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Come visit my home city of Boston, Massachusetts. You'll see we have the same issues of affordability, shortage of housing, influx of newcomers, and NIMBY'sm that beset the Golden Horseshoe Region. Not every city or region in the US believes in unrestricted growth you know.
While they’re still rather expensive, aren’t places like Worcester, Springfield, Fall River etc much more affordable than places comparable distances from Toronto? 500k is the benchmark price from any kind of mortgage eligible property in Southern Ontario now, with very few exceptions. I think Massachusetts has benefitted from having hundreds of years of growth and construction rather than having its population more than double since the 1970s like Ontario has.
While they’re still rather expensive, aren’t places like Worcester, Springfield, Fall River etc much more affordable than places comparable distances from Toronto? 500k is the benchmark price from any kind of mortgage eligible property in Southern Ontario now, with very few exceptions. I think Massachusetts has benefitted from having hundreds of years of growth and construction rather than having its population more than double since the 1970s like Ontario has.
Springfield perhaps. Springfield is a good 2 hours drive away from Boston and while it has its charms, it still cannot shake off its identity as an old industrial has-been of a city, think Cornwall, Ontario. Worcester has really gone up in pricing the past few years. Though still cheaper than Boston, I would not call Worcester affordable anymore. Fall River is set to get hooked up by commuter rail and prices will likely jump then. Both Worcester and Fall River are only an hour away from Boston. And no, sadly housing has not kept up with Greater Boston population growth. The median price of a home in Greater Boston just reached a record $900,000 USD this year. This article here explains: https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/06/20...state-may-data. Massachusetts is a small cramped state and Boston is a small (area-wise) cramped city. We're frankly running out of space.
Wow 900k usd. That’s about on par with Toronto now. Canada was already expensive before the pandemic but you can really see the contrast in before and after in the US. I think the US is probably going to take the lead in policy changes to address this. Sadly Canada will probably wait for you guys to do something and then copy it rather than take leadership on this issue ourself.
Back in the days of the Soviet Union and Communist China before the reopening, the government had a free hand in doing just this with an iron fist. It was community planning at its most extreme, and if you were stuck in a thankless place, well tough luck. In a free economy and free society like that of the US and Canada, the government of course cannot do that. The O.P.'s idea sounds great on paper until the realization that the idea is not equitable and goes against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Neither Ford nor Trudeau can tell anyone where or where not to move to or say to Toronto and Hamilton "Hey knock it off! You have too many people already and you're housing is too expensive. Stop marketing yourselves to newcomers so that Thunder Bay and Sudbury can catch up to you guys." I mean the whole idea sounds ludicrous and discriminatory doesn't it? The thought of why people, firms, and jobs congregate in certain places is all based on economies of scale. They congregate at places where they can maximize their potential and are willing to pay the highest price to do so or else they would not congregate there.
People are going to move to big cities and where the jobs are at. No one is going to move to Regina, Saskatoon, Thuder Bay or Sudbury if there is no jobs there.
Wow 900k usd. That’s about on par with Toronto now. Canada was already expensive before the pandemic but you can really see the contrast in before and after in the US. I think the US is probably going to take the lead in policy changes to address this. Sadly Canada will probably wait for you guys to do something and then copy it rather than take leadership on this issue ourself.
Canada is going to get hit very hard because everyone wants to live in the GTA area or Vancouver. The Vancouver area cannot sprawl because of the water and mountains.
Canada may have 20 to 30 cities but in reality it comes down to GTA area or Vancouver area people want to live.
The US has lot more cities and it is more spread out unlike Canada.
Many people just don’t want live out side of GTA area or Vancouver area.
Canada is going to get hit very hard because everyone wants to live in the GTA area or Vancouver. The Vancouver area cannot sprawl because of the water and mountains.
Canada may have 20 to 30 cities but in reality it comes down to GTA area or Vancouver area people want to live.
The US has lot more cities and it is more spread out unlike Canada.
Many people just don’t want live out side of GTA area or Vancouver area.
I think it’s more complex than that. Toronto basically was gifted Montreal’s financial sector in the 1970s and all the offshoots that come with it. Calgary is a huge destination when oil is good, but crashes when oil is down. It’s not just the GTA and Vancouver that are expensive either. All of BC save the Peace River region in the far northeast and all of Southern Ontario plus much of northern Ontario like Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie are experiencing housing crises now, as well as the whole provinces of Nova Scotia and PEI and to some extent New Brunswick. Calgary and Winnipeg have had their housing prices double since the pandemic as well. Montreal is way up too, maybe 50-60%. It really is a nation wide problem and not just nation wide truly but a global issue that can be blamed on neoliberal economic policies since the 1980s.
People are going to move to big cities and where the jobs are at. No one is going to move to Regina, Saskatoon, Thuder Bay or Sudbury if there is no jobs there.
Then Federal and Provincial governments should stop giving financial incentives to businesses to locate or expand in big cities and encourage them to create jobs in smaller cities where housing prices are lower.
I think it’s more complex than that. Toronto basically was gifted Montreal’s financial sector in the 1970s and all the offshoots that come with it. Calgary is a huge destination when oil is good, but crashes when oil is down. It’s not just the GTA and Vancouver that are expensive either. All of BC save the Peace River region in the far northeast and all of Southern Ontario plus much of northern Ontario like Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie are experiencing housing crises now, as well as the whole provinces of Nova Scotia and PEI and to some extent New Brunswick. Calgary and Winnipeg have had their housing prices double since the pandemic as well. Montreal is way up too, maybe 50-60%. It really is a nation wide problem and not just nation wide truly but a global issue that can be blamed on neoliberal economic policies since the 1980s.
If you look at Montreal and Quebec they clearly doing some thing different to keep housing prices down.
The cities in southern Ontario have not experienced much growth like the GTA most people are lock into GTA.
Windsor, Ontario
1971 population 209,300
2021 population 229,660
London, Ontario
1971 population 223,222
2021 population 422,324
Kitchener, Ontario
1971 population 111,805
2021 population 256,855
St. Catharines
1971 population 109,722
2021 population 136,803
Niagara Falls
1971 population 67,163
2021 population 94,415
Edited to add: If you scroll down you will also see separate graphs for Calgary and Winnipeg which show how their housing prices have changed over the last two years. Prices have been basically flat.
Edited to add: If you scroll down you will also see separate graphs for Calgary and Winnipeg which show how their housing prices have changed over the last two years. Prices have been basically flat.
You’re source is correct, but it cuts off too early to show what I was referring too. Prices have been flat across the country recently but have held steady near their all time highs from early 2022. The big jump was in Fall 2020-Early 2022
Edit: I tried to find a source for Winnipeg, cdnirene but it appears I was wrong, prices did not double in Winnipeg. I had to find different sources for the years, but it looks like the average price rose from ~275k to ~375k, so more like a 30-40% increase. My mistake, I was going off anecdotal evidence
Last edited by pdw; 08-24-2023 at 11:34 AM..
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