So I’ve decided to stay put.

Okay, I was not seriously considering moving, but the idea of finding a smaller house — and perhaps equally (more?) importantly a smaller lot — has lately been taking on some appeal.

My brain has been muttering in the background: “Do you really want to vacuum, dust, rake and shovel this much? Really?”

Our home is not huge, but neither is it wee. And I have better things to do.

Now is not the time to even think about it.

You may or may not have noticed that housing in this town is in short supply. There has certainly been a lot about it in the news about this problem nationally as well as locally. But it’s worth noting that shelter availability in Saskatoon is even worse than the Canadian average.

Whereas listings have fallen 20 per cent nationwide, they’re down 37 per cent in our fair but very tightly

My brain has been muttering in the background: “Do you really

want to vacuum, dust, rake and shovel this much? Really?”

Our home is not huge, but neither is it wee. And I have better things to do.

Now is not the time to even think about it.

You may or may not have noticed that housing in this town is in short supply. There has certainly been a lot about it in the news about this problem nationally as well as locally. But it’s worth noting that shelter availability in Saskatoon is even worse than the Canadian average.

Whereas listings have fallen 20 per cent nationwide, they’re down 37 per cent in our fair but very tightly supplied city.

This state of affairs has been coming on for five years or more, so it’s not just some weird pandemic- related glitch. Nope.

Sales certainly soared shortly after COVID hit us, which has not helped. Anything half-decent, particularly on the single- family side, was snapped up more or less instantly for months. But we were already in this market, if less drastically, two years before that.

I’m not sure if I would call it a crisis . . . yet . . . but ask someone who needs a $400,000 single-family home with three bedrooms in a decent location that doesn’t need $100K in renovations. They may have a different interpretation.

At the beginning of May, there were about 1,065 homes on the market. (There was one in my neighbourhood. ONE.) That’s half of the spring normal. You could argue that the 37 per cent decline in listings was starting to look like 50 per cent.

Sales were also down to 546 from 656 last April, a reduction of about 17 per cent, but that’s dominantly because there is so little to buy. If the house you need isn’t on the market . . . you can’t buy it. There it is.

Higher interest rates are having little, if any, effect on the existing home market. After all, five per cent is not exactly through the roof. We have, since 2008’s financial crash, been enjoying historically low rates.

However, they have had a cataclysmic effect on new housing; last year, deals on new houses fell through left and right and sideways.

Building, apart from purpose-built rental, is still low and fell again in April to 66 starts from 115 in the same month of last year.

Ah, one might say. Well, at least people can bide their time in an apartment while they wait for the market to recover. Phew.

Ahhh, no. That’s not working either.

The vacancy rate in Saskatoon was 3.4 per cent in 2022, and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. forecasts it will drop to 2.5 per cent this year, two per cent next and a drastically low 1.8 per cent in 2025.

So what gives? you may ask.

I’m not sure I’ve heard a good explanation for this, nor can I invent one.

One thing to consider is the hangover from the period between 2014 and 2017, when Saskatoon’s market was overbuilt. This happened because we had the ol’ “Saskaboom” thing going on, which unceremoniously collapsed along with commodity prices in 2014.

Therefore, it would be hard to blame builders who were really caught in a bad situation at the time. Market conditions dictate building, but so do prior events and prudence. Then, of course, last year’s interest rates soared, coming just after supply chains — for all kinds of materials — had crumbled.

Also, many builders are focused on multi-family homes at present.

Which is important because we are seeing more and more new Canadians arrive in Saskatoon, who will start as renters, and that’s another factor affecting demand.

I’m sure there are some policy reasons behind the housing issues plaguing Canada, but many of the ones I’m aware of are relatively minor. For example, the province rebated the PST on housing for a few years before withdrawing that boon. But that rebate only applied to the lower end of new housing, so it can’t be the only reason behind a housing shortage (even if it was shortsighted.)

Meanwhile, the provincial economy is thriving, in part because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which kind of makes me feel ill but there it is.

For just one example, Russia has terrified the world with its actions, and particularly its nuclear threats, which puts Cameco Corp. on the front

line of supplying fuel to overseas reactors, including Ukraine (Russia is/was a huge nuclear fuel supplier.)

As the economy churns, you have to think market conditions will begin to support the building of new houses soon. I’m just baffled about why we’ve spent five years getting to the point where we are running out of homes. Of all kinds.

Maybe COVID just threw us all for a bigger loop than we even realize, which is saying something.

• Joanne Paulson