OTTAWA – A new poll suggests nearly half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque as the cost of living crisis continues to squeeze household budgets, and young people are more likely to s...
The problem is, as I said, this is one of the few times where “letting dead-eyed mobbed up property developers make a goddamned mountain of money” will actually help everyone. I mean, even the abominable and corrupt crap Ford is doing to the greenbelt will help - every house, even million-dollar mcmansions, helps fight the crisis.
It’s a game of musical chairs where the chairs are allocated by money instead of by speed. Adding more chairs to the game helps more people win regardless. Even if you’re adding more thrones, that means there’s more milking-stools left-over for the poor instead of those milking-stools getting flipped and upgraded into artisanal urban kneeling seats to sell to the people who have the money for thrones.
And not only that, but PP’s stated plan: kick municipal asses until they start hitting housing targets? That would force municipalities to allow more housing. And assuming greenbelts remain in place (fingers-crossed), that would mean that cities would by necessity have to upzone and implement better, more urbanist, more intesification-friendly planning policies. That’s way better than Ford’s greenbelt crap, but then Ford didn’t campaign on the greenbelt crap.
But yes, assuming PP is being honest about his plan: It’s sneaky and yet still far better than not doing it and I’m mostly angry at his opponents for getting us to this point.
every house, even million-dollar mcmansions, helps fight the crisis.
This is incorrect. Unsustainable housing developments make municipalities poorer which worsens their ability to provide housing. We need to densify our populated places, not build new low-density developments in the middle of nowhere which will inevitably require costly highway expansions for the people there to get anywhere for work or amenities.
The fact that American sprawl cities have affordable housing shows that sprawl does help. Yes, sprawl is bad economics and worse environmentalism, but it does control housing prices.
For example, Zillow pegs the median home price in Houston, TX at $260k USD. It’s a suburban hellscape, but a reasonably-priced one.
Housing cost doesn’t matter on its own. Cost of living is what matters. If you get a cheap house but you need to spend a lot on transportation to get anywhere and do anything you’re still fucked. Houston suburbs are gonna be more expensive to live in than a small apartment in urban Montreal.
We have a limited number of builders and resources. It’s not helping by having them build a ton of mcmansions when they could be building high density condos instead.
We don’t really know what they’d build given the choice since one of those options is generally illegal (you can get special executive permission that makes it legal, but you could say the same about murdering people in countries that have a pardoning system).
Right but I’m talking about federal and that’s provincial. In fact, Ford put together a Housing Affordability Task Force a few years back and that’s exactly what they recommended! He just… y’know… didn’t do any of it. Not sure why he even asked them in the first place.
It boggles my mind that you think PP and his conservatives would support urbanism. Their core demographic is suburban NIMBYs. He’s just lying to swing voters.
The trick is the “half million population limit” he promised, which will make densification something he does to the Liberal cities on behalf of his exurban voter-base. And this is a specific, quantifiable promise he has mentioned repeatedly with hard numbers.
I don’t discount the possibility he could half-ass it and let it die in consultation the way the Liberals did with electoral reform… but on the other hand, when have Conservatives ever given a shit about consultation?
Edit: either way, I’m not saying “conservatives are good”. I hate them for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is they represent an active threat to trans friends and family.
All I’m saying is “using the threat of municipal funding cuts to force cities to fix their planning departments and rapidly greenlight large infill developments is a good idea and the Liberals+NDP should steal it”.
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The problem is, as I said, this is one of the few times where “letting dead-eyed mobbed up property developers make a goddamned mountain of money” will actually help everyone. I mean, even the abominable and corrupt crap Ford is doing to the greenbelt will help - every house, even million-dollar mcmansions, helps fight the crisis.
It’s a game of musical chairs where the chairs are allocated by money instead of by speed. Adding more chairs to the game helps more people win regardless. Even if you’re adding more thrones, that means there’s more milking-stools left-over for the poor instead of those milking-stools getting flipped and upgraded into artisanal urban kneeling seats to sell to the people who have the money for thrones.
And not only that, but PP’s stated plan: kick municipal asses until they start hitting housing targets? That would force municipalities to allow more housing. And assuming greenbelts remain in place (fingers-crossed), that would mean that cities would by necessity have to upzone and implement better, more urbanist, more intesification-friendly planning policies. That’s way better than Ford’s greenbelt crap, but then Ford didn’t campaign on the greenbelt crap.
But yes, assuming PP is being honest about his plan: It’s sneaky and yet still far better than not doing it and I’m mostly angry at his opponents for getting us to this point.
This is incorrect. Unsustainable housing developments make municipalities poorer which worsens their ability to provide housing. We need to densify our populated places, not build new low-density developments in the middle of nowhere which will inevitably require costly highway expansions for the people there to get anywhere for work or amenities.
The fact that American sprawl cities have affordable housing shows that sprawl does help. Yes, sprawl is bad economics and worse environmentalism, but it does control housing prices.
For example, Zillow pegs the median home price in Houston, TX at $260k USD. It’s a suburban hellscape, but a reasonably-priced one.
Housing cost doesn’t matter on its own. Cost of living is what matters. If you get a cheap house but you need to spend a lot on transportation to get anywhere and do anything you’re still fucked. Houston suburbs are gonna be more expensive to live in than a small apartment in urban Montreal.
We have a limited number of builders and resources. It’s not helping by having them build a ton of mcmansions when they could be building high density condos instead.
We don’t really know what they’d build given the choice since one of those options is generally illegal (you can get special executive permission that makes it legal, but you could say the same about murdering people in countries that have a pardoning system).
If they can change the rules to allow building in the greenbelt, they can change the rules to allow higher density residence.
Right but I’m talking about federal and that’s provincial. In fact, Ford put together a Housing Affordability Task Force a few years back and that’s exactly what they recommended! He just… y’know… didn’t do any of it. Not sure why he even asked them in the first place.
It boggles my mind that you think PP and his conservatives would support urbanism. Their core demographic is suburban NIMBYs. He’s just lying to swing voters.
The trick is the “half million population limit” he promised, which will make densification something he does to the Liberal cities on behalf of his exurban voter-base. And this is a specific, quantifiable promise he has mentioned repeatedly with hard numbers.
I don’t discount the possibility he could half-ass it and let it die in consultation the way the Liberals did with electoral reform… but on the other hand, when have Conservatives ever given a shit about consultation?
Edit: either way, I’m not saying “conservatives are good”. I hate them for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is they represent an active threat to trans friends and family.
All I’m saying is “using the threat of municipal funding cuts to force cities to fix their planning departments and rapidly greenlight large infill developments is a good idea and the Liberals+NDP should steal it”.