Could boats be the answer to Canada's affordable housing crisis?

financialpost.com:

Martina and Matt Campbell did all the right things in their 20s. They established their careers, scrimped and saved, had some great adventures and in 2015 bought a house in their hometown of Calgary. It was a bungalow, a fixer-upper, and they did the fixing themselves: redoing the floors, electrical and heating, adding a garage and transforming the house into a forever-type home.

Matt, an entrepreneur with his own IT firm, and Martina, a freelance accountant, had other dreams as well, such as buying a place on Vancouver Island someday and, at some distant point, a boat. That dream scenario grew more immediate in March 2020 when a pandemic rolled across the planet and the Calgary house started to feel like a prison, with four walls and the same old views.

The cabin-fever-inducing combination convinced them to sell the bungalow, along with most of their worldly possessions, and shove off for a new life aboard the MV Eudora, a 40-foot yacht in B.C. they paid $500,000 for.

“My dad was like, ‘Are you crazy? You can’t sell your house and buy a boat,’” Martina said. “He thought it was a terrible financial decision, and then he worried about how we would get our mail, because we didn’t have an actual address.”

Martina and Matt are not impulsive outliers, but part of a much larger community known as “liveaboards.” That is, Canadians, primarily in B.C., who live full time on boats. It is a cross-section of largely ocean-loving folks ranging from salty old sea dogs and eccentrics to retirees flush with cash and people with nowhere else to go, not to mention a 30-something-year-old couple from Calgary, currently tied to a dock at Van Isle Marina in Sidney, B.C.

“Living aboard is definitely a unique lifestyle,” Matt said. “It allows