep in the streets while overly large private homes continue to be built, adding to the current stock of millions of unused extra bedrooms.
Yesterday.s Guardian reports on how this grotesque contradiction is expressed in Canada, where the rate of home ownership is among the highest in the developed capitalist world.
A recent study estimates that Toronto has six empty bedrooms for every bedroom that a household actually needs, that 80% of Ottawa homeowners have extra bedrooms, and that the 800,000 Vancouver bedrooms which sit empty could meet the needs many times over of the homeless and families and singles living in spaces that are too small.