Housing Bubble II: The Quest To Build Enough Homes Where People Actually Need Them

[theman23]

Originally Posted by Nite

the 2 years of low immigration i am referring to is from April 2020 to Feb 2022 so only the first 2 months of 2022. The record numbers of immigration pretty much started right after housing peaked.

That isn’t true. By the end of 2021 we were back to growing by 420k people a year. That would have been the second highest growth number in over 30 years, second to 2019.

And again, you keep conflating housing affordability and prices. Affordability has not yet plateued.

[Build.It]

Higher rates and decreasing prices is part of how affordability will eventually be restored. In the short term it will be less affordable, as the case right now. That is the entire point of the higher rates. Make mortgage payments less affordable so that prices are forced to come down.

It only addresses one aspect of what created the problem (cheap money), but it's a start.

We still need to address all the various rules that prevent developers from building what people want at the scale that people want it. (Greenbelt, Places to Grow, NIMBYs)

Most people want to live in detached houses. The only thing stopping developers from building affordable detached houses at the scale the market desires is government. As a result, the next best thing (townhomes) get bid up, which leads to condo apartments getting bid up as well by those who can no longer afford townhomes.

This message really needs to sink in with high density urbanists. Your war against detached houses and cars (and the various policies put in place as a result) is what caused housing to become unaffordable in Canada.

[goodgrowth]

The core social/economic problem imo is that we've built physical environments that have lead to significant job clustering and density which you could probably argue is a public good yet a lot of the surrounding residential land is treated more as an exclusivity thing.

I like the term "density freeloading" because whenever somebody somebody says they don't like density how often are they in some remote rural area vs in the suburbs proximal to the benefits of density?

We are not a nation of density haters so much as a nation of density freeloaders.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Build.It

This message really needs to sink in with high density urbanists. Your war against detached houses and cars (and the various policies put in place as a result) is what caused housing to become unaffordable in Canada.

If you want more detached houses, you have two choices:

1) Substantially improved local and regional transit.

2) 2-3 hr commutes (one way) in traffic.

If you think I'm exaggerating, talk to the nutters who live in KWC or Barrie or Hamilton, a shocking percentage of whom will drive.

There's a reason developers in the 416 would build even more density if they could get away with it. Thanks to inadequate transit service, there's a lot of demand to pay more for shelter to save time.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

If you want more detached houses, you have two choices:

1) Substantially improved local and regional transit.

2) 2-3 hr commutes (one way) in traffic.

If you think I'm exaggerating, talk to the nutters who live in KWC or Barrie or Hamilton, a shocking percentage of whom will drive.

There's a reason developers in the 416 would build even more density if they could get away with it. Thanks to inadequate transit service, there's a lot of demand to pay more for shelter to save time.

Is there anywhere providing single family homes with transit? If we look at similar sized cities with affordable SFHs/ Say Houston. They have much bigger capacity of freeways. Sure this brings other problems but the freeway network of Toronto has developed even less than transit over the last 50 years.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Is there anywhere providing single family homes with transit? If we look at similar sized cities with affordable SFHs/ Say Houston. They have much bigger capacity of freeways. Sure this brings other problems but the freeway network of Toronto has developed even less than transit over the last 50 years.

I'm not sure what the point of comparing to Houston is here. We aren't going to demolish neighborhoods to build 20 lane freeways. And I'm fairly sure, if our governments even tried to do that today, they'd get utterly crushed in court. So really, there's only one way out. That's massive regional rail networks and either feeder services or parking structures that cost several hundred million. It's not directly analogous. But a lot of European and Japanese exurbs are basically what our suburbs should be.

Ironically, the very people who clamour for SFD often don't want to pay the taxes associated with building that kind of infrastructure necessary to sustain the lifestyle they want. Just imagine what parking alone would cost at GO stations iif we had cost recovery for the parking Taj Mahals we build.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Is there anywhere providing single family homes with transit? If we look at similar sized cities with affordable SFHs/ Say Houston. They have much bigger capacity of freeways. Sure this brings other problems but the freeway network of Toronto has developed even less than transit over the last 50 years.

Confused…do you mean to suggest no single family home areas in Canada have good bus service?

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Confused…do you mean to suggest no single family home areas in Canada have good bus service?

No I mean is it possible to deliver good transit to the point where SFHs are affordable as they can be built in a widespread area. Freeways are how you knit SFHs to a city. That and liberal planning. GTA has huge swaths of land locked out of development. Some near highways or other transport links. In some senses that is unchangable but my point is you aren't fixing affordablity with transit.

[Xelebes]

Another thing that needs to be considered is access to jobs. Like one of the things that makes Edmonton more affordable than places like Calgary is how polycentric the employment centres are. The number of people who work downtown is only 40,000. The rest are in jobs in Nisku/Airport, Yellowhead, Acheson, Refinery Row, Industrial Heartland, or otherwise commute to the Oilsands. That way, the distance to your job is not so dependent on the distance to the few employment centres. That makes SFH more possible.

The dream that you get that much more SFH out of Toronto is pretty dubious.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Build.It

Most people want to live in detached houses. The only thing stopping developers from building affordable detached houses at the scale the market desires is government.

Incorrect. Most people would want a SFH but within easy reach of all urban amenities, and that's just impossible (which is why they're so pricy). Blanketing the countryside with exurban sprawl isn't what people want, you can't support decent transit and traffic would be a nightmare anyway.

Anyone with a bit of savings and who truly wants a SFH can easily get one. In Cartier, Ontario for example (RIP, swimmer_spe!)

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why most people won't choose the above solution for their housing needs ...

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

No I mean is it possible to deliver good transit to the point where SFHs are affordable as they can be built in a widespread area.

Define "good transit". Because what GO is attempting with RER is to sort of enable development in a manner you are alluding to here. Maybe the local bus won't be frequent in Oshawa. But once they get to the GO station, they'll be able to get on a train heading downtown every 15 mins and get there in half an hour. This kind of network should make it fast more convenient to live in an SFH, especially if local bus service improves alongside RER (which is also a Metrolinx mandate/goal).

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Freeways are how you knit SFHs to a city.

This applies up to a point. Pretty easy to be auto centric in an oversized suburb like Ottawa. Urban agglomerations the size of the GGH are all but impossible to develop in a manner that is extraordinarily car centric unless you did it early on and developed commute patterns that aren't very core centric (so lots of driving to business parks outside the core). And even then there's a price to pay. Houston's core is basically half parking lots.

Originally Posted by YOWetal

That and liberal planning. GTA has huge swaths of land locked out of development. Some near highways or other transport links. In some senses that is unchangable but my point is you aren't fixing affordablity with transit.

It can be done. But it requires transit planning on a level this country is not used too. Toronto would need coverage like Melbourne (as we were talking about) with RER frequencies. And the question is, who is going to pay for that. But if we ever had that level of transit coverage, in theory that would allow massive SFH growth. Uxbridge would become the new Milton. That said, if Toronto ever did something like this and will maintained its downtown centric employment/commerce model, I think most people would find that kind of a city absolutely unbearable beyond their neighborhood. Downs-Thomson paradox kinda explains that.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lio45

Incorrect. Most people would want a SFH but within easy reach of all urban amenities, and that's just impossible (which is why they're so pricy). Blanketing the countryside with exurban sprawl isn't what people want, you can't support decent transit and traffic would be a nightmare anyway.

Anyone with a bit of savings and who truly wants a SFH can easily get one. In Cartier, Ontario for example (RIP, swimmer_spe!)

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why most people won't choose the above solution for their housing needs ...

It's always surprising to me how many people don't understand the basic physics of the problem and how it's proximity to the core that determines $/sqft. If you want an SFH in a desirable location, you will pay more per square foot and since you want more square feet in total, the overall price will obviously be expensive.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by lio45

Incorrect. Most people would want a SFH but within easy reach of all urban amenities, and that's just impossible (which is why they're so pricy). Blanketing the countryside with exurban sprawl isn't what people want, you can't support decent transit and traffic would be a nightmare anyway.

Anyone with a bit of savings and who truly wants a SFH can easily get one. In Cartier, Ontario for example (RIP, swimmer_spe!)

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why most people won't choose the above solution for their housing needs ...

It's not impossible at all. Houston is a great example. Build wherever and however you want and the governmetn builds the highways infrastrcuture and 8 million people can mostly live in mostly affordable SFHs.