These taxes are the main source of the city budget and pay for all city services: schools, fire department, parks, public transportation. If someone pays his share but does not use it - it means other give more. With extremely dense existing housing, empty apartments is the only thing that prevent total traffic collapse.
l have no idea what your going about and how traffic is even relevant to this conversation at all. Housing is not affordable right now. Period. Your fucking talking about spending 70 bucks a year on coffee and how empty houses help traffic.
Canadians cant afford to buy houses right now, and a big part of the problem is because both foreign and domestic investors using empty condos to park cash.
What is simply going over your head (and you can penny pinch, save your two grand a year on movies and coffee all you want), these days, the ONLY way to build equity is appreciation but when it gets so high, entering the market is outside the middle income earners.
There not calling this "a housing crisis" for no reason. There's a fundamental problem that will eliminate our so called "middle class" if it doesn't get fixed. While many people like bazokajoe will scream "it's a free market and we live in a capitalistic society", and it's true, that's only healthy to a certain extent. There's tons ramifications of not having a middle class.