Hypocritical politrickster scumbags want to import massive numbers of immigrants, and call anyone who questions whether it is a good idea to bring in so many people racist. But they secretly don't want those people living anywhere near them.
As for me, I really don't gaf about living near brown people because, despite some people on Reddit saying I live in a pussy suburb or whatever (yeah my area is kind of pussy tbh), there were lots of brown people in my neighbourhood before Trudeau's immigration tsunami. And now there's more recent immigrants and refugees in the area.
For me it isn't about the ethnicity so much as there are just way too many people in general and the infrastructure isn't sufficient for them.
I live in a very “stop sprawl”, “density is good” Toronto neighbourhood. We vote Liberal or NDP 200% of the time.
We also fight any non detached home development like hell (density is good, just not HERE) and massive immigration is good. I’d say it is a perfect example of the hypocrisy that is the heart of modern day urban Liberalism, but also, it’s made these people fabulously rich so I suppose it makes sense.
And they are all fine with brown neighbours. Not that any of them would be able to afford a house here so it’s a bit of a moot point.
But... this is the exact trend you would expect in a representative democracy with a first-past-the-post system. The people who, overwhelmingly, vote in local elections are home-owners. Not tenants. Home owners are almost all invested for the long term in the local district, and care about tax and spending policy locally.
What candidate, who wants to get elected, isn't going to pander to homeowners? They're still going to be around in four years come next election. Will those maybe-tenants you've created housing for be interested in voting for you? Or showing up to the polls at all?
We're getting exactly the results in government that we'd expect from our voting system. If we don't like it, we need to change the voting system, so it incentivizes getting people other than homeowners to show up and vote.
Exactly. They organize and vote. Someone tried to build a multiplex here once (oh the horror!) and these reliable liberal voters lost their minds “will change the character of the neighbourhood”.
Hypocrites. Well organized, always voting hypocrites.
You’re literally jealous because it’s not you, because if you had that money you think you’d want to have masses of people crawling all over each other like crabs in a bucket. Nah, you’d act just like they would.
>focusing on density is done by people trying to downplay immigration
Why can't people care about both? Less immigration will reduce prices. Greater density can reduce prices, property taxes, and deficits.
I want VERY affordable housing, that is sustainable in the long term from a cost perspective. Fix BOTH problems.
They are just regurgitating establishment narratives (the dumb ones who are suffering the ramifications) or are benefiting from the mass immigration / ponzi economy scam.
Exactly.
99% of people who talk about "density" are trying to shift the focus and sweep the immigration NIGHTMARE under the rug.
One problem with increasing density is it allows politicians to keep immigration at stupid levels for even longer, by masking the symptoms of the problem they're creating.
Europe has density but not neccessarily the high rise condos we have. We could rebuild entire neighbourhoods on smaller lots.
Europe also has better local gathering places. Parks, markets, pubs. If you have density, people also need places to socialize affordably.
Why are we taking people that aren't capable of building countries that other people want to move to? The land doesn't develop itself, the culture doesn't coalesce around itself, it's the people that dictate conditions in area.
Bruh, they're still fucking they're just using contraception, in part because the social pressure to have kids has declined but much more so, no one can afford kids.
I don't think this applies for these immigrants coming in from the past few years, I went to a mall a few days back on the weekend, and I think probably 95% were indian and half of them had multiple kids, they must be doing something to leech money from the government to support them. In the food court I swear every minute i heard some indian guy shout "beta!" 🤣
The liberal cabal standing with LeBlanc for his foreign interference talk was disturbing. The future is soon 1 in 10 white. See it in videos of classrooms too. What if the opposite was true in other countries? They wouldn't like it except that's impossible.
Density is not the only answer but is definitely part of the solution. Sprawl is also extremely costly to the taxpayer.
But it also needs to be the right kind of density i.e. fewer shoeboxes in the sky and more family-sized dwellings.
The towns empty to the cities because there seems to be more opportunities. If the towns were given more ability instead of all the jobs and institutions going to the cities I think a lot of people would choose towns. With so much tech in our lives now even reliable internet and WiFi would encourage people to choose a smaller population to live in. People are the same everywhere, but the speed and the load from humans in a smaller community is more manageable.
We should be doing both. The inner cities build up, and the suburbs around it expand outwards.
The problem is density is being roadblocked, and then the infrastructure for sprawling out and the sprawl is also being roadblocked.
Everyone wants everything to stay exactly how they like it as if conditions won't change regardless of if you like it or want it.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-government-regulations-make-housing-unaffordable
Japan fixed their crisis in the 80s via deregulation, places like Europe and Canada have some of the extensive and expensive regulations around housing, they also pass property taxes onto development.
Didn’t Japan “fix” the housing issue with -0.4% population growth (so their population shrinkage). As the population gets smaller there are more houses than needed creating a glut which pushes prices down making things more affordable.
Well they do have 4X the population. I’m surprised at their home builds though as with a shrinking population you would think the demand wouldn’t be there?
They don't have rules about building homes and often knock down houses every few decades and build a new one. Less regulations and zoning restrictions make building cheaper and they don't view houses as investments
I’ll admit it’s crossed my mind more than once that our progressively more rigid building codes keep increasing the cost of building until people can’t afford it.
Perhaps it is the way to go. I don’t know in this one.
Because they don't own the land. It's all leased. If you're willing to try and convince Canadians to give up property ownership in the name of affordability you go ahead and try.
We really don't.
We need to be sending immigrants out into undeveloped regions of the country and telling them to build a community for themselves if they don't want to integrate.
If they want to be settlers, they need to settle.
When my great grandfather came here from Italy that’s literally what they told him. You’re gonna live in North Bay, and you’re going to work construction, rails whatever - no choice.
So... the people who have been living there for generations, using the land to trap, and hunt, and harvest their traditional foods don't count because they don't exist in sufficient density for you?
I'm talking about the scrap land nobody has been using to trap or hunt or farm for generations. The land both the Indigenous and the settlers took a pass on.
Believe it or not, there is still a massive amount of such Crown land that is essentially frontier land still.
Most of Northern Ontario, most of Northern Alberta, most of Northern Saskatchewan, most of Northern Manitoba...
I'm talking places that have no roads, no infrastructure, no water systems, no nothing. More remote than the Indigenous settlements that need to be accessed by helicopter.
There is plenty of land absolutely no one uses.
No... all that land is actually used by the people who live there now. It is used for hunting, and trapping, and has been for generations.
And your proposal would require building roads and sewage and water and power systems and supply lines that aren't there now... so billions and billions of dollars to house people, in a place where no services exist to house them now in a way that wouldn't violate the Geneva convention.
Basically you have a solution that amounts to "raise my taxes and spend more money than we would have to, to solve this sensibly with existing resources, to steal land and make lots of people miserable."
Do you seriously have nothing better to do with your money than make other people miserable through public spending?
It really isn't. And I'm not proposing spending tons of money on building stuff for them. I'm proposing dumping them there on a helicopter, and maybe airdropping the supplies they need to build it themselves. If they die, it's their own fault.
I'm also not proposing stealing land. I'm proposing using land currently owned by the government that they are doing sweet FA with and haven't for over a hundred years.
There's a lot of it.
Right, so pathological cruelty to others, done by wasting resources you claim others aren't using (but can't actually... you know... demonstrate).
Basically you want to waste money so you can be mean to people who you don't know. Am I wrong? Is what you're proposing any more moral than kicking puppies or drowning kittens for entertainment?
Cities like Vancouver can only densify. It has water on 3 sides and the city of Burnaby on the other. Some densification makes sense in most cities but instead of pushing people into Vancouver and Toronto, we should encourage people to move to smaller cities. Either give tax breaks for people that leave big cities for smaller cities or just give more federal assistance to the smaller cities to attract people.
Depends on your gauge of what is unaffordable. House prices in smaller towns may be higher than in the past but compared to the GVA and GTA, it really is quite affordable.
Maybe they are slightly more affordable. But they are still completely unaffordable on price to income.
Just because they aren't batshit crazy price, doesn't mean they aren't crazy price.
Encourage corpos to make people work from home instead of the government in Ottawa forcing people back into the office and it would help move people into smaller cities all over
It appalls me the amount of posters who haven't read up on the WEF's stated goals.
They told you they would force this on you.
But no, it's not the answer. Less immigration is a good start, currently
Mixed-use, mid-rise density along major transit corridors is a beautiful thing, near the heart of good urban planning. It’s not a new idea, it’s been proven for 30 years. It has nothing at all to do with immigration.
It makes transit viable, neighbourhoods vibrant and safe, is brilliant for the tax base, and puts many amenities in walking distance of a lot of people.
Please don’t make the lame Dunning-Kruger effect move of reflexively linking 30 years of the most proven and successful planning ideas to five minutes of thinking about immigration.
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It depends on urban planning, theyre some nice videos and channels on youtube regarding planning on why density and walkability are good things. No one's arguing for densely packed sardine houses but more so buildings and neighbourhoods closer to each other.
Utilities drop in a more denser population a lot of cities in the US are going bankrupt due to their sprawl. Water pipelines need to be replaced, electric and gas piplines need to be maintained too.
For us here in Canada, where the desirable land is limited. Density with good urban planning should be the way ahead.
Ok so you have international home hoarding, a housing crisis and a huge flood of people.
There are three core issues and addressing one can only do so much.
I'm all for attacking this on multiple fronts if you are suggestion cutting immigration I'm on board.
Also cheap and abundant credit is another issue that has enabled this mess. Government not allowing a natural market cycle. A clearing of mal-investment.
Well yes and no. The answer would really be to free up land for development. We have so much empty land and we could build planned cities but we don't want to buy could at least add density with plan in current transit corridors.
For example in Toronto Danforth from the viaduct to vic park could easily become a typically Paris Boulevard. At every subway stop the city could put in tired 4 or 5 stories not for profit housing they already have the land so with minimal impact to existing neighborhoods but not zero impact.
Go stations should be a hub like train stations of the past. They could have multiple towers , townhouses, etc again on existing land. Even Danforth go stop is a waste land that can have more development. It is increasing now but should be integrated with tunnel access to main station. But we have zero thinking or planning the city should have a one hundred year plans in place not subject to whims of politics. Tear down Gardener no fix Gardner no add a fly bye no let us dig a tunnel. Wtf
Danforth is actually already zoned in the city plan to permit that to happen. It has been for decades.
What's stopping it is the land is, for the most part, divided into 20 x 80 foot foot properties, with separate owners. And has been for coming on a century now. Unless every property owner in a row agrees to sell to a developer, the development can't happen. 5 stories up on 20 feet of width, and not touching the neighbouring properties as you build isn't feasible... also building codes (number of staircases, etc.) make designing the interior into leasable units difficult.
Where properties were wide enough to permit significant redevelopment, it has happened.
You could argue that the city should expropriate all the land along danforth, and sell it to developers to build what you view as the greatest and best use of the land... but that's taking valuable assets (land) away from working class people, who've earned and invested that wealth over the course of a century, and destroying highly functional neighbourhoods for an elite notion of "what's right." Which is exactly what we deplored about demolishing cities for freeways and block-buster housing projects in the mid 20th Century.
We don't look back at that as a good choice. So maybe we should hesitate to repeat it?
Finally, there's the problem of "with what money?" Federal and Provincial money is entirely dedicated to keeping old people alive and comfortable. That's what our sales tax and income taxes go to: pensions and health care. Rebuilding miles and miles of city costs a lot of money. Billions and billions of dollars. Whose pockets does it come from?
I am not saying all of the Danforth just TTC property. And of course federal money this would be for non profit housing. And not too big. There are already lots of towers , main, woodbine,Greenwood . At main though they could make it a major transit hub with underground between them and maybe a parking garage for it.
As well as a couple more towers.
Danforth east of main needs something.
Well some density increase needs to happen but I can't speak for what makes sense outside T. and really only for the east end of old Toronto and east York.
I don't like increasing density randomly in existing neighborhoods though. If you are in a quite neighborhood away from main thoughfares and transit you should expect it to stay that way.
Central planning is not going to fix the cities. The Go stops are are huge mess because every past and future government is a mess. We need to get rid of zoning altogether. ZERO red tape, let them build now.
It seriously is the answer, for the last 30 to 40 years, policies regarding zoning have been restrictive just to please the worst generation the earth has ever seen: the boomers.
This garbage generation wanted to keep their little villages like they were in 1974, but we're in 2024, we can't expand further and further all the time, there's a limit at some point. These old fucks just don't want to see towers and condos for the reason stated above. In Québec, the municipalities and provincial government are slowly starting to give the finger to the garbage human beings in favor of common sense, so we're starting to see old ugly un-renovated since the 80s awful bungalows being destroyed in favor of 6+ apartments/condos buildings that are next to school, grocery stores, small markets, etc.
Please explain how paying the same or more price/sq ft on smaller sized unit increases affordability.
It's really just shrinkflation and falling quality of life.
I thought the question was about density. Makes sense to pay more if you can avoid the cost of a car or two. We can't afford to subsidize wasteful lifestyles. That's not a free market. Developers charge what people are willing to pay for condos.
Free market while federal government insures mortgages, provides commercial bank policy, sets rates to zero and buys up mortgage backed securities.
Free market....lol.
You can choose to have a car or not with 800sq ft or 400sq ft. If they are both priced at $2500 sq ft there really truly isn't better affordability.....its just shrinkflation.
If density were the solution, then Vancouver wouldn't be the shit show it is now. I've been to many US and Canadian cities, and besides Toronto, I've yet to see a city with as many construction cranes in operation as Vancouver. Even it's suburbs are sprouting condos. Yet, Vancouver and Toronto have some of the worst housing affordability in the world.
It's sad because I live in one of those suburbs. When I moved here 14 years ago, it was all single-family homes and relatively affordable apartments that populated the neighborhood. Today, many of that affordable housing and small businesses have been leveled to make way for, yep, more bland condos with the same boring and repetitive chain coffee shops and other businesses in their podiums.
I'll also note that many low-income immigrants have also been displaced due to this. Government at all levels not only allowed for this, but encouraged this insanity.
Canada is massive fucking country and any housing shortage is an artificial. People with properties want number go up. The liberals are the worse in terms of hypocrisy. Bulldoze and build that what is needed.
If density is the solution, then why aren’t people buying up or renting out those condos in Toronto? Answer is that not everybody likes living on top of each other, hearing, seeing, and smelling their neighbours.
Density and housing crisis are not related.
Housing crisis, as in not enough housing relative to population demand, does not change whether we are building up or out. Canada's housing crisis is due to supply-demand being really out of balance. Sure, maybe it is more efficient to build up, but really the issue is not enough housing for the population increase. Big cities tend to build up, I don't see an issue with that, the problem is the apartments built are too small and carry cost is huge: taxes, maintenance, condo fees. Government can mandate minimum 3 bedrooms and min 1500 sqft but then since that is all the government does, "mandates", the private sector can simply say "no thank you".
When we try to get to the bottom of this, we see that we need open competition and regulations that make the housing industry attractive for the investment capital. The sudden bank rate increase pretty much shutdown interest, while creating a crisis in the whole economy. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Macklem wanted, clearly stated, to slow down the economy. It is working. As a result of this, there will be even less housing built, despite the government propaganda, meaning even higher imbalance between housing supply and demand.
Overall, the huge increase in population count coupled with the sudden increase in bank interest rates are the main factors that have caused the crisis.
We can, to some extent, solve the housing crisis by fixing the supply-demand ratio. But there's a lower limit to how much costs can be driven down by that means alone.
People tend to misunderstand the correlation between density and costs. Both construction costs, and maintenance costs (which appear to the homeowner / occupant as property taxes, maintenance costs, condo fees, etc.).
It's unfortunate that we tend to build very high density apartments like the ones you're describing, and very low density like SFH on large lots. The most financially efficient housing (and therefore the housing that should be available at the lowest cost to occupants, if the market were working correctly) is the "missing middle" we hear about so often. It's a happy middle ground that puts multiple units on a single piece of land, reduces infrastructure costs, but isn't so large that's it's a $100M engineering project like a big tower.
In addition to controlling population growth, we should be enabling the construction of housing that is affordable and financially sustainable in the long run, and then correctly attributing maintenance costs to various housing types, in order to incentivize the construction and occupation of homes that people can actually afford for themselves.
Yes, the missing middle.
While it will increase density, it does so at a pace where it won't require as massive of an infrastructure upgrade compared to if you were to throw a bunch of towers in one location (Oakridge, Olympic Village, Marine Gateway, Brentwood being a few areas that have been/will be huge pain points).
The current projects being accepted still don't have too many of this missing middle housing included. We need more of these 4- 6 storey buildings that make better use of all the SFH areas in urban areas.
Of course not. There's no shortage of land to build out in many cities. 30% of a new house cost is taxes alone. With the stoke of a pen we could make housing much more affordable if the municipal governments stopped all the red tape and taxes.
Zero interest rate policy. Cheap and abundant credit has enabled speculators to aquire and hold finacialized housing.
Also government and central banks expanding the money supply. Monetary debasement and improper calculation of inflation.
People who push density don't have kids. Living in a town house or single family home ect is way better than trying to raise a family in an apartment building. I've done all 3 and the apartment building was horrible for young kids. I found the townhouse was great for a family. The kids could be kids and play outside. The complex gave a sense of security and made it easy for parents to get to know each other. Raising a family in an apartment building is a horrible experience for everyone.
Most Canadians, if asked, will tell you they would love to own a single family home. That's why people move to Alberta. Most people who want to live in a condo are young urban people who like going to bars, restaurants night clubs ect. For the rest of us, the endless concrete jungle is a horrible dystopia. Unless you're a street skater, lol.
Most Canadians, if asked, will tell you they would love to own a single family home. That's why people move to Alberta. Most people who want to live in a condo are young urban people who like going to bars, restaurants night clubs ect. For the rest of us, the endless concrete jungle is a horrible dystopia. Unless you're a street skater, lol.
A lot of our current issues do come down to inefficient resource usage - we got away with it for a long time just because of favorable financing structures, but it\`s expensive in the long term since per-capita infrastructure requirements are high. It\`s always going to be more expensive in the long term to sprawl vs. build compactly. Space is expensive. Using less of it is cheaper. (we won't even touch on the benefits of walkability and natural third places, which generally only work in denser environs)
A lot of Europe has the same issues we do, with restrictive zoning particularly in city centres. Those infamous Hausmannian blocks that dominate Paris? Completely untouchable.. Try to fit a 21st century population into a city that was built 200 years before with no leeway to grow, of course it will be expensive.
I'm saying this exactly elsewhere, and getting downvoted to oblivion. I'm not sure why I am, and you are not.
Density (when done correctly) can help reduce costs, property taxes, and deficits. This is an entirely separate issue from the supply-demand ratio, which is heavily impacted by immigration.
Both can contribute to driving down costs.
Changes like 4 plex by right across Ontario for example being stopped by the province is a big reason. All the tall tower in Toronto are a symptom of restrictive zoning forever. You could not build middle housing in much of the city because if it.
And they're priced accordingly. Unfortunately it's not possible for everyone to live in one, particularly in our three biggest cities which all have significant constraints on outward expansion. The real issue is whether there's a plan B that is reasonably affordable for those who can't afford to bid seven figure sums on SFDs.
Complex issue. Why have development fees increased exponentially but property taxes have been artificially kept low?
Globalization has provided cheap consumer goods which put downward pressure on the bullshit CPI calculation while the true cost of RE ownership is not appropriately accounted for. Great we have cheap televisions and clothes but food and shelter which can't be imported are through the proverbial roof.
Some correction here, property taxes are higher than they should be. Property taxes are supposed to cover services to the home and city only. Instead cities use them for woke agendas or housing which they aren’t supposed to (that’s provincial).
There are also things that are wealth taxes on property but have different names like school taxes.
A property tax isn’t progressive like an income tax as it chooses winners and losers based on an asset class. Which is why we were supposed to avoid using it like an income tax. Similar to wealth taxes in stocks, if you do that to property here investment flees. We have seen a mass exodus of union pension funds from Canada which has led to our low wages as there isn’t enough investment in capital here.
To note: I realize taxes on various asset holders who own assets you don’t is attractive to people who want to punish others but don’t want to pay themselves. But realistically more taxes doesn’t = more money. Some expected outcomes: property values would go down, rents would go up, most commercial would go bankrupt, property transfer taxes would go down, inheritance taxes would go down, development would go down, capital gains/income tax revenues would go down.
The BC NDP introduced like 5-10 taxes on property and are running a large deficit, more taxes doesn’t equal more money.
Development fees could be cheaper if we built more dense housing because we would require less infrastructure per capita.
Property taxes are artificially low because people vote to defer their costs into the future, when someone else will have to pay them. I.e. prices in the past were never actually sustainable in the first place.
Why not mention higher wages.
Maybe if we accounted for all this instead of making our whole economy based on ponzi wealth we would be more and income based ecomony instead of asset based.
Why do you keep bringing up other points?
The answer to your question, "is density the only answer" is "no, density is not the only answer".
I am trying to demonstrate that density does present an opportunity to lower both construction costs and ongoing costs. But you keep deflecting and trying to talk about other things.
Unfornulately, that may be the solution to a lot of issues. You may have to start turning cities into Singapore type towers. They are small but they are a place to live.
Quality of life is subjective. I prefer amenities and walk ability over being in the middle of fucking nowhere and having to rely on a vehicle every time I exit my home.
It is subjective but previously we had affordable CHOICE.
BTW. I'm in small city that has turned completely unaffordable too! Gotta love mass immigration and almost 2 decades of ZIRP
We need multiple micro centers. Which means multiple small dense cities, and mega cities should not be built because they lead to affordability crisis and crime
No it would not lead to speculation, speculation is caused by people being allowed to buy as many houses they want.
There should be a limit on this. Also, govt should give cheap credit so people can do other businesses.
Yes I'm saying people should not be allowed to buy as many houses as they want there should be a limit.
It's like Bill Gates should not be allowed to buy all the worlds grain.
Size of mega cities depends on the population.
Why do people living in Surrey need to go to work in Vancouver?
Why is the office in Vancouver when all employees are in Surrey?
These kinds of decisions can create micro cosms which can handle small small populations nicely
The history of suburban development, North American gentrification, red lining, racist zoning laws, and post market crash disaster capitalism and corporate asset capture will answer your questions.
My puny brain can't comprehend how building micro condos, which take several years, isn't livable, and isn't affordable, is a low hanging fruit. Please explain. Then also please explain how with a stroke of a pen, changing immigration policy, reducing demand is not considered a low hanging fruit.
I'm agreeing with you. This is the easy way out for the government to say they are doing something (housing shrinkflation/density) buts its complete bullshit.
> Is density the only answer?
Density basically means allowing more floor space on the same land.
It's not the only answer, but looking at the prices of apartments in places like Vancouver and Toronto, it seems like a good answer. In Vancouver, **land** is limited and therefore expensive (because of ocean and mountains), but there's no reason for **apartments** to be so super-scarce and expensive.
I should also point out that building a lot more floor space is basically the [opposite of shrink-flation](https://morehousing.ca/crowding-vs-density) - it means that floor space will be less scarce and expensive. What happens when floor space is expensive per square foot is that apartments have to get smaller and smaller, because otherwise nobody can afford to live in them.
Another approach: Canada isn't running out of land. Creating brand-new cities seems impractical, but an alternate suggestion from Mike Moffatt and Hannah Rasmussen is to [deepen labour markets in smaller cities](https://web.archive.org/web/20161109021437/https://canada2020.ca/labour/). People move where the jobs are, which is why demand is so high in the GTA and Metro Vancouver.
All we have seen is higher and higher price per square foot and smaller unit size. So does it make less expensive?
I agree that density is part of the solution in our major cities though. But that's not really what I'm talking about.
Let the market actually have a natural cycle. Instead liberals blasted demand artificially with mass immigration. Combined with low rates and lending standards. Not to mention the liberal government buying 40B of mortgage backed securities this year.
Socialize any loss, privatize any gain.
Immigration certainly plays a factor, but housing was unaffordable before the huge spike in immigration in 2021, so there much be other factors at play, no?
> I agree that density is part of the solution in our major cities though. But that's not really what I'm talking about.
The thing is, when Covid hit, we suddenly had a lot of people working from home, needing more space, and willing to move. People move where the jobs are, and a lot of jobs were no longer tethered to downtown Toronto and Vancouver. The result is that the housing shortage in Toronto and Vancouver basically spilled over to the rest of the country.
Places like Nanaimo and Nelson - smaller centres where housing was usually reasonably affordable, without having to build a lot more housing - are now more like suburbs of Vancouver, and priced accordingly. Same thing across southern Ontario and the Maritimes, with people leaving Toronto. It's a huge benefit for the people moving (because it lowers their housing costs), so it's not going to stop happening - but it creates tremendous pressure for locals.
[The Globe and Mail was reporting on this spillover effect in December 2020](https://morehousing.ca/spillover), while the borders were still closed.
For places which have a lot of land, they can presumably extend their boundaries, build up their infrastructure, and build more housing. But for places with limited buildable land, like Nelson, or that already have the infrastructure to support more infill housing, like Calgary, it makes sense to allow more height and density.
I agree that we also need to [cut way back on population growth](https://morehousing.ca/population-growth), but even after that, the remote-work demand shock isn't going away. The pre-Covid housing stock doesn't match where people want to live and work, post-Covid.
It’s either density in existing cities or build entirely new cities where they didn’t exist before.
Vancouver is on track to be a 7M person city in my kids’ lifetime. Possibly my lifetime, lol, is the recent trends continue.
Those people have to live somewhere…
Density will be an important part of Canada if it is to improve. As is many parts of the country are very expensive for the government to run, the lack of density causes all manner of things (hydro, electric, elementary schools ..ect) to be more numerous (therefore expensive) in Canadian cities as opposed to others of similar stats.
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We actually don't need anymore people than we already have. How Trudeau can jive his green agenda with his goal of having 100,000 000 people in Canada by 2100 is beyond me.
Here’s a radical idea. Deport illegal immigrants and don’t renew visas for foreign “students”. Build more housing and allow supply to catch up with demand. Impose very strict immigration standards that prioritizes people with much needed skills that will be beneficial to the Canadian economy in key industries. That is if there is no Canadians to be found to do the job in the first place. Subsidize education and vocational training so that native Canadians can increase their skills and be employed in productive sectors of the economy. Lastly crack down on employers and individuals who commit visa fraud.
These are very logical and common sense solutions to the problem. Politicians are benefiting too much from the status quo so naturally they will not do any of these things. At best you can expect lip service and half measures.
Listen,
We could pave over the entire country and turn it into apartments and it STILL wouldn't be enough to house every broke Indian who wants to come here as an economic migrant (and bring their entire extended family, then have a billion kids).
Enough with the "*hey let's solve something else instead of the immigration problem!"* bullshit already.
The way I see density is mostly about lowering costs, for the ownership class and for infrastructure. but this lower cost is at a lower standard of living and everyone knows that even if they don't admit it. Even people who loooove density when they talk, what are their personal goals? Probably not to live in the smallest pod possible....
Look at this from the position of someone who just wants to own housing and maximize the profit. When the market is tight the rents will grow until they match the capacity of people's income to pay. Then you realize the quality of the housing in this situation doesn't matter...it can be a house, it can be 20 to a house, it can be condo with 10 people in it, you're getting 30-50% of all their paycheques regardless.
This is why politicians and their pet ideologues love density. They can farm peasant paycheques with a 30sqft pod in the sky just as a much as they can with detached housing, all they need to do is make sure demand vs supply is in their favor and boy does the government come through on that.
You can't sprawl. Our road system sucks and its the reason why our transit sucks. Densification is the only answer but you also gotta stop immigration.
No, first we need to significantly reduce increases in demand, arguably we could even eliminated if we just halted immigration and let the natural birth rates take effect.
Secondly, we could literally just build more and invest in really good public transit. We could cover much better distances if we had faster trains but seem to hate actually building them.
Thirdly, increase remote work options. If you don't have to live within a daily/weekly commute for a job that is entirely done on a computer, then you can live wherever you want so long as the internet is good.
Fourth, literally just build more random cities and persuade (even coerce) companies to put jobs there. We have the land, we just refuse to stop concentrating employment in relatively small areas.
I deliver beer to small towns throughout eastern Ontario. I've seen prices in Ottawa skyrocket to Toronto levels. But I've also seen many recent immigrants settling in small communities that were in decline, buying small businesses, variety stores, restaurants, and practices of retiring professionals. This is something that native Canadians simply have not done over the last decades. In fact, the majority of young Canadians I see posting here are urbanites in the half dozen large cities that hold half our population who complain about living there but simply cannot conceive of doing what their favorite targets of scorn are doing: moving to and living in a small town. I moved from Toronto to Ottawa and then out to a smaller community, because I grew up in a small community and found that I got more space, privacy and a better quality of life in one. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have always been dense and overcrowded. There are accounts of people in the 17th century complaining about Quebec city being overcrowded and dense.
They're cities. Cities are overcrowded and dense. Try living in the 99% of the country that isn't one.
Europe is a big place.
However the places that most people have in mind have been experiencing insane levels of migration for at least a decade while many other places have strict rules about home building.
To answer your question: yes we need to densify and fast but we also need to immediately cut back immigration. This likely means the social security Ponzi scheme collapses but I think it would be more destructive to delay the inevitable
I agree with this mostly.
I think also the powers that be want to centralize power on who owns land.
There's been a big push in exploiting our natural resources and a lot of our land is being gobbled up by foreign interests.
If people expect to live in dense multiunits, or see it as the answer, they won't complain or care when rural land is gobbled.
There's more nuance obviously.
The other answer is high speed rail connecting the big cities with rural cheap areas where people get cheaper lands to build their home. But high speed rails are super expensive and the Canadian government is too bureaucratic and poor to implement it.
You can theoretically ask a Chinese company to build it for cheap but all these talks on "I don't trust the Chinese government or any Chinese companies" means that's out of the question.
Another issue is investors. Even if you do get the rail built, if the government doesn't limit who can buy up that land, those land will get swallow up by investors and big builders, and they will charge an arm and a leg for a tiny space, similar to what you get in downtown.
No!! Build houses! There’s already enough tiny condos for everyone they’re everywhere now. Time to overbuild detached houses, big ones. Because guess what happens when you overbuild houses??! The whole entire market will reprice lower. Bingo affordability for all. Oh, wait, that might help across all segments of housing?
Nvm build micros yah fools
We have such a huge country we could spread people out to. Density is not the only answer. The government could encourage remote work for companies and themselves to encourage more people to move to the middle of nowhere but they'd rather force everyone back to the office and cram everybody into the GTA/GVA.
No. They tell you that. And that's because we're taking an ever increasing population as granted. If population stays the same, the demand for housing will stay the same too. We can be back to the days when everybody could afford a starter house and a little lawn.
Truth is, population doesn't have to \*increase\*. We only need immigration to hit replacement levels because otherwise we die out. The reason we need to grow the population is that we need an ever increasing GDP to pay for our deficit spending. If our GDP doesn't go up forever, our creditors will have serious doubts about Canada's ability to repay its debt, the same way banks deny your credit card application if your income drops. So out of the two, politicians choose to have a big budget which they can personally benefit from, as opposed to leaving us alone.
you cant outbuild unlimited demand focusing on density is done by people trying to downplay immigration
I mean if you 1. Are against sprawl 2. Are in favour of massive immigration Then density is the only solution.
And yet most members of “stop sprawl” groups own homes on the outskirts of cities and don’t want brown people living near them
Why do you believe living near “brown people” is some sort of virtue?
[удалено]
Well brown people are just turning our country into theirs, so it makes sense
No true scotsman fallacy
Hypocritical politrickster scumbags want to import massive numbers of immigrants, and call anyone who questions whether it is a good idea to bring in so many people racist. But they secretly don't want those people living anywhere near them. As for me, I really don't gaf about living near brown people because, despite some people on Reddit saying I live in a pussy suburb or whatever (yeah my area is kind of pussy tbh), there were lots of brown people in my neighbourhood before Trudeau's immigration tsunami. And now there's more recent immigrants and refugees in the area. For me it isn't about the ethnicity so much as there are just way too many people in general and the infrastructure isn't sufficient for them.
RIP Brampton before it was like this.
Do not spread negative stereotypes about an entire group of people. Either be very specific or focus on immigration policy instead of people.
I live in a very “stop sprawl”, “density is good” Toronto neighbourhood. We vote Liberal or NDP 200% of the time. We also fight any non detached home development like hell (density is good, just not HERE) and massive immigration is good. I’d say it is a perfect example of the hypocrisy that is the heart of modern day urban Liberalism, but also, it’s made these people fabulously rich so I suppose it makes sense. And they are all fine with brown neighbours. Not that any of them would be able to afford a house here so it’s a bit of a moot point.
Some of them are fine brown neighbours
Yeah because people with detached homes that don’t like anything you believe in has less say about where they live or how they live than you do?
But... this is the exact trend you would expect in a representative democracy with a first-past-the-post system. The people who, overwhelmingly, vote in local elections are home-owners. Not tenants. Home owners are almost all invested for the long term in the local district, and care about tax and spending policy locally. What candidate, who wants to get elected, isn't going to pander to homeowners? They're still going to be around in four years come next election. Will those maybe-tenants you've created housing for be interested in voting for you? Or showing up to the polls at all? We're getting exactly the results in government that we'd expect from our voting system. If we don't like it, we need to change the voting system, so it incentivizes getting people other than homeowners to show up and vote.
Exactly. They organize and vote. Someone tried to build a multiplex here once (oh the horror!) and these reliable liberal voters lost their minds “will change the character of the neighbourhood”. Hypocrites. Well organized, always voting hypocrites.
What.
Exactly.
Correct. Rich retards who exist based on their grandfather's investments should have less influence in their hometown than normal people, yes.
You’re literally jealous because it’s not you, because if you had that money you think you’d want to have masses of people crawling all over each other like crabs in a bucket. Nah, you’d act just like they would.
Density is the only bandaid\* It does not solve the problem lmao
Increased homelessness and 50 renters sharing illegal basement apartments is another option.
"you cant outbuild unlimited demand" it's not a solution
Lowering demand is.
yes it's the only solution
There won’t be enough housing forever no matter how dense you make it, if you keep importing the whole world’s population into Canada.
>focusing on density is done by people trying to downplay immigration Why can't people care about both? Less immigration will reduce prices. Greater density can reduce prices, property taxes, and deficits. I want VERY affordable housing, that is sustainable in the long term from a cost perspective. Fix BOTH problems.
because every pro density person ive ever met is also pro immigration
Yup. It's painful how clueless they are. And typically I find a lot of them complaining about lack of jobs/pay too.
They are just regurgitating establishment narratives (the dumb ones who are suffering the ramifications) or are benefiting from the mass immigration / ponzi economy scam.
Exactly. 99% of people who talk about "density" are trying to shift the focus and sweep the immigration NIGHTMARE under the rug. One problem with increasing density is it allows politicians to keep immigration at stupid levels for even longer, by masking the symptoms of the problem they're creating.
There won’t be enough housing forever if you keep importing the whole world’s population into one country.
Dand from immigration but also speculation in general due to low rates/carry costs.
the reason people speculated on housing is because of our massive growth rate
Europe has density but not neccessarily the high rise condos we have. We could rebuild entire neighbourhoods on smaller lots. Europe also has better local gathering places. Parks, markets, pubs. If you have density, people also need places to socialize affordably.
Canada is copying South American, Brazil style density.
Fine with me
Why does Canada need to be taking in people from countries that never take people in?
And also sending gobs of money to those countries. But yes, stopping mass immigration would definitely help.
I think it’s more so nobody wants to actually move to these countries, unless you are from that demo.
Why are we taking people that aren't capable of building countries that other people want to move to? The land doesn't develop itself, the culture doesn't coalesce around itself, it's the people that dictate conditions in area.
Believe me, $100,000 would allow any westerner to live like royalty in India, but they won’t even let a foreign national own one single iota of land.
Because Canadians aren't fucking enough... https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/statistics-canada-total-fertility-rate-2022-1.7100404#:\~:text=Facebook-,Canada's%20total%20fertility%20rate%20dropped%20to%20its%20lowest%20point%20in,woman%2C%20Statistics%20Canada%20said%20Wednesday.
Bruh, they're still fucking they're just using contraception, in part because the social pressure to have kids has declined but much more so, no one can afford kids.
...and no one can afford kids because we keep voting for governments that don't provide adequate support for young families.
Hopefully you’ll meet someone and have a family.
Because it's too expensive to consider even having kids.
I don't think this applies for these immigrants coming in from the past few years, I went to a mall a few days back on the weekend, and I think probably 95% were indian and half of them had multiple kids, they must be doing something to leech money from the government to support them. In the food court I swear every minute i heard some indian guy shout "beta!" 🤣
The liberal cabal standing with LeBlanc for his foreign interference talk was disturbing. The future is soon 1 in 10 white. See it in videos of classrooms too. What if the opposite was true in other countries? They wouldn't like it except that's impossible.
It’s not but people like to put up roadblocks because they don’t actually want to be parents
lmao, okay, don't know what world you're living in unless you're making more than 50K and aren't living in a basement or 2 bedrm shit box.
Density is not the only answer but is definitely part of the solution. Sprawl is also extremely costly to the taxpayer. But it also needs to be the right kind of density i.e. fewer shoeboxes in the sky and more family-sized dwellings.
Actually not letting in more people is the answer
The towns empty to the cities because there seems to be more opportunities. If the towns were given more ability instead of all the jobs and institutions going to the cities I think a lot of people would choose towns. With so much tech in our lives now even reliable internet and WiFi would encourage people to choose a smaller population to live in. People are the same everywhere, but the speed and the load from humans in a smaller community is more manageable.
Speculation has made all of Southern Ontario unaffordable
We should be doing both. The inner cities build up, and the suburbs around it expand outwards. The problem is density is being roadblocked, and then the infrastructure for sprawling out and the sprawl is also being roadblocked. Everyone wants everything to stay exactly how they like it as if conditions won't change regardless of if you like it or want it.
That's true. And development is heavily taxed and restricted. We want growth but don't want to actually grow.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-government-regulations-make-housing-unaffordable Japan fixed their crisis in the 80s via deregulation, places like Europe and Canada have some of the extensive and expensive regulations around housing, they also pass property taxes onto development.
Didn’t Japan “fix” the housing issue with -0.4% population growth (so their population shrinkage). As the population gets smaller there are more houses than needed creating a glut which pushes prices down making things more affordable.
For sure it contributes, but so does bureaucracy, and so does development fees. In Vancouver the fees can cost more than the house.
But Japan doesn’t have to develop more houses. With a shrinking population there will always be enough houses for everybody.
They build about 3x more housing starts than Canada per year.
Well they do have 4X the population. I’m surprised at their home builds though as with a shrinking population you would think the demand wouldn’t be there?
They don't have rules about building homes and often knock down houses every few decades and build a new one. Less regulations and zoning restrictions make building cheaper and they don't view houses as investments
Hmmm. So is that better? Cheaper housing but less permanent?
Seems to work for them. I don't see why we don't just remove all the red tape and zoning so we can actually build shit
I’ll admit it’s crossed my mind more than once that our progressively more rigid building codes keep increasing the cost of building until people can’t afford it. Perhaps it is the way to go. I don’t know in this one.
Because they don't own the land. It's all leased. If you're willing to try and convince Canadians to give up property ownership in the name of affordability you go ahead and try.
Japan fixed its problem with below-replacement birth rate and extremely strict limits on immigration. Population rollover FTW…
Well it did change dramatically when the federal government took over housing in the 80s.
We really don't. We need to be sending immigrants out into undeveloped regions of the country and telling them to build a community for themselves if they don't want to integrate. If they want to be settlers, they need to settle.
When my great grandfather came here from Italy that’s literally what they told him. You’re gonna live in North Bay, and you’re going to work construction, rails whatever - no choice.
You... don't think the people living in "undeveloped regions" of the country should have a say over who settles there?
"Undeveloped" means no people living there. Actually none, not just a small homestead with minimal reception. Like, population density <1/100km²
So... the people who have been living there for generations, using the land to trap, and hunt, and harvest their traditional foods don't count because they don't exist in sufficient density for you?
I'm talking about the scrap land nobody has been using to trap or hunt or farm for generations. The land both the Indigenous and the settlers took a pass on. Believe it or not, there is still a massive amount of such Crown land that is essentially frontier land still.
Tell me about this land indigenous people don't use for trapping or hunting on. And haven't for "generations"? Where can I find it?
Most of Northern Ontario, most of Northern Alberta, most of Northern Saskatchewan, most of Northern Manitoba... I'm talking places that have no roads, no infrastructure, no water systems, no nothing. More remote than the Indigenous settlements that need to be accessed by helicopter. There is plenty of land absolutely no one uses.
No... all that land is actually used by the people who live there now. It is used for hunting, and trapping, and has been for generations. And your proposal would require building roads and sewage and water and power systems and supply lines that aren't there now... so billions and billions of dollars to house people, in a place where no services exist to house them now in a way that wouldn't violate the Geneva convention. Basically you have a solution that amounts to "raise my taxes and spend more money than we would have to, to solve this sensibly with existing resources, to steal land and make lots of people miserable." Do you seriously have nothing better to do with your money than make other people miserable through public spending?
It really isn't. And I'm not proposing spending tons of money on building stuff for them. I'm proposing dumping them there on a helicopter, and maybe airdropping the supplies they need to build it themselves. If they die, it's their own fault. I'm also not proposing stealing land. I'm proposing using land currently owned by the government that they are doing sweet FA with and haven't for over a hundred years. There's a lot of it.
Right, so pathological cruelty to others, done by wasting resources you claim others aren't using (but can't actually... you know... demonstrate). Basically you want to waste money so you can be mean to people who you don't know. Am I wrong? Is what you're proposing any more moral than kicking puppies or drowning kittens for entertainment?
Cities like Vancouver can only densify. It has water on 3 sides and the city of Burnaby on the other. Some densification makes sense in most cities but instead of pushing people into Vancouver and Toronto, we should encourage people to move to smaller cities. Either give tax breaks for people that leave big cities for smaller cities or just give more federal assistance to the smaller cities to attract people.
Small cities don't have jobs or resources. However we did see remote workers displace residents from small cities through rapid gentrification.
Smaller cities in Ontario and BC are also completely unaffordable. Density is also pushed there as the solution.
Depends on your gauge of what is unaffordable. House prices in smaller towns may be higher than in the past but compared to the GVA and GTA, it really is quite affordable.
Maybe they are slightly more affordable. But they are still completely unaffordable on price to income. Just because they aren't batshit crazy price, doesn't mean they aren't crazy price.
Yeah but wages are often lower.
Encourage corpos to make people work from home instead of the government in Ottawa forcing people back into the office and it would help move people into smaller cities all over
It appalls me the amount of posters who haven't read up on the WEF's stated goals. They told you they would force this on you. But no, it's not the answer. Less immigration is a good start, currently
Mixed-use, mid-rise density along major transit corridors is a beautiful thing, near the heart of good urban planning. It’s not a new idea, it’s been proven for 30 years. It has nothing at all to do with immigration. It makes transit viable, neighbourhoods vibrant and safe, is brilliant for the tax base, and puts many amenities in walking distance of a lot of people. Please don’t make the lame Dunning-Kruger effect move of reflexively linking 30 years of the most proven and successful planning ideas to five minutes of thinking about immigration.
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It depends on urban planning, theyre some nice videos and channels on youtube regarding planning on why density and walkability are good things. No one's arguing for densely packed sardine houses but more so buildings and neighbourhoods closer to each other. Utilities drop in a more denser population a lot of cities in the US are going bankrupt due to their sprawl. Water pipelines need to be replaced, electric and gas piplines need to be maintained too. For us here in Canada, where the desirable land is limited. Density with good urban planning should be the way ahead.
Ok so you have international home hoarding, a housing crisis and a huge flood of people. There are three core issues and addressing one can only do so much.
I'm all for attacking this on multiple fronts if you are suggestion cutting immigration I'm on board. Also cheap and abundant credit is another issue that has enabled this mess. Government not allowing a natural market cycle. A clearing of mal-investment.
Well yes and no. The answer would really be to free up land for development. We have so much empty land and we could build planned cities but we don't want to buy could at least add density with plan in current transit corridors. For example in Toronto Danforth from the viaduct to vic park could easily become a typically Paris Boulevard. At every subway stop the city could put in tired 4 or 5 stories not for profit housing they already have the land so with minimal impact to existing neighborhoods but not zero impact. Go stations should be a hub like train stations of the past. They could have multiple towers , townhouses, etc again on existing land. Even Danforth go stop is a waste land that can have more development. It is increasing now but should be integrated with tunnel access to main station. But we have zero thinking or planning the city should have a one hundred year plans in place not subject to whims of politics. Tear down Gardener no fix Gardner no add a fly bye no let us dig a tunnel. Wtf
Danforth is actually already zoned in the city plan to permit that to happen. It has been for decades. What's stopping it is the land is, for the most part, divided into 20 x 80 foot foot properties, with separate owners. And has been for coming on a century now. Unless every property owner in a row agrees to sell to a developer, the development can't happen. 5 stories up on 20 feet of width, and not touching the neighbouring properties as you build isn't feasible... also building codes (number of staircases, etc.) make designing the interior into leasable units difficult. Where properties were wide enough to permit significant redevelopment, it has happened. You could argue that the city should expropriate all the land along danforth, and sell it to developers to build what you view as the greatest and best use of the land... but that's taking valuable assets (land) away from working class people, who've earned and invested that wealth over the course of a century, and destroying highly functional neighbourhoods for an elite notion of "what's right." Which is exactly what we deplored about demolishing cities for freeways and block-buster housing projects in the mid 20th Century. We don't look back at that as a good choice. So maybe we should hesitate to repeat it? Finally, there's the problem of "with what money?" Federal and Provincial money is entirely dedicated to keeping old people alive and comfortable. That's what our sales tax and income taxes go to: pensions and health care. Rebuilding miles and miles of city costs a lot of money. Billions and billions of dollars. Whose pockets does it come from?
I am not saying all of the Danforth just TTC property. And of course federal money this would be for non profit housing. And not too big. There are already lots of towers , main, woodbine,Greenwood . At main though they could make it a major transit hub with underground between them and maybe a parking garage for it. As well as a couple more towers. Danforth east of main needs something.
I agree. A lot of that makes sense. But they are pushing density as a solution in small cities and towns across Ontario.
Well some density increase needs to happen but I can't speak for what makes sense outside T. and really only for the east end of old Toronto and east York. I don't like increasing density randomly in existing neighborhoods though. If you are in a quite neighborhood away from main thoughfares and transit you should expect it to stay that way.
Central planning is not going to fix the cities. The Go stops are are huge mess because every past and future government is a mess. We need to get rid of zoning altogether. ZERO red tape, let them build now.
That is interesting but zero red tape definitely wouldn't improve things.
It seriously is the answer, for the last 30 to 40 years, policies regarding zoning have been restrictive just to please the worst generation the earth has ever seen: the boomers. This garbage generation wanted to keep their little villages like they were in 1974, but we're in 2024, we can't expand further and further all the time, there's a limit at some point. These old fucks just don't want to see towers and condos for the reason stated above. In Québec, the municipalities and provincial government are slowly starting to give the finger to the garbage human beings in favor of common sense, so we're starting to see old ugly un-renovated since the 80s awful bungalows being destroyed in favor of 6+ apartments/condos buildings that are next to school, grocery stores, small markets, etc.
Yes, next question.
You're 12 aren't you?
You just can't handle the truth.
Please explain how paying the same or more price/sq ft on smaller sized unit increases affordability. It's really just shrinkflation and falling quality of life.
I thought the question was about density. Makes sense to pay more if you can avoid the cost of a car or two. We can't afford to subsidize wasteful lifestyles. That's not a free market. Developers charge what people are willing to pay for condos.
Free market while federal government insures mortgages, provides commercial bank policy, sets rates to zero and buys up mortgage backed securities. Free market....lol.
You can choose to have a car or not with 800sq ft or 400sq ft. If they are both priced at $2500 sq ft there really truly isn't better affordability.....its just shrinkflation.
Google externality
Ok, I just did. Still not sure what you tried to imply.
If density were the solution, then Vancouver wouldn't be the shit show it is now. I've been to many US and Canadian cities, and besides Toronto, I've yet to see a city with as many construction cranes in operation as Vancouver. Even it's suburbs are sprouting condos. Yet, Vancouver and Toronto have some of the worst housing affordability in the world. It's sad because I live in one of those suburbs. When I moved here 14 years ago, it was all single-family homes and relatively affordable apartments that populated the neighborhood. Today, many of that affordable housing and small businesses have been leveled to make way for, yep, more bland condos with the same boring and repetitive chain coffee shops and other businesses in their podiums. I'll also note that many low-income immigrants have also been displaced due to this. Government at all levels not only allowed for this, but encouraged this insanity.
Density is a lie to make builders richer without solving the affordability issue.
Canada is massive fucking country and any housing shortage is an artificial. People with properties want number go up. The liberals are the worse in terms of hypocrisy. Bulldoze and build that what is needed.
If density is the solution, then why aren’t people buying up or renting out those condos in Toronto? Answer is that not everybody likes living on top of each other, hearing, seeing, and smelling their neighbours.
100% Investors love them though.
Density and housing crisis are not related. Housing crisis, as in not enough housing relative to population demand, does not change whether we are building up or out. Canada's housing crisis is due to supply-demand being really out of balance. Sure, maybe it is more efficient to build up, but really the issue is not enough housing for the population increase. Big cities tend to build up, I don't see an issue with that, the problem is the apartments built are too small and carry cost is huge: taxes, maintenance, condo fees. Government can mandate minimum 3 bedrooms and min 1500 sqft but then since that is all the government does, "mandates", the private sector can simply say "no thank you". When we try to get to the bottom of this, we see that we need open competition and regulations that make the housing industry attractive for the investment capital. The sudden bank rate increase pretty much shutdown interest, while creating a crisis in the whole economy. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Macklem wanted, clearly stated, to slow down the economy. It is working. As a result of this, there will be even less housing built, despite the government propaganda, meaning even higher imbalance between housing supply and demand. Overall, the huge increase in population count coupled with the sudden increase in bank interest rates are the main factors that have caused the crisis.
We are in a massive economic pickle. Those tend to sort themselves out in time but likely with significant pain.
We can, to some extent, solve the housing crisis by fixing the supply-demand ratio. But there's a lower limit to how much costs can be driven down by that means alone. People tend to misunderstand the correlation between density and costs. Both construction costs, and maintenance costs (which appear to the homeowner / occupant as property taxes, maintenance costs, condo fees, etc.). It's unfortunate that we tend to build very high density apartments like the ones you're describing, and very low density like SFH on large lots. The most financially efficient housing (and therefore the housing that should be available at the lowest cost to occupants, if the market were working correctly) is the "missing middle" we hear about so often. It's a happy middle ground that puts multiple units on a single piece of land, reduces infrastructure costs, but isn't so large that's it's a $100M engineering project like a big tower. In addition to controlling population growth, we should be enabling the construction of housing that is affordable and financially sustainable in the long run, and then correctly attributing maintenance costs to various housing types, in order to incentivize the construction and occupation of homes that people can actually afford for themselves.
Yes, the missing middle. While it will increase density, it does so at a pace where it won't require as massive of an infrastructure upgrade compared to if you were to throw a bunch of towers in one location (Oakridge, Olympic Village, Marine Gateway, Brentwood being a few areas that have been/will be huge pain points). The current projects being accepted still don't have too many of this missing middle housing included. We need more of these 4- 6 storey buildings that make better use of all the SFH areas in urban areas.
Of course not. There's no shortage of land to build out in many cities. 30% of a new house cost is taxes alone. With the stoke of a pen we could make housing much more affordable if the municipal governments stopped all the red tape and taxes.
And get rid of ZIRP and the printing press that is helping to inflate land prices.
What is zirp? And I'm not following how the printing press relates to my comment?
Zero interest rate policy. Cheap and abundant credit has enabled speculators to aquire and hold finacialized housing. Also government and central banks expanding the money supply. Monetary debasement and improper calculation of inflation.
Oh ok well yes the first one is done with, 2nd is still a big issue though.
Yep and they are already chomping on the bit to lower rates. We are addicted to cheap money.
People who push density don't have kids. Living in a town house or single family home ect is way better than trying to raise a family in an apartment building. I've done all 3 and the apartment building was horrible for young kids. I found the townhouse was great for a family. The kids could be kids and play outside. The complex gave a sense of security and made it easy for parents to get to know each other. Raising a family in an apartment building is a horrible experience for everyone.
It's possible to advocate for solutions that help people other than yourself.
Most Canadians, if asked, will tell you they would love to own a single family home. That's why people move to Alberta. Most people who want to live in a condo are young urban people who like going to bars, restaurants night clubs ect. For the rest of us, the endless concrete jungle is a horrible dystopia. Unless you're a street skater, lol.
Most Canadians, if asked, will tell you they would love to own a single family home. That's why people move to Alberta. Most people who want to live in a condo are young urban people who like going to bars, restaurants night clubs ect. For the rest of us, the endless concrete jungle is a horrible dystopia. Unless you're a street skater, lol.
A lot of our current issues do come down to inefficient resource usage - we got away with it for a long time just because of favorable financing structures, but it\`s expensive in the long term since per-capita infrastructure requirements are high. It\`s always going to be more expensive in the long term to sprawl vs. build compactly. Space is expensive. Using less of it is cheaper. (we won't even touch on the benefits of walkability and natural third places, which generally only work in denser environs) A lot of Europe has the same issues we do, with restrictive zoning particularly in city centres. Those infamous Hausmannian blocks that dominate Paris? Completely untouchable.. Try to fit a 21st century population into a city that was built 200 years before with no leeway to grow, of course it will be expensive.
I'm saying this exactly elsewhere, and getting downvoted to oblivion. I'm not sure why I am, and you are not. Density (when done correctly) can help reduce costs, property taxes, and deficits. This is an entirely separate issue from the supply-demand ratio, which is heavily impacted by immigration. Both can contribute to driving down costs.
Because we both know that single family homes are the most desired dwelling in Canada. People don’t want to live in ghetto towers
Why aren't we permitting a range of housing options to be built? Why artificially constrain the market to only building two?
Changes like 4 plex by right across Ontario for example being stopped by the province is a big reason. All the tall tower in Toronto are a symptom of restrictive zoning forever. You could not build middle housing in much of the city because if it.
There are plenty of options other than just detached home and "ghetto towers".
And they're priced accordingly. Unfortunately it's not possible for everyone to live in one, particularly in our three biggest cities which all have significant constraints on outward expansion. The real issue is whether there's a plan B that is reasonably affordable for those who can't afford to bid seven figure sums on SFDs.
I agree not everyone can live in a single family unit so perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that we are full
Complex issue. Why have development fees increased exponentially but property taxes have been artificially kept low? Globalization has provided cheap consumer goods which put downward pressure on the bullshit CPI calculation while the true cost of RE ownership is not appropriately accounted for. Great we have cheap televisions and clothes but food and shelter which can't be imported are through the proverbial roof.
Some correction here, property taxes are higher than they should be. Property taxes are supposed to cover services to the home and city only. Instead cities use them for woke agendas or housing which they aren’t supposed to (that’s provincial). There are also things that are wealth taxes on property but have different names like school taxes. A property tax isn’t progressive like an income tax as it chooses winners and losers based on an asset class. Which is why we were supposed to avoid using it like an income tax. Similar to wealth taxes in stocks, if you do that to property here investment flees. We have seen a mass exodus of union pension funds from Canada which has led to our low wages as there isn’t enough investment in capital here. To note: I realize taxes on various asset holders who own assets you don’t is attractive to people who want to punish others but don’t want to pay themselves. But realistically more taxes doesn’t = more money. Some expected outcomes: property values would go down, rents would go up, most commercial would go bankrupt, property transfer taxes would go down, inheritance taxes would go down, development would go down, capital gains/income tax revenues would go down. The BC NDP introduced like 5-10 taxes on property and are running a large deficit, more taxes doesn’t equal more money.
Development fees could be cheaper if we built more dense housing because we would require less infrastructure per capita. Property taxes are artificially low because people vote to defer their costs into the future, when someone else will have to pay them. I.e. prices in the past were never actually sustainable in the first place.
Why not mention higher wages. Maybe if we accounted for all this instead of making our whole economy based on ponzi wealth we would be more and income based ecomony instead of asset based.
Why do you keep bringing up other points? The answer to your question, "is density the only answer" is "no, density is not the only answer". I am trying to demonstrate that density does present an opportunity to lower both construction costs and ongoing costs. But you keep deflecting and trying to talk about other things.
Unfornulately, that may be the solution to a lot of issues. You may have to start turning cities into Singapore type towers. They are small but they are a place to live.
Accept falling quality of life. Never.
Yup, fuck that.
Quality of life is subjective. I prefer amenities and walk ability over being in the middle of fucking nowhere and having to rely on a vehicle every time I exit my home.
It is subjective but previously we had affordable CHOICE. BTW. I'm in small city that has turned completely unaffordable too! Gotta love mass immigration and almost 2 decades of ZIRP
We need multiple micro centers. Which means multiple small dense cities, and mega cities should not be built because they lead to affordability crisis and crime
Cheap credit leads to housing speculation
No it would not lead to speculation, speculation is caused by people being allowed to buy as many houses they want. There should be a limit on this. Also, govt should give cheap credit so people can do other businesses.
Cheap holding costs allow speculators to buy up finacialized RE/housing and speculate. 100%
Yes I'm saying people should not be allowed to buy as many houses as they want there should be a limit. It's like Bill Gates should not be allowed to buy all the worlds grain.
You could be onto something there. We should heavily tax multiple property owners.
Yes exactly. There should be simple laws to not allow or tax heavily
Google mal-investment. That also includes zombie companies.
We don't have mega cities and are experiencing an affordability crisis and we are a hotbed for financial crime: see the Cullen Commission.
Size of mega cities depends on the population. Why do people living in Surrey need to go to work in Vancouver? Why is the office in Vancouver when all employees are in Surrey? These kinds of decisions can create micro cosms which can handle small small populations nicely
The history of suburban development, North American gentrification, red lining, racist zoning laws, and post market crash disaster capitalism and corporate asset capture will answer your questions.
Canada needs more immigrants. Time to start density with some nice insulated tents and sleeping bags so they will be ready for winter.
The density fetishists are, for the most part, people who are pro-mass immigration and housing investors looking for cheap supply.
It's expensive density. Its not even an answer. You want to live in 200 sqft micro condos for 500k? Thats what density is
It's not a solution, it's low hanging fruit as always.
My puny brain can't comprehend how building micro condos, which take several years, isn't livable, and isn't affordable, is a low hanging fruit. Please explain. Then also please explain how with a stroke of a pen, changing immigration policy, reducing demand is not considered a low hanging fruit.
I'm agreeing with you. This is the easy way out for the government to say they are doing something (housing shrinkflation/density) buts its complete bullshit.
> Is density the only answer? Density basically means allowing more floor space on the same land. It's not the only answer, but looking at the prices of apartments in places like Vancouver and Toronto, it seems like a good answer. In Vancouver, **land** is limited and therefore expensive (because of ocean and mountains), but there's no reason for **apartments** to be so super-scarce and expensive. I should also point out that building a lot more floor space is basically the [opposite of shrink-flation](https://morehousing.ca/crowding-vs-density) - it means that floor space will be less scarce and expensive. What happens when floor space is expensive per square foot is that apartments have to get smaller and smaller, because otherwise nobody can afford to live in them. Another approach: Canada isn't running out of land. Creating brand-new cities seems impractical, but an alternate suggestion from Mike Moffatt and Hannah Rasmussen is to [deepen labour markets in smaller cities](https://web.archive.org/web/20161109021437/https://canada2020.ca/labour/). People move where the jobs are, which is why demand is so high in the GTA and Metro Vancouver.
All we have seen is higher and higher price per square foot and smaller unit size. So does it make less expensive? I agree that density is part of the solution in our major cities though. But that's not really what I'm talking about.
You've said repeatedly that price per square foot needs to decline. How do you propose to make this happen, exactly?
Let the market actually have a natural cycle. Instead liberals blasted demand artificially with mass immigration. Combined with low rates and lending standards. Not to mention the liberal government buying 40B of mortgage backed securities this year. Socialize any loss, privatize any gain.
Immigration certainly plays a factor, but housing was unaffordable before the huge spike in immigration in 2021, so there much be other factors at play, no?
> I agree that density is part of the solution in our major cities though. But that's not really what I'm talking about. The thing is, when Covid hit, we suddenly had a lot of people working from home, needing more space, and willing to move. People move where the jobs are, and a lot of jobs were no longer tethered to downtown Toronto and Vancouver. The result is that the housing shortage in Toronto and Vancouver basically spilled over to the rest of the country. Places like Nanaimo and Nelson - smaller centres where housing was usually reasonably affordable, without having to build a lot more housing - are now more like suburbs of Vancouver, and priced accordingly. Same thing across southern Ontario and the Maritimes, with people leaving Toronto. It's a huge benefit for the people moving (because it lowers their housing costs), so it's not going to stop happening - but it creates tremendous pressure for locals. [The Globe and Mail was reporting on this spillover effect in December 2020](https://morehousing.ca/spillover), while the borders were still closed. For places which have a lot of land, they can presumably extend their boundaries, build up their infrastructure, and build more housing. But for places with limited buildable land, like Nelson, or that already have the infrastructure to support more infill housing, like Calgary, it makes sense to allow more height and density. I agree that we also need to [cut way back on population growth](https://morehousing.ca/population-growth), but even after that, the remote-work demand shock isn't going away. The pre-Covid housing stock doesn't match where people want to live and work, post-Covid.
We also had massive speculation and ZIRP.
It’s either density in existing cities or build entirely new cities where they didn’t exist before. Vancouver is on track to be a 7M person city in my kids’ lifetime. Possibly my lifetime, lol, is the recent trends continue. Those people have to live somewhere…
Density will be an important part of Canada if it is to improve. As is many parts of the country are very expensive for the government to run, the lack of density causes all manner of things (hydro, electric, elementary schools ..ect) to be more numerous (therefore expensive) in Canadian cities as opposed to others of similar stats.
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DeGasperis votes no
What a fuckin shit show?
We actually don't need anymore people than we already have. How Trudeau can jive his green agenda with his goal of having 100,000 000 people in Canada by 2100 is beyond me.
[удалено]
Surely this problem could be overcome though by building walls that are not paper thin….
Here’s a radical idea. Deport illegal immigrants and don’t renew visas for foreign “students”. Build more housing and allow supply to catch up with demand. Impose very strict immigration standards that prioritizes people with much needed skills that will be beneficial to the Canadian economy in key industries. That is if there is no Canadians to be found to do the job in the first place. Subsidize education and vocational training so that native Canadians can increase their skills and be employed in productive sectors of the economy. Lastly crack down on employers and individuals who commit visa fraud. These are very logical and common sense solutions to the problem. Politicians are benefiting too much from the status quo so naturally they will not do any of these things. At best you can expect lip service and half measures.
I'm not even going to THINK of talking about density until we stop flooding Canada with 1.2 million poor people every year. Nice try though.
Listen, We could pave over the entire country and turn it into apartments and it STILL wouldn't be enough to house every broke Indian who wants to come here as an economic migrant (and bring their entire extended family, then have a billion kids). Enough with the "*hey let's solve something else instead of the immigration problem!"* bullshit already.
The way I see density is mostly about lowering costs, for the ownership class and for infrastructure. but this lower cost is at a lower standard of living and everyone knows that even if they don't admit it. Even people who loooove density when they talk, what are their personal goals? Probably not to live in the smallest pod possible.... Look at this from the position of someone who just wants to own housing and maximize the profit. When the market is tight the rents will grow until they match the capacity of people's income to pay. Then you realize the quality of the housing in this situation doesn't matter...it can be a house, it can be 20 to a house, it can be condo with 10 people in it, you're getting 30-50% of all their paycheques regardless. This is why politicians and their pet ideologues love density. They can farm peasant paycheques with a 30sqft pod in the sky just as a much as they can with detached housing, all they need to do is make sure demand vs supply is in their favor and boy does the government come through on that.
You can't sprawl. Our road system sucks and its the reason why our transit sucks. Densification is the only answer but you also gotta stop immigration.
No, first we need to significantly reduce increases in demand, arguably we could even eliminated if we just halted immigration and let the natural birth rates take effect. Secondly, we could literally just build more and invest in really good public transit. We could cover much better distances if we had faster trains but seem to hate actually building them. Thirdly, increase remote work options. If you don't have to live within a daily/weekly commute for a job that is entirely done on a computer, then you can live wherever you want so long as the internet is good. Fourth, literally just build more random cities and persuade (even coerce) companies to put jobs there. We have the land, we just refuse to stop concentrating employment in relatively small areas.
Sounds good to.me.
I deliver beer to small towns throughout eastern Ontario. I've seen prices in Ottawa skyrocket to Toronto levels. But I've also seen many recent immigrants settling in small communities that were in decline, buying small businesses, variety stores, restaurants, and practices of retiring professionals. This is something that native Canadians simply have not done over the last decades. In fact, the majority of young Canadians I see posting here are urbanites in the half dozen large cities that hold half our population who complain about living there but simply cannot conceive of doing what their favorite targets of scorn are doing: moving to and living in a small town. I moved from Toronto to Ottawa and then out to a smaller community, because I grew up in a small community and found that I got more space, privacy and a better quality of life in one. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have always been dense and overcrowded. There are accounts of people in the 17th century complaining about Quebec city being overcrowded and dense. They're cities. Cities are overcrowded and dense. Try living in the 99% of the country that isn't one.
Europe is a big place. However the places that most people have in mind have been experiencing insane levels of migration for at least a decade while many other places have strict rules about home building. To answer your question: yes we need to densify and fast but we also need to immediately cut back immigration. This likely means the social security Ponzi scheme collapses but I think it would be more destructive to delay the inevitable
No reason density should be the solution all across the country....not in small cities town or rural and that is what we are seeing.
I agree with this mostly. I think also the powers that be want to centralize power on who owns land. There's been a big push in exploiting our natural resources and a lot of our land is being gobbled up by foreign interests. If people expect to live in dense multiunits, or see it as the answer, they won't complain or care when rural land is gobbled. There's more nuance obviously.
The other answer is high speed rail connecting the big cities with rural cheap areas where people get cheaper lands to build their home. But high speed rails are super expensive and the Canadian government is too bureaucratic and poor to implement it. You can theoretically ask a Chinese company to build it for cheap but all these talks on "I don't trust the Chinese government or any Chinese companies" means that's out of the question. Another issue is investors. Even if you do get the rail built, if the government doesn't limit who can buy up that land, those land will get swallow up by investors and big builders, and they will charge an arm and a leg for a tiny space, similar to what you get in downtown.
There is no cheap land in southern Ontario and BC anymore. This is the problem
Make smaller Homes charge less
Is it really more affordable if the price per foot is the same or higher but the space is smaller? I think that's called shrinkflation.
No!! Build houses! There’s already enough tiny condos for everyone they’re everywhere now. Time to overbuild detached houses, big ones. Because guess what happens when you overbuild houses??! The whole entire market will reprice lower. Bingo affordability for all. Oh, wait, that might help across all segments of housing? Nvm build micros yah fools
We have such a huge country we could spread people out to. Density is not the only answer. The government could encourage remote work for companies and themselves to encourage more people to move to the middle of nowhere but they'd rather force everyone back to the office and cram everybody into the GTA/GVA.
Density is the opposite of what we need!!
No. They tell you that. And that's because we're taking an ever increasing population as granted. If population stays the same, the demand for housing will stay the same too. We can be back to the days when everybody could afford a starter house and a little lawn. Truth is, population doesn't have to \*increase\*. We only need immigration to hit replacement levels because otherwise we die out. The reason we need to grow the population is that we need an ever increasing GDP to pay for our deficit spending. If our GDP doesn't go up forever, our creditors will have serious doubts about Canada's ability to repay its debt, the same way banks deny your credit card application if your income drops. So out of the two, politicians choose to have a big budget which they can personally benefit from, as opposed to leaving us alone.
Smart.