Toronto’s St. James Town, the largest high-rise community in Canada. Photo by Ashton Emanuel/Flickr.

In his fourth-century memoir Saint Augustine recalls his youthful struggle to become a man of virtue. Confessions describes Augustine’s twenties, when the young saint was harried by a deep desire to live a temperate, celibate life, yet his status as a successful man-about-town in the bustling metropolis of Carthage led him to stumble repeatedly over his own concupiscence. His indiscretions were invariably accompanied by a profound spiritual guilt and renewed vows to comport himself with greater equanimity. It was only later, with the benefit of age and wisdom, that Augustine was able to observe that he had never actually wanted virtue at all. If he had truly desired righteousness, he would have been righteous; his perennial back-sliding was evidence that he didn’t really want to live virtuously, he merely wanted to want to do so.

Our national response to the housing crisis has a lot in common with this Augustinian ambivalence. We agonize over soaring home prices and wring our hands at the thought of generations locked out of homeownership. We spend dark nights of the soul reflecting on the skyrocketing rents that make life so hard to so many. We promise ourselves that we are going to do something about it; that we’ll restore affordability, end homelessness, and make homeownership universally attainable.

But like Augustine we stumble. The promises we make ourselves are invariably broken and, year after year, the situation goes from bad to worse.

If we wanted to create a world where everyone has affordable, dignified housing we would. We would take a track similar to France, Austria, or Finland and work to undo cultural stigmas against renting and social housing and use non-market alternatives to provide decent homes for all. But our leaders have made it abundantly clear that they have no........

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