He absolutely is wrong there; municipalities can’t reach housing targets if they only get funding after reaching them
Municipalities can absolutely reach housing targets, they just have to stop saying “no” to infill developers. The Hamilton example is not spurious - the only reason it’s going through this multi-year delay is because the building is too tall and needs to get a variance for being too tall.
The concept of “too tall for downtown Hamilton” is absurd on its face. Cities should have amended their official plans years ago and streamlined approvals for large, high-density infill developments. They choose not to. So they must be forced to do so.
It’s not just reptilian amoral for-profit developers facing this, it’s the heroic affordable housing builders too. You’ll hear the same complaints from Housing Now TO and Jen Keesmaat.
Watch this video presentation at Toronto City Hall by Mark Richardson of Housing Now:
"$20 billion dollar intersection in Forest Hill; somebody said that should be a 7-storey and 70-unit building in 2018. How…where did that number come from? Somebody picked that number. Because it “conformed to the current planning policy for Forest Hill”
he explains it very clearly: the housing crisis is a self-inflicted wound caused by municipal governments. He and his org have an endless list of buildings they want to construct, and they’re being told “no” by city hall.
Want to increase units by 15% per year? Stop saying no.
I know it’s creepy to see somebody defend home-builders, since most developers are crooks. You know why most developers are crooks? Because municipal governments made building housing a crime.
Okay, let’s take Ford’s target of 1.5m over 10 years or 150 000 a year
Next year it would be 172500, followed by 198375, followed by 228131 and so on
As we know it’s illegal for municipalities to operate in the red. So how high are your property taxes going to be to accommodate that when the city loses funding to cover those costs because they don’t make it
A realistic solution for other levels of government to intervene would be to build housing on land that they own
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Municipalities can absolutely reach housing targets, they just have to stop saying “no” to infill developers. The Hamilton example is not spurious - the only reason it’s going through this multi-year delay is because the building is too tall and needs to get a variance for being too tall.
The concept of “too tall for downtown Hamilton” is absurd on its face. Cities should have amended their official plans years ago and streamlined approvals for large, high-density infill developments. They choose not to. So they must be forced to do so.
It’s not just reptilian amoral for-profit developers facing this, it’s the heroic affordable housing builders too. You’ll hear the same complaints from Housing Now TO and Jen Keesmaat.
Watch this video presentation at Toronto City Hall by Mark Richardson of Housing Now:
https://mastodon.social/@Pxtl/110300343308877005 (yes, that is my mastodon)
"$20 billion dollar intersection in Forest Hill; somebody said that should be a 7-storey and 70-unit building in 2018. How…where did that number come from? Somebody picked that number. Because it “conformed to the current planning policy for Forest Hill”
he explains it very clearly: the housing crisis is a self-inflicted wound caused by municipal governments. He and his org have an endless list of buildings they want to construct, and they’re being told “no” by city hall.
Want to increase units by 15% per year? Stop saying no.
I know it’s creepy to see somebody defend home-builders, since most developers are crooks. You know why most developers are crooks? Because municipal governments made building housing a crime.
Okay, let’s take Ford’s target of 1.5m over 10 years or 150 000 a year
Next year it would be 172500, followed by 198375, followed by 228131 and so on
As we know it’s illegal for municipalities to operate in the red. So how high are your property taxes going to be to accommodate that when the city loses funding to cover those costs because they don’t make it
A realistic solution for other levels of government to intervene would be to build housing on land that they own