I live in Toronto as well. We make a good income, have large savings for a down payment, and recently thought about buying a house. It's depressing.
So, I decided to look at the City Plan -- to see what the actual plan is for addressing the housing cost crisis in Toronto.
Not surprisingly, the real problem became very clear to me, almost immediately.
The problem is not blind bidding.
The problem is not foreign buyers.
The problem is not low interest rates.
The problem is the official city plan is 100% a NIMBY plan.
From the plan itself:
> While communities experience constant social and demographic change,
the general physical character of Toronto’s residential Neighbourhoods
endures.
In other words, let's not change our back yards.
> Physical changes to our established Neighbourhoods must
be sensitive, gradual and “fit” the existing physical character.
Again -- this means that the large inner-city neighborhoods full of mansions (such as Rosedale and Forest Hill), have to stay full of mansions.
Just to spell it out:
> If, for example, an existing zoning by-law permits only single detached houses in a particular geographic neighbourhood and the prevailing building type in that neighbourhood is single detached dwellings, then the Plan’s policies are to be interpreted to allow only single detached dwellings in order to respect and reinforce the established physical character of the neighbourhood
You see this reflected in the development that does happen. Yonge & Eglinton just gets more dense -- because that's the "character" of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, in "fancy" neighborhoods, housing often gets less dense, because that conforms to the "prevailing" characteristic of the neighborhood.
With the current plan, the city is going to be a city with super high density combined with ultra low density and very little in-between. In other words, it will be full of wonderful enclaves for the wealthy, and sardine-can housing for everyone else.
This, of course, leads to issues such as the lack of schools available in the Yonge & Eglinton area, anod overcrowded transit, not to mention the lack of quality housing for families with two kids. (Try finding a decently sized 3 bedroom unit near playgrounds and schools. Yikes.)
The solution, would be to allow more medium and low rise development throughout neighborhoods. The "character" of the existing neighbourhoods should be allowed to change.
I don't blame Toronto though, this is a problem that is happening in most wealthy cities in North America. Doesn't mean we can't do better. We should.
> If, for example, an existing zoning by-law permits only single detached houses in a particular geographic neighbourhood and the prevailing building type in that neighbourhood is single detached dwellings, then the
Totally agree with you.
I just returned home from a visit to Cape Canaveral, Florida. It has a true mixed residential pattern. Lots of singles, duplexes, and small apartment blocks mixed. Felt "natural", scaled well, etc. I'm sure there are problems, but from a short visit, it looked like a reasonable assortment of housing.
>With the current plan, the city is going to be a city with super high density combined with ultra low density and very little in-between. In other words, it will be full of wonderful enclaves for the wealthy, and sardine-can housing for everyone else.
For ease of searching, this phenomenon is often called the "missing middle" problem. And it sucks, because as the already-high-density areas get more and more dense over time, it just reinforces the fear of density that people in the low-density neighborhoods have, because it confirms their prior belief that density means 50 story condo towers, and only 50 story condo towers.
Chicago is a wonderful counterexample to this - lots of neighborhoods are a mix of SFH, SFH with ADUs, MFH with 2, 3 or 4 units, and small 4 or 5 story apartment buildings, with nary a condo tower in sight.
There's this idea of a "city as a museum", to normalize the balance of power you describe.
In NYC there's a very similar balance of power. On some rarefied streets, it's illegal to change the silhouette or facade of a building, because it's an "historic district".
But if you go 40 minutes outside of lower manhattan, relatively affordable housing abounds and there are essentially no rules. The "museum" core creeps outwards, but with sloth-like predictability.
You're right, these places are not "for you/us". They're for people whose means allow them to make mole hills out of the mountains you describe (access to education, public transit, quality housing), and for the rest of us, who are willing to compromise their ideals and cope with the egregious terms and conditions.
Your solutions make sense in a utilitarian sense, but this is not a sense that appeals homeowners who have already rationalized away the irrational aspects of the status quo. Generations of experience have shown that, absent some highly-destructive disaster, it's cheaper to move to place you perceive to align with your ideals, or to change your own ideals, than it is to change the ideals of zoning policy.
There is a selfish component to this vector of development, but it's reductionist to say it's the only component. At any given point in time, the selfish component is there; but at many points in time it is not the biggest contributor.
Some of it is NIMBY. But the officials can’t change the fact that there is only so much land to go around and a disproportionate number of people strongly desire a detached house.
Building huge quantities of condos may help some with density and may drive prices down slightly but there is little that can be done to have new detached houses on the market.
You could potentially tear down some mansions in rich neighborhoods to build two or three houses and that might help slightly at the margins. There aren’t enough mansions in the city for this to really move the needle though.
The problem is a handful of cities are winners and everywhere else is losing. Toronto is the lifeblood of Canada and many people want to be here for opportunities that are unavailable elsewhere. A large population that grew up here doesn’t want to leave friends and family behind to start a more affordable life elsewhere. As long as we create a society where there are a handful of great places to live those places will be prohibitively expensive.
Being unable to create successful cities in Canada outside of Toronto and Vancouver has been the bigger political failing than NIMBY within those two cities. If Canada had five cities that were as successful as Toronto there would be more opportunity to go around and less pressure on Toronto. Disproportionate amount of both internal and external immigration is to the places with the best jobs and that drives up housing quickly.
> But the officials can’t change the fact that there is only so much land to go around and a disproportionate number of people strongly desire a detached house.
That may be true, but the housing cost crisis extends beyond detached houses. We need more apartments, condos, townhouses, etc. Not just nice detached houses. Prices should get lower in all of those categories. Even condos in towers have grown much, much more expensive.
> You could potentially tear down some mansions in rich neighborhoods to build two or three houses and that might help slightly at the margins.
Most of the land in Toronto is tied up with single family detached housing. Why not replace some of these with small apartment buildings, brownstones, and townhouses especially when near transit, or villages? I live in a large house that is a 10 minute walk to transit and two major strips of retail. This neighborhood is mostly detached houses and duplexes. Why not allow for double, triple, or quadruple the density with townhouses or small apartment buildings? If done at scale, across the city, this could absolutely make a huge difference, in terms of the availability of housing.
In terms of mansions, why not spend a few hours walking around Forest Hill. You'll probably need more time, though, if you want to see them all. It's a beautiful neighborhood. And very large.
> The problem is a handful of cities are winners and everywhere else is losing.
There are other nice cities that are growing -- and the housing prices are growing exponentially there as well. (For example, Waterloo and Victoria.) Everywhere else is definitely not losing, though I agree that there should be more thriving cities in Canada, that is also a daunting task. Frankly, it's also a lot more daunting than changing the zoning to allow for medium density in single-family neighborhoods.
The bottom line, though, is that you're right about what officials can't change. They can't change the amount of land available, but they certainly can and should change the amount of development that is allowed on it. The current plan is simply not working. Something needs to change. My proposal is to allow medium density development; I don't see a better alternative.
If you’re waiting for a progressive zoning plan which incentivizes enough building to naturally bring down housing prices in Toronto, you will be dead before that reasonably priced home becomes available.
> Our goal is 72,000 new homes across Vancouver in the next 10 years.
Unfortunately, if the Vancouver population continues to grow at an annual 1% rate, that means 275,000 new people to house. 72,000 homes would mean an average of 3.82 people in each of those new houses, which is just not realistic.
In short: Vancouver isn't even planning on building enough to be able to house everyone.
I'm not very familiar with the city, but clearly, their attempts to solve the housing issue are not actually serious if they're not even planning on building enough housing for everyone.
So, I decided to look at the City Plan -- to see what the actual plan is for addressing the housing cost crisis in Toronto.
Not surprisingly, the real problem became very clear to me, almost immediately.
The problem is not blind bidding.
The problem is not foreign buyers.
The problem is not low interest rates.
The problem is the official city plan is 100% a NIMBY plan.
From the plan itself:
> While communities experience constant social and demographic change, the general physical character of Toronto’s residential Neighbourhoods endures.
In other words, let's not change our back yards.
> Physical changes to our established Neighbourhoods must be sensitive, gradual and “fit” the existing physical character.
Again -- this means that the large inner-city neighborhoods full of mansions (such as Rosedale and Forest Hill), have to stay full of mansions.
Just to spell it out:
> If, for example, an existing zoning by-law permits only single detached houses in a particular geographic neighbourhood and the prevailing building type in that neighbourhood is single detached dwellings, then the Plan’s policies are to be interpreted to allow only single detached dwellings in order to respect and reinforce the established physical character of the neighbourhood
You see this reflected in the development that does happen. Yonge & Eglinton just gets more dense -- because that's the "character" of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, in "fancy" neighborhoods, housing often gets less dense, because that conforms to the "prevailing" characteristic of the neighborhood.
With the current plan, the city is going to be a city with super high density combined with ultra low density and very little in-between. In other words, it will be full of wonderful enclaves for the wealthy, and sardine-can housing for everyone else.
This, of course, leads to issues such as the lack of schools available in the Yonge & Eglinton area, anod overcrowded transit, not to mention the lack of quality housing for families with two kids. (Try finding a decently sized 3 bedroom unit near playgrounds and schools. Yikes.)
The solution, would be to allow more medium and low rise development throughout neighborhoods. The "character" of the existing neighbourhoods should be allowed to change.
I don't blame Toronto though, this is a problem that is happening in most wealthy cities in North America. Doesn't mean we can't do better. We should.
https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/97dd-cp-of...