OPINION: Doug Ford’s Greenbelt reversal is a good thing — but the government’s plans were never really about providing affordable housing
Written by Brian Doucet • TVO News
We don’t need more sprawl, we need to build up.
Low density zoning is what got us to this mess, in addition to designing literally everything around cars. I can’t go anywhere worthwhile in my town without having to get on the highway.
What do they call them now, 15 minute cities? Do that. Build up and provide services within a small, walkable zone.
And not just build up: also allow businesses in the ground floor and basements. A residential-only neighborhood where you can’t do basic stuff like buying groceries, bringing your kids to the nursery, or going to a cafe/restaurant isn’t a great place to live without a car either.
Housing is unaffordable because investment properties are insufficiently taxed. This incentivises all the behaviour we’re seeing. There are three classes of people in today’s housing market. First is the people who don’t own a home and have insufficient capital and income to afford one. The second is people who already purchased a home and have equity in their existing property to leverage against a new or additional home. The third is people who have parents or family helping them afford a home, this is basically the same as the second group, though.
Tax investment housing more. Affordability will fix itself.
Yup. Go after speculators. Canadian speculators are doing this to others Canadians. They need to be hit with a huge tax, at least 20%. Watch the issue correct.
Maybe someone who knows more about developing land can answer a question I have. Why are developers resistant to building affordable housing?
If you can fit 40 small apartment units into a new three-story walk-up on the same amount of land as a single McMansion, surely some landlord would jump at the opportunity to buy the building. A building like that lasts forever, has good earning potential, and there is a huge market for cheaper apartments, making it a good investment.
I doubt developers are especially resistant to building apartments. It’s probably a zoning issue that makes it more expensive for them (because upzoning would often be needed, which currently increases land value due to the higher income potential for the owner). That’s why there was recent talk about making cities open up zoning. But if they don’t address that upzoning increases land value, then it could make rents for these new places prohibitive if just left to market forces. (Places with low rents and high quality homes don’t just have a high supply-- they generally have robust options for non-market housing.)
You need to get it permitted. It is usually easier to get a McMansion permitted over affordable housing.
You also have issues of building in a city versus random land.
To add to this, most land in cities is zoned to only permit one residentual house, maybe a suite or two depending on the municipality and size of the parcel. Any time someone wants to build an apartment or anything other than what’s permitted they are required to apply for a zoning amendment and have it approved via council. Rezonings can often take several months to years to go through and depending on who council is and how strong the opposition’s voice is, the rezoning may get denied. So it’s kind risky, even moreso of you need to apply for an Official Community Plan amendment as well as ask for a bunch of variences to things like setbacks, parking, etc.
If you’re curious, your city will have a zoning map available online that your can look at to see how much is zoned to only allow one house. It’s generally called Residential 1,or R1, or Low Density Residential or something like that and will coloured light yellow, maybe light blue.
There is a much larger set of buyers for homes (shit on suburbs all you want: but they’re where the middle class can afford to comfortably raise a family) than there is for purpose built rentals. Home buyers also pay much more per unit.
In Ottawa, purpose-built three unit multitenant places go for less than a single home in the same neighbourhood.
Okay, I think building on the greenbelt is immoral and short-sighted… but people who think it wouldn’t help with home prices are just being anticapitalist to a fault. You add more supply, and it controls prices. Come on, we all spent the last few years learning how shortages drive up the price of computer chips, cars, and toilet paper. Why should housing be any different?
The correct thing is to kick municipal governments in the balls until they let more buildings get built as green infill and simultaneously work on building more public housing and co-ops and getting more trained builders into the market.
But while destroying the planet and our traffic woes, paving the greenbelt would’ve helped with housing prices.
