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I know CD skews older, but many on this forum have children that are experiencing the housing crunch if they are not experiencing it themselves. A lot of this issue stems from the fact that there are a lot of building/zoning restrictions in ontario municipalities.
Here’s my idea: Those of us that remember the Harris amalgamations of the late 90s-00s know that it’s easy for our municipal borders to be redrawn.
What I propose is that a demographic survey is done and areas with lower rates of homeownership be de amalgamated as a new type of municipality (let’s call it a “borough” rather than a town/city/township) and give it less powers over zoning and building codes and rather have a one size fits all system drawn up by the province.
This new municipal government type will support development of lower cost housing (smaller houses, townhouses, purpose built rentals etc)
There have also been a lot of advancements in the prefab/modular housing technology that could be taken advantage of to build houses more rapidly. They even have prefab townhouse and apartments, far nicer than the trailers we normally think about.
Decentralization of zoning (locals, which will get lawyers and real estate people real control) is what sets BACK affordable housing (look at Texas, and/or Alhambra, Ca.) With CMHC in Canada it's a whole different game than in free enterprise areas (the USA being a disasterous example)
Modular housing has "come of age". I grew up in a 20th Century Canadian trailer that went from Ottawa to Alberta, Tulsa to California. It was made for the road. Most were not. But my friend just completed her "modular" and "she shed garage" in an area of one to three million dollar homes, and you'd NEVER GUESS it's a "modular' (Eagle Homes, British Columbia).
I believe the "modulars" just delivered this week to local First Nations property are also from Eagle. But we should have be able to do this................half a century ago. The need has always been there. Half a century ago my parents built "affordable" housing for new arrivals in a "barrio" in La (South El Monte). But that's without A DIME of govt. help. OR GOVT INTERFERENCE. TODAY you have hearings, impact studies, involvement of govt. and private social group "consultants" which extends the build from a year...........to three years. Want your money tied up for three years instead of one??
I agree completely. Ideally the red tape would be removed from all our municipalities, but as you mentioned; lawyers and lobbyists for the NIMBY crowd doesn’t want that. That’s why I think redrawing municipalities could fix the problem. The Harris government proved this was possible even if the towns themselves were against it. I think it would be easier to create “new” municipal governments than remove powers from existing ones, and if it’s done based on homeownership/rental demographics it would be even easier
I agree completely. Ideally the red tape would be removed from all our municipalities, but as you mentioned; lawyers and lobbyists for the NIMBY crowd doesn’t want that. That’s why I think redrawing municipalities could fix the problem. The Harris government proved this was possible even if the towns themselves were against it. I think it would be easier to create “new” municipal governments than remove powers from existing ones, and if it’s done based on homeownership/rental demographics it would be even easier
Funny note that the "Toronto Super City" is how we all ended up........with the FORD brothers. I suspect if they had remained in their original borough we'd never have heard of either one. (Though, to be fair, I think in the current insanity Doug has done the best he could, or at least kept his focus).
The movement of POWER to provincial levels has been ongoing for some time. It makes control of the masses a lot easier (New York, London, and Montreal just have to make ONE phone call) but we're not going to get out of this housing issue fast. We spent fifty years getting INTO it.
Example: Zoning current wood frame housing/apts. from three stories to five stories (maybe even six) is easy/peasey. There is no reason why wood frame can't do five stories, and it's not talked about. The EXISTING buildings concrete, boiler room and other pretty easy upgrades could be done FAST, and framing is now going modular, so GET ON IT.
(I think Seattle has already been doing that for a few years) I know an old Norwegian in Van. that's been running large framing crews for decades,, and he mentioned this ...........twenty years ago. A lot of Vancouver's (as an example) wood frame bldgs. are ready for that upgrade.
I would HUGELY increase the blgs. value for the owner, BUT keep affordable housing in place.
Funny note that the "Toronto Super City" is how we all ended up........with the FORD brothers. I suspect if they had remained in their original borough we'd never have heard of either one. (Though, to be fair, I think in the current insanity Doug has done the best he could, or at least kept his focus).
The movement of POWER to provincial levels has been ongoing for some time. It makes control of the masses a lot easier (New York, London, and Montreal just have to make ONE phone call) but we're not going to get out of this housing issue fast. We spent fifty years getting INTO it.
Example: Zoning current wood frame housing/apts. from three stories to five stories (maybe even six) is easy/peasey. There is no reason why wood frame can't do five stories, and it's not talked about. The EXISTING buildings concrete, boiler room and other pretty easy upgrades could be done FAST, and framing is now going modular, so GET ON IT.
(I think Seattle has already been doing that for a few years) I know an old Norwegian in Van. that's been running large framing crews for decades,, and he mentioned this ...........twenty years ago. A lot of Vancouver's (as an example) wood frame bldgs. are ready for that upgrade.
I would HUGELY increase the blgs. value for the owner, BUT keep affordable housing in place.
I was reading recently about an orthodox Jewish community outside of New York that has the highest population growth rate in the United States. I believe most of its construction has been wood frame condominium towers as you describe. Sounds like a great affordable housing option for the Toronto area that I can’t imagine would be too controversial
I was reading recently about an orthodox Jewish community outside of New York that has the highest population growth rate in the United States. I believe most of its construction has been wood frame condominium towers as you describe. Sounds like a great affordable housing option for the Toronto area that I can’t imagine would be too controversial
What probably helps this "community" is that they're not dealing with a group that expects to start life with nine bedrooms and eleven bathrooms. As the concrete high-rises we were building in Vancouver, BC got smaller and smaller the standing joke was that each condo was going to come with an Asian girlfriend, because they were the only ones used to living in that small a space, and not take you out in the middle of the night!!
We also installed thousands of small Italian commodes (just TRY to find parts for them) and if my aunt ever visited we'd end up calling the fire dept. and use cables and the jaw of life to get her off the pot. I'm struck by no one having made those toilets a major issue. Maybe everyone but moi has a "peach bum" downtown and can literally, "get off the pot".
One thing I don’t see talked about much: the Pickering Airport not being built is a big cause of the housing shortage east of Toronto from what I can see as well. Environmental opposition with definitely be loud on this one, but the economic advantages of a second airport are definitely there. Once it’s built, the balance of land around it could be heavily urbanized like the area around Pearson is now. Would also provide more incentive for better highway and rail infrastructure east of Toronto. Thoughts?
Housing affordability refers to a person’s ability to afford home expenses. In Canada, housing is taken into account cheap if their home prices square measure but thirty percent of before-tax home financial gain. concerning eighty percent of Canadians square measure deemed to possess their housing desires met through the marketplace, whether or not through new or selling housing choices. except for people who cannot afford marketplace housing, there's cheap housing, which is something from temporary emergency shelters through transition housing, corroboratory housing, backed housing, market rental housing, or market homeownership.
Cheap for those who already own property whether outright or through existing mortgages. Expensive for everyone else. You’re correct we are somewhat spoilt by the size of homes we’ve come to expect, but that’s exactly the problem I was bringing up in this thread. There’s deed restrictions, exclusionary zoning and NIMBYs in the way of small, affordable homes being built. Here’s a headline from the Toronto Sun about it https://torontosun.com/news/provinci...cross-province
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WE CAN......move forward.
