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
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
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.
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.
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.)
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.