[Admiral Beez]

Exactly. The Economist is running a year long series on their economic problems. That said a British education can be useful.

We can find reasons to complain about any country. My lawyer’s daughter got her BA with a double major in Art History and Commerce from Queens, and then did her Art History Masters in the UK with an intership at Bonhams. This combined with her UK postgrad opened her up to great contacts, landed her first paid, permanent position in her field, leading to her current career with some big auction house in Manhattan.

Whatever you think about Canada, the UK is not exactly the model for a future dynamic economy...

Had she stayed in Canada I’m not sure all that was possible - we have fine art auction houses in Canada, but the market is tiny and the jobs far fewer.

But back to housing, I am hoping that Ontario housing prices do come down outside of the GTA. My one kid wants to live in a smaller south ON town, but even those, like Cobourg or Stratford are now out of sight.

 

[evandyk]

But back to housing, I am hoping that Ontario housing prices do come down outside of the GTA. My one kid wants to live in a smaller south ON town, but even those, like Cobourg or Stratford are now out of sight.

And also inside the GTA! I don't want to live in a place like Cobourg or Stratford, I want to live in a place like Toronto, but right now most people with kids are priced right out, unless they have very good jobs or bought a place 10 or more years ago.

 

[afransen]

I don't see how affordability will get meaningfully better in Toronto. Even major supply expansion through zoning will probably just keep affordability from getting worse.

 

[evandyk]

I'm not particularly hopeful either. I'm hoping for a long period of stagnation at best.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I don't see how affordability will get meaningfully better in Toronto. Even major supply expansion through zoning will probably just keep affordability from getting worse.

We need to stymie demand as well as increase supply. That means Canada needs to slow immigration so that the influx matches up with housing stock. We can start by demanding where landed immigrants can settle and reside - but if we don’t have the stones for that, we must reduce the immigration numbers to match housing stock.

 

[Undead]

I'm not particularly hopeful either. I'm hoping for a long period of stagnation at best.

Thankfully prices are already down:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/real-estate-numbers-june-crea-1.6521568

We need to stymie demand as well as increase supply. That means Canada needs to slow immigration so that the influx matches up with housing stock. We can start by demanding where landed immigrants can settle and reside - but if we don’t have the stones for that, we must reduce the immigration numbers to match housing stock.

The problem is that our economy relies on immigration for cheap labour to do the jobs Canadians won't; and as new consumers (which is why big biz is so pro-immigration). I don't see this changing any time soon.

That being said, the immigration rate has been more or less steady for many years/decades. But housing prices really took off only after 2010. So there's hope that raising interest rates and loosening zoning will help.

 

[kEiThZ]

Globe and Mail had a great article by Oliver Moore about how Mississauga is depopulating. Their strict protection of single family homes means a lot of homes now have empty nesters in them. And there's increasingly insufficient populations in these neighborhoods to support services like schools, or local businesses. Yet, they keep shoveling density on to Hurontario. The madness of it all.....

The highlights are on their Twitter thread:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1548359655566413825

 

[evandyk]

Globe and Mail had a great article by Oliver Moore about how Mississauga is depopulating. Their strict protection of single family homes means a lot of homes now have empty nesters in them. And there's increasingly insufficient populations in these neighborhoods to support services like schools, or local businesses. Yet, they keep shoveling density on to Hurontario. The madness of it all.....

This isn't happening in Toronto in the aggregate, because of King E, King W and Yonge St, but is happening across most of Toronto as well, particularly the well-off neighbourhoods like the Annex, Leslieville, Danforth, etc.

 

[evandyk]

LOL. I had only started reading the article when I posted this, and there's a chart that makes this exact point.

 

[afransen]

We need to stymie demand as well as increase supply. That means Canada needs to slow immigration so that the influx matches up with housing stock. We can start by demanding where landed immigrants can settle and reside - but if we don’t have the stones for that, we must reduce the immigration numbers to match housing stock.

I think we're better off having a more coherent strategy about building housing, and livable urban areas, more quickly and efficiently. Canada has absurdly long approval timelines for building permits and zoning that makes expensive high rise development the only viable way of building dense housing.

Affordability improves if we can make cities more walkable and bikeable so car ownership is not required.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Affordability improves if we can make cities more walkable and bikeable so car ownership is not required.

IDK, I see an inverse relationship between affordability and walkability/bikeability. Any neighbourhood in Toronto that has a high walkability score will also have low affordability.

The main thing that impacts affordability is supply/demand.

 

[evandyk]

IDK, I see an inverse relationship between affordability and walkability/bikeability. Any neighbourhood in Toronto that has a high walkability score will also have low affordability.

The main thing that impacts affordability is supply/demand.

This is true, but owning a car (and also driving it a lot) is also a pretty major expense.

 

[afransen]

IDK, I see an inverse relationship between affordability and walkability/bikeability. Any neighbourhood in Toronto that has a high walkability score will also have low affordability.

The main thing that impacts affordability is supply/demand.

This is true, but owning a car (and also driving it a lot) is also a pretty major expense.

This is what I was getting at. Owning a car can be 10-20% of a lower income household's budget, so being able to eliminate the car, or go from two cars to one car can go a long way to affording nominally higher cost housing.

I think walkable/bikeable neighbourhoods trade at such a premium partly because of this, and also that they are in such short supply. If we did a better job providing this type of neighbourhood it would become more accessible.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I think walkable/bikeable neighbourhoods trade at such a premium partly because of this, and also that they are in such short supply. If we did a better job providing this type of neighbourhood it would become more accessible.

Good points, but isn’t the horse already out of the stable, the die cast, so to speak? The outer city and the suburbs are fully developed with car dependent housing. How do we go about changing somewhere like the Rouge area in Scarborough (Walkability score 42 out of 100) or Princess-Rosethorn in Etobicoke (scored 44) into something like my Cabbagetown neighbourhood and its 93 score? This isn’t Sim City where we can just wipe the map.

Mind you, walkability or not, we still have two cars and a motorcycle. Though one car hasn’t moved in weeks.

 

[Undead]

Most ROWs in the suburbs are so wide that building wider sidewalks and decent bike lanes shouldn't be difficult. These projects just need to be bundled with every road rebuilding. Repurpose the useless grassy shoulders for protected bike lanes, diet each vehicle lane in favour of the sidewalk and we've got progress.