Toronto The One | 328.4m | 91s | Mizrahi Developments | Foster + Partners
- Thread starter urbandreamer
- Start date
zang
Senior Member
From what I'm to understand, Layton's house is pretty modest. And Christie Pits is by no means considered a luxury neighbourhood. Don't try and make it out to be the Bridal Path.
Developers are barely building low/middle income housing anymore. It's about money, not about what the city actually needs. We don't need more luxury condos to be sold for some asshat in Oakville to play micro hotelier on AirBnB or for investors who'll allow it to sit empty while they still make money on accruing property value. Or worse yet, the a-holes who bought a half dozen 400sqft studio condos so they could rent them each out for $3500 a month.
Affordable housing is non-existent because no one's building affordable housing. Everybody's trying to get rich off of either building luxury or buying up all the housing.
They don't oppose every single development. They oppose luxury developments because they do little but raise the costs of living and drive the middle-income earners out to the outer GTA.
Developers are barely building low/middle income housing anymore. It's about money, not about what the city actually needs. We don't need more luxury condos to be sold for some asshat in Oakville to play micro hotelier on AirBnB or for investors who'll allow it to sit empty while they still make money on accruing property value. Or worse yet, the a-holes who bought a half dozen 400sqft studio condos so they could rent them each out for $3500 a month.
Affordable housing is non-existent because no one's building affordable housing. Everybody's trying to get rich off of either building luxury or buying up all the housing.
Part of the *lack of regulation* is why there's little affordable housing. There is, I assure you, very much a market for it.
See: Mixed income housing.
No, it's not. Pushing density in a place that's not calling for it was a big mistake back in the 1970s. We know better now.
ciceror
Active Member
Well they're no one is going to be building affordable housing in the extra 38 meters no matter what
we can leave it empty and get nothing, or we can approve the height increase and get 80 more luxury units that will be paying expensive property taxes to the city which can be used to fund affordable housing, public spaces, services, ect...
we can leave it empty and get nothing, or we can approve the height increase and get 80 more luxury units that will be paying expensive property taxes to the city which can be used to fund affordable housing, public spaces, services, ect...
khaldoon
Active Member
I know this is off topic but how do you think developers can build “affordable” housing while making a profit and considering the cost of land acquisition, financing, material and labour and marketing costs, etc?
The idea of asking developers to provide affordable housing is like asking farmers to produce affordable food or automakers to build affordable transport. As a city/society/country, if you want affordable food, you subside its cost, want affordable transportation you spent on public transportation. If you want affordable housing, you subside the cost of housing or get into the business of building public housing.
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zang
Senior Member
The land values are going up *because* they keep building luxury housing. What you're asking is "how do you think they can make money when they keep pushing away their ability to make money?"
We did that. TCH. And it's frankly a terrible paradigm that creates ghettos and only encourages classism.
Mixed-income housing isn't some kind of crazy idea. Is having 10% of a new development dedicated to affordable housing going to bankrupt developers? Hardly.
evandyk
Senior Member
The land values are going up because a lot of people want to live here and we hardly build and approve any new housing. So the few places you're allowed to build tall buildings become insanely valuable.
khaldoon
Active Member
How would propose this can be done? Out of every 100 units, 90 would sell for $ 2 million and 10 go for $ 200 k? Do they have the same finishes and share the same amenities? If so and the cost difference is subsidized by the city or the developer, who owns these units and who gets to sell/rent them? How about maintenance costs? Should the expansive units keep subsidizing the the affordable ones? Take it to the extreme and instead of ghetto neighborhoods or ghetto building you get ghetto floors or ghetto floor sections.
zang
Senior Member
Toronto has more cranes than any city in North America | Urbanized
Cranes have almost become part of the Toronto skyline at this point, and that's because we have the most out of any North American city.
dailyhive.com
zang
Senior Member
You're verging on ridiculousness here. No one said "sell a 3000sqft Carrera marble-floored condo for $200k". Obviously, different finishes.
Mixed income is not an unproven or new idea.
evandyk
Senior Member
We are building fewer new homes per new Ontarian these days than pretty much ever before.
zang
Senior Member
You’ve expanded from Toronto to the entire province now. Different governments.
crumplescotch
New Member
Modest? Is 2 million property modest to you? Take a look at the prices in the area, most of them aren't even for sale, worst houses that need serious repairs are like 1.5 million. If that's modest to you, you're even further from average people and their problems than Mr. Layton here.
How luxury is a 700k-1 million $ a unit building that will house thousands of people as oppose to a single family house in Chistie Pitts-like neighbourhood for 2-5 million $ that will house 4-5 people? These 'middle-income earners' sit on a very valuable land in one of the fastest growing metro areas in NA and they know it. Do you know how China solved their housing problems? They didn't ask for their opinions, they just built hosing where it was needed, they let developers do what they have to do to increase supply.
We all know exactly why. Red tape, high costs of re-zoning and developing land in the city, yellow belt, nimbyism. There's zero sense in building cheap housing, you'll end up in debt, bankrupting yourself or doing literal charity. There is no market for affordable housing and councillors are only making it worse by pandering to nimbys.
Government made it a rich mans game by making it virtually impossible to build for anyone other than huge corporations with hedge funds and stock market players backing them up. They have no interest in charity, they want to make profit, surprise, surprise, we all do. If average Joe can't just transform his single family house to a duplex or small apartment building without facing costly legal challenges you know exactly why things are the way they are. Cut the red tape and it will do wonders to supply and 'red hot' real estate market, trust me, it will calm itself down in a matter of couple of years if we just let average people and small companies build what they want where they want.
No it wasn't, you personally may not like it because it looks gross to you/because poor people live there/immigrants live there/people that are not the same skin tone as you live there (OMG!!!! how can you possibly live in a neighbourhood like that, what a terrible idea!) BUT these are still one of the few available options for people who want to pay less than 2000$ for rent. They are affordable and they solve housing problem, so they were not a big mistake.
Converting single family houses to duplexes or small apartment buildings is not 'pushing density' it's called 'presenting the missing middle'. Might want to go to Europe or Montreal to take a look at how normal inner city neighbourhoods look like in places that are planned way better than any NA city.
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crumplescotch
New Member
So why should they do charity? Because you asked nicely? You're not going to go bankrupt if you rent out basement in your house for 300$ a month or give it for free for someone homeless either. I mean, from what I understand you're doing pretty good yourself, why should Mizrahi or any other developer do charity when you don't want to?
Yep, the thread has been derailed again. There are threads in our Politics Forum if you want to pursue this matter. Any further posts in this thread re: affordable housing policy/reality will be deleted.
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The Preservationist
Active Member
Was kind of expecting something for the city in lieu of a height and profit margin increase. Nothing offered?