Ontario will unveil a housing plan today. Here's some of what's in it | CBC News
cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-doug-ford-...
cbc.caPosted Mar 30, 2022, 10:04 AM UTC
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cbc.caI despise Ford. I'm a nurse and that man has created so much suffering in my life.
That being said, this is a good start to addressing the housing crisis.
Single-family homes and the suburbs need to change. City planning needs to speed up as it is just halted by NIMBYs.
I saw a tiktok today on how Mississauga has 800,000 people yet for a city of that size, it has nothing going on. This is owed to it's suburb, undense design. Things need to change and this is a good start.
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what are you talking about? there's square one and walmart.
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Too true. Compare it to a standalone city with a similar population like Calgary or Edmonton. Those cities have far more character and activity. Mississauga is literally just 100,000 identical beige brick single family homes, some warehouses and a mall.
I really don’t know why Hazel McCallion is celebrated so much. She’s largely responsible for making Mississauga this way. Queen of sprawl.
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I think a big part is also just building housing. Even dense design does not mean something will be going on if all that denseness is just home/condos etc. You need proper transit, a shopping area, recreational facilities etc. Just lumping some big box stores in an area doesn't really cut it
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Mississauga might be the second-busiest new build market in the country right now after Toronto. They’re building an LRT. They have a BRT. Not sure what this is about, they’re making some pretty interesting strides.
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To get to Square One and back from the suburbs? What's in Mississauga that people actually go there for a destination that excludes the fact that they live there?
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Give people a place to live and they’ll make that place a destination. Housing is the first step.
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City planning needs to speed up as it is just halted by NIMBYs.
Sometimes, yes. But mostly by city planners and engineers in order to assess community support needs (schools, water, sewage, transit, emergency services, etc.).
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They should bring back rent control for new buildings. This should have never been removed.
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Rent control is an okay measure, but it has its cons. Economists generally agree rent control creates a lot of negative externalities, and can be damaging to both tenants and cities. It may be a short-term solution, but long-term we need to build more rental supply which reduces market rates and therefore decreases the need for rent control.
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I was thinking about this recently, cause I remember a lot of complaints when it was announced and rents were increased.
In the past couple years though we saw the policy in action when rents were dropped during the pandemic, people were able to find affordable apartments.
Now that demand and the price of rent is increasing, anyone who was able to sign a lease during the last 2 years still has affordable rent. Except for people in buildings built after 2018, they can potentially see a huge increase.
So it seems like at least in this example, rents are still affordable for some people, but if we didn't have rent control then we would see increases for everyone. It seems like rent control has kept the average cost of rent down.
What would some of the downsides of rent control be?
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With the caveat that I am not an economist, I think the major critiques are that:
- Rent control reduces mobility of tenants - think about all of the people you see on this subreddit saying they've been in their 1 bedroom since 2010 and pay only $1,000/mo and will never be able to move, even if their housing needs (location, size, etc.) change.
- Rent control doesn't address the problem of affordability, generally - it provides certainty and protection for those already housed, but doesn't support building of more units so we can house more people affordably. Nor does it make it more affordable for new people moving to a place to live - only those were fortunate enough to live there when rates were lower.
- To a lesser extent than the above two, rent control is a disincentive for new construction - we need more supply of housing, yet government intervention in the market makes building that supply less attractive, because the investor won't be able to mark rents to market.
The pandemic is a bit of an anomaly - I would argue our policies shouldn't aim to have tenants to "lock in" below-market rents. We should aim to allow the market to sort itself out, and tenants should expect to pay fair rents. The major issue right now is that the market is also being hampered on the supply side by awful zoning regulations and costly processes to build housing stock, so supply is lower than the demand and so prices rise. Rent control provides comfort to some who have been in the market for a long time, but doesn't help solve the actual problem.
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but long-term we need to build more rental supply
The barrier to more rental supply is not rent control - it's zoning and the higher profitability of condo construction. Purpose built rental returns money to the business owners over a long period of time, while condo construction gets the developer a quick flip.
Ontario had no rent control on units built after 1998 for a long time... and we saw next to zero purpose built rental built in Toronto during the period of 1998-2019.
Rent control has an effect on decreasing the "demand" for businesses building new rental construction, but if the amount of construction that can happen is already limited by other externalities, then rent control isn't going to make things worse.
Economists are the classic "this works for spherical cows in a vacuum" - they can make general statements, but they studies are rarely validated against real environments.
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Hmmmm.....I don't think anyone wants to implement a simple solution, of tax increases for those with 2 or more properties (which as we've seen is a chunk of buyers).
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As I understand, an entire generation is priced out and gouged by greedy speculators and 'investors'.
Many have overpaid for education, experienced an economy that crashes every several years, declines in real wages, lack of job security, and so on.
I feel zero sympathy for people who hold multiple properties as 'rental income'. If, however the industry was regulated differently and supply met the actual demand, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
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At work I have to listen to co workers contemplating their 2nd or 3rd house as an income property...while I basically can never afford to buy a home, these people simply use the equity of their home to purchase the next and the next and rent it out to people so that they have their mortgages paid for with income on top...
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+1
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The current plan is like trying to make leafs tickets less expensive by giving ticket master more to sell. Except tickets have 1 use, a house can sit unoccupied for 3 years with minimal maintenance and low property tax to be sold later.
We need more supply yes, but our market is both short of supply and out of control. We need more controls to support people who just want a place to live.
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It's a good start. If the province wants to bring in more people there has to be more construction.
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Let's wait to see what's actually in the legislation. A lot of people in the comments here are conflating what the PCs are proposing now (which sounds pretty reserved) with what the housing report recommended (which is very comprehensive).
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To get more homes built more quickly, the task force recommended the province impose sweeping changes on cities. The proposals include increasing density in neighbourhoods of single-family homes, spending less time spent in public consultations on housing projects and imposing deadlines for housing approvals.
Ford has blamed high house prices in part on city councils moving too slowly to approve housing developments. At a summit in January with mayors from Ontario's 30 biggest cities, he announced a $45-million fund to streamline approvals.
It's far from certain whether the measures coming from the government Wednesday will have any short-term impact on the price of buying a home in Ontario.
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The proposals include increasing density in neighbourhoods of single-family homes,
This sounds promising. I'll never understand Toronto's feast or famine approach to density. Basically anything touching Yonge Street, a subway stop or certain other hotspots is super dense, but move 20 feet off Yonge Street and it's non-stop single-family homes.
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Nimby political will being expressed. Politicians are terrified of the homeowner class.
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While I agree with high density within a 500m radius of subway stops and other higher-order transit, we don’t gotta get rid of single family homes all together. A neighbourhood like Dovercourt-Wallace-Emerson is primarily SFH with some condo towers scattered around. It has a density of over 9000 people/square km, and if the whole city had this density we’d be able to fit around 6M people in toronto, where our current population is 3.1M or so. What we need is a major change in neighbourhoods of Scarborough, Etobicoke, and North York to become a lot denser. Every SFH neighbourhood along the crosstown in Scarborough needs to become a lot more like the Annex or Riverdale, and then we won’t have to give up SFHs but also we’ll create much more housing
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The cost of housing is skyrocketing across the globe due to low interest rates driving inflation in all asset classes.
Literally only Dougie: "Why would Toronto city hall do this?"
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skyrocketing across the globe
Yeah no differences between countries at all. Nothing to see here.
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It's almost like something major happened globally after 2020 or something lol.
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What..?
You: housing is skyrocketing everywhere! Me: here’s a graph showing that’s not true You: but COVID happened!
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Did you look at the graph? Prices started to skyrocket and diverge from income after 2001 or so.
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Toronto housing isn’t in line with inflation what are you on about?
Where else did housing cost double in 3 years?
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Never said it was in line with inflation (whatever metric that is lol). And If you look at the data, while Canada is admittedly on the high end, it's a global phenomenon. A quick Google search would also reveal most countries are dealing with a housing affordability crisis right now.
Basically: low interest rates = holding cash a losing proposition = flight to speculative asset classes = sky-high housing valuations. It's eCoN 1o1 baby. See also: the stock market circa 2019-2022.
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Is there any part about changing zoning laws to allow duplexes, triplexes etc in residential areas by default? I don’t see mention of that but it was an important part of the task force’s recommendations.
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Also notably absent is a task force recommendation that would have allowed so-called “as of right” zoning which automatically permits developers to build up to four units with a maximum of four storeys on a single residential lot, essentially sidestepping the municipal approval process.
“We have to work in in conjunction with Ontario's 444 municipalities and we have heard very clearly that perhaps the recommendations were a bit too bold for some communities,” Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark told reporters at Queen’s Park on Wednesday. “So we are going to have to go back and consult with them and work with them because if we are going to deal with the housing crisis in Ontario we have to have municipalities in our corner.”
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So essentially nothing much is going to change. Can’t build 2-4 storey buildings like are common in Montreal or Europe because it scares the NIMBYs. The tall and sprawl remains.
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"This government has had four years and they finally discovered there's a housing crisis," NDP Leader Andrea Horwath
Yup.
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There's some good stuff in here an I like the building code changes a lot (mass timber up to 12 storeys, single egress up to 6 etc.) but it's a big let down when compared to the housing affordability task force report.
We heard from municipalities that they aren’t ready to implement ambitious policies from the Task Force’s report right now.
Please just ignore the municipalities, they are the ones who got us into this mess.
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The government will table a bill that takes aim at delays in city planning approvals slowing down home construction and driving up prices,
Yeah that won't fix housing prices. It will create more sprawl, destroy greenspace, and provide new investment properties for investors (which will create even more upwards pressure in prices).
The bill "lays the foundation" for what the official described as the government's long-term strategy to address the root causes of Ontario's housing problem.
Unless the plan is to drive investors from the housing market and free those properties for actual homeowners, then the plan does not actually address anything.
The proposals include increasing density in neighbourhoods of single-family homes,
Doing this instead of fast-tracking-green-lighting developments on farmland and greenspace would be good, but will never ever happen as the owners of single-family-homes perceive a neighbourhood with more small-scale-density and affordable housing options as something that will be detrimental to their home's price. These are Ford voters. Ford would never risk their anger when he needs their votes.
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Yeah that won't fix housing prices. It will create more sprawl, destroy greenspace, and provide new investment properties for investors (which will create even more upwards pressure in prices)
Why would you assume that the only thing this will apply to are greenfield approvals? They're arguably one of the fastest approval tracks, highrise and midrise is an approval quagmire that takes years needlessly.
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Why would you assume that the only thing this will apply to are greenfield approvals?
Because up to very recently Ford was 100% for developing the Greenbelt, and I'm not convinced that his very recent change of heart will survive long past the election. Hell, he may still be allowing it for his developer buddies, but now quietly. Literally nothing in Doug Ford's history in governing has shown any support or interest in environmental science and respect for green spaces.
highrise and midrise is an approval quagmire that takes years needlessly.
Yeah. Because if you have an influx of a lot of people into a given neighbourhood you have to plan the community resources to support all those people. More units ideally would mean more families, which means you need schools for that, community centers, libraries. Then there are the impacts on traffic, on sewage, water, hydro. There are things to consider beyond how many fucking condo units can we cram into this 30 floor eyesore building.
I'm pro high density, but it should be done smarter. And the smarter way would be to eliminate single family zoning province wide, then change the property taxing and financing of developments to discourage single family homes in favour of denser options like mini-homes, duplex/triplex/four-floor-walkups. But even then, all that has to be done with due consideration for community development (like those pesky school things).
None of that kind of shit is being considered. Only the question of how many high-rise condos can we cram in here, and how many rental spaces do you want on the ground floor?
Besides all that, ALL these high density units will not do a damn thing for the price of housing if investor companies are allowed to buy up half the available units before a shovel even breaks ground.
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More units ideally would mean more families, which means you need schools for that, community centers, libraries. Then there are the impacts on traffic, on sewage, water, hydro.
All this also applies to greenfield development. You can densify and renovate infrastructure like community centres and schools, just as easily as you do for residential.
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All this also applies to greenfield development.
Sure. Except you also don't have that greenspace anymore.
The one thing I feel confident saying about Ford is that whatever his plan, it won't have any measures that will upset his 905 single family owners. So whatever plan is put in place it will be to encourage more sprawl, and more highways, and won't address that investors sweep in, outbid homebuyers, and drive up prices anyone.
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Doug Ford just had to keep those property values skyrocketing and NIMBY homeowners in the 905 happy enough to survive another election.
A friendly reminder to vote for the party with the most ambitious housing plan.
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I'll believe it when the prices drop
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Just read through the official release....
They ignored almost all of the 55 recommendations from the housing report. Anything that would have upset suburban votes got ignored E.g. eliminating zoning restrictions in low-rise neighborhoods. Only a handful of minor tweaks are in the new bill, nothing that will have any real impact.
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Why not tax the investors. So whoever owns more than one home. Those are the people operating businesses. They should be taxed
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Wouldn't the logical move be to force people to build up instead of out? They could also limit purchasing to people that do not own residences and such, but that would be helping poor people.
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spending less time on public consultations for housing projects" - condos, condos everywhere
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As much as Dug is as smart as a Tim's breakfast bagel, this is the first government plan, from any level, that actually has concrete plans that will have actual impacts on the market. Maybe not immediate, but zoning changes and faster approvals should get more housing built faster, which will help with supply.
I am impressed, for like the 1st time in four years...
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Build more houses sure, but at least design these new neighborhoods so they aren't concrete wastelands where you depend on your car to get you to go transit.
*To get anywhere.
Seriously, how many subdivisions are we building where you can walk to a store, walk to/home from a bar, walk to amenities. Most subdivisions are a suburban nightmare, fields of houses with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
What do you mean you can go for a walk and look at your neighbours driveways. Ahh, suburuban lyfe.
It really seems they build the houses first, and then at a much later date they try to shoe horn in the bare minimum infrastructure to accommodate the larger population
It’s so weird seeing schools in recently-constructed subdivisions already using scores of portable classrooms.
You would’ve thought they’d have accounted for this BEFORE the subdivision was built. Total incompetence.
Yes - they should account for the exact population of children in a place that is yet to exist…