Canada's 'housing bubble' deemed close to bursting

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I am not sure that this is really the crux of the problem, though. Pretty much every single neighbourhood in Toronto already has an existing school or schools within it. These are existing government-held properties than can be renovated, expanded or enlarged. It seems to me the issue is more with funding from the province in order to get that done. Something which often doesn't keep pace with the level of development and population growth. This is a problem in the suburbs as well.

For sure, but my understanding of the original problem proposed here is the question of what is the appetite for funding something that is currently underserviced (ie. schools and other child-centred services) on the basis that they may become more utilized in the future? To me it's better to spend say, $1 million per year over the next ten years to keep that capacity in place. If the alternative is removing it now in order to spend $0 per year over the next ten years only to have to spend $15 million to bring it back online in year 11, then it seems like a no-brainer. Most people don't like writing cheques to pay for something that may or may not be needed in the future though.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Not for long....



https://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/02/27/cash-strapped-tdsb-losing-millions-on-underutilized-schools/

You guys are getting hard to follow.

Is there a dearth of school space in central Toronto or not?

Do we want young families to move into the city or not?

If places like Mississauga become more like (central) Toronto, is it a good thing or not?

[Wigs]

It appears that Mississauga is now declining at the expense of its neighbour(s) in Peel (and Halton) like Brampton (+63k) which still has explosive growth.

I honestly never thought I'd see Mississauga's population level off, let alone actually decline.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You guys are getting hard to follow.

Is there a dearth of school space in central Toronto or not?

Do we want young families to move into the city or not?

If places like Mississauga become more like (central) Toronto, is it a good thing or not?

Seems consistent to me.

1. If there is a growing underutilization of school space in a city, how long will that capacity be maintained until it is cut to match current demands?

2. If that demand then changes in the future, how easy is it to bring the capacity that was once removed back online?

3. Then the final part, is there a better way to help keep consistent demand now and avoid issues 1 and 2 noted above? I don't think booting seniors out of their SFH because "you're taking up space in a school zone" is a valid answer, but some more refined zoning practices could definitely help.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Seems consistent to me.

1. If there is a growing underutilization of school space in a city, how long will that capacity be maintained until it is cut to match current demands?

2. If that demand then changes in the future, how easy is it to bring the capacity that was once removed back online?

3. Then the final part, is there a better way to help keep consistent demand now and avoid issues 1 and 2 noted above? I don't think booting seniors out of their SFH because "you're taking up space in a school zone" is a valid answer, but some more refined zoning practices could definitely help.

I definitely agree with the conclusion of 3., but the article Truenorth showed that there is underutilized school space in Toronto now.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Acajack

If you look at areas of Canadian cities that are "deserts" for retail services, they're almost all places where it's a pain in the 🞵🞵🞵 (relative to ROI) to run a business due to undesirables breaking or stealing 🞵🞵🞵🞵, or making your customers nervous.

That's just one condition in which deserts for certain amenities are created. Lack of demand is another. An easy example of this is ethnic grocery stores. Not every city and every neighbourhood can support a T&T. Why do you think that is?

Originally Posted by Acajack

You guys are getting hard to follow.

Is there a dearth of school space in central Toronto or not?

There's a mismatch. Certain core downtown neighbourhoods have a shortage of space. But on the whole, the 416 has a surplus of space. And that surplus, like Mississauga, is in suburban low density neighbourhoods.

Incidentally, this trend is also partly why walking to school is falling off a cliff. Consolidation puts more schools out of walking distance and drives demand for bussing.

Originally Posted by Acajack

Do we want young families to move into the city or not?

I think we want young families to have options to match their housing to their needs. They should not be forced into shoebox condos because of policy failures.

Originally Posted by Acajack

If places like Mississauga become more like (central) Toronto, is it a good thing or not?

If an F student emulates and catches up to a D student, nobody is going to suggest that is not an improvement. But that's still not an A student.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

For sure, but my understanding of the original problem proposed here is the question of what is the appetite for funding something that is currently underserviced (ie. schools and other child-centred services) on the basis that they may become more utilized in the future? To me it's better to spend say, $1 million per year over the next ten years to keep that capacity in place. If the alternative is removing it now in order to spend $0 per year over the next ten years only to have to spend $15 million to bring it back online in year 11, then it seems like a no-brainer. Most people don't like writing cheques to pay for something that may or may not be needed in the future though.

It's worse than that. If you have kids, would you move into a neighbourhood with no schools? Not if you can help it. And the same logic applies to other amenities. Once these schools and strip malls are shuttered and redeveloped, they are almost certainly never coming back.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Wigs

It appears that Mississauga is now declining at the expense of its neighbour(s) in Peel (and Halton) like Brampton (+63k) which still has explosive growth.

I honestly never thought I'd see Mississauga's population level off, let alone actually decline.

Mississauga is declining because SFH NIMBYs don't want new homes/higher density builds to be added and the municipality reached its boundaries for development.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's worse than that. If you have kids, would you move into a neighbourhood with no schools? Not if you can help it. And the same logic applies to other amenities. Once these schools and strip malls are shuttered and redeveloped, they are almost certainly never coming back.

If we proposed libraries today NIMBYs would certainly prevent them from being built.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I definitely agree with the conclusion of 3., but the article Truenorth showed that there is underutilized school space in Toronto now.

Toronto is not a monolith. There can be severe shortages in Spadina/Fort York (as there was for the past 5-8 years before the Cityplace school opened up) while Forest Hill sits empty as the rich Boomers and Gen Y'rs have long since sent their kids away. One of the issues I see in Toronto today is there's a disconnect between the places that are accessible/affordable to young families, and the places that have much better child-raising infrastructure in place, which I think is one of the main issues behind the original question. The places that were built decades ago for raising families no longer actually have the families anymore. Your point of view is that the situation is a temporary structural transition. I think the rest of us are pointing out that if "temporary" stretches out too long, things can start to degrade and are hard to reverse.

[Truenorth00]

Consider how remarkable this is during a period of near record high immigration, for a suburb in a metro that attracts the bulk of immigrants to Canada:

https://twitter.com/globeandmail/status/1548359683630514183?t=Bh2k1muHntC_K0qmzk3UNg&s=19

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

That's just one condition in which deserts for certain amenities are created. Lack of demand is another. An easy example of this is ethnic grocery stores. Not every city and every neighbourhood can support a T&T. Why do you think that is?
.

We are taking about basic amenities.

T&T is not a basic, essential service. Though I suppose to some people it is, but if that's your case, you'll move to a place that has one. And if enough people in your area fancy that, something of that nature will open up.

[suburbanite]

It also goes to show how superficial the tall glass condo towers are in the grand scheme of housing supply. How much theoretical density was added in Mississauga over the period where population declined that much?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Acajack

We are taking about basic amenities.

T&T is not a basic, essential service. Though I suppose to some people it is, but if that's your case, you'll move to a place that has one. And if enough people in your area fancy that, something of that nature will open up.

You seem to not understand the analogy.

The point here is that every amenity has a minimum population required for viability. Be that a doctor's office or a Loblaws or an elementary school. If the population isn't there, they move on. These people may be older and richer. But there's still only so many times they will see the doctor and only so much they can eat.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

It also goes to show how superficial the tall glass condo towers are in the grand scheme of housing supply. How much theoretical density was added in Mississauga over the period where population declined that much?

Unit density =\= population density.

Tall condos are a policy failure. Change my mind.

[Acajack]

Guys, I'm on your side.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

I know they all don't, but when I was in Vancouver's Yaletown I was shocked at the number of retirees that had downsized into condos. Everything is close by, they have a pile of extra money from the move, and they are close to services they need.

Parents of friends did it many years ago as well and love it. They take last minute vacations all the time.

I was also surprised that in multiple neighborhoods how many seniors lived in downtown Vancouver.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

It also goes to show how superficial the tall glass condo towers are in the grand scheme of housing supply. How much theoretical density was added in Mississauga over the period where population declined that much?

The annual unit construction in Mississauga is actually not that high, for a city of it's size. We are talking about a city of over 700,000 people. Downtown Mississauga by my count only had 4 condo towers completed between 2016 and 2021, and a handful more up at Hurontario and Eglinton. That probably works out to only something like 2 condo towers a year in the entire city.

you see this in the Census Data as well, Mississauga's occupied dwelling count increased by only 3,665 dwellings between 2016 and 2021, or 733 units a year.

Downtown Mississauga isn't actually all that high growth of an area. The CTs which generally align with downtown Mississauga grew by 4,570 people from 49,276 to 53,846 between 2016 and 2021, a growth rate of about 9%, or 1.8% annually. The downtown itself barely grew above the Canadian average.

No wonder the city shrank.

Tall condos look impressive, but add less units than most people realize. Particularly since condo units have much lower average occupancy levels than detached dwellings, typically around 1.7 people per unit instead of over 3 per unit for new construction houses. A 35 storey condo with 350 units is a huge massing building seen for miles, but only adds the population equivalent to about 180 houses. At modern subdivision densities, that's probably about 20 acres of houses replaced by a tower on ~1 acre.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I support the mayors who are working towards densification and more sound and sustainable urban development practices, however it's worth it to point out that in terms of "costs", a large SFH with a long granny living in it brings in the exact same tax dollars to the city as if it had a family of 4-5-6 living there.

The public infrastructure is already in place and any maintenance or reconstruction of it that is needed is covered by the tax bill just as it would be if it were inhabited by a young, "nuclear" family.

If anything, it might be slightly cheaper to have granny living there as there is less actual usage of certain city services.

The city was able to operate just fine with this type of development for decades, and now it can't?

If existing nabes with surplus infrastructure capacity aren't efficiently utilized then new places with new infrastructure will have to be developed (often green fields) which definitely is more expensive. Either more expensive for the new residents if they're taxed enough to cover the full cost of the new infrastructure, or more expensive for the municipality if there's any level of subsidy. Or perhaps both. And in the past, new nabes have often received some level of subsidy.

It's a lot easier to fit granny into the existing urban/suburban area if she was living in a smaller space, while the larger family will likely struggle to find new accommodations.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

If existing nabes with surplus infrastructure capacity aren't efficiently utilized then new places with new infrastructure will have to be developed (often green fields) which definitely is more expensive. Either more expensive for the new residents if they're taxed enough to cover the full cost of the new infrastructure, or more expensive for the municipality if there's any level of subsidy. Or perhaps both. And in the past, new nabes have often received some level of subsidy.

It's a lot easier to fit granny into the existing urban/suburban area if she was living in a smaller space, while the larger family will likely struggle to find new accommodations.

For sure. That's why redevelopments and densification need to be incentivized.

[Coldrsx]

Affordability Across Canada
RE/MAX Canada brokers and agents in 24 key markets across the country were asked to provide their analysis on local market activity and housing affordability trends for the first half of 2022.

Western Canada
Across Western Canada, competition from out-of-town or move-over buyers has put upward pressure on home prices year-over-year. Double-digit year-over-year price increases were noted in Kelowna/Central Okanagan, BC (+21.1% from $778,657 in 2021 to $942,977 in 2022), Vancouver, BC (+19.69% from $1,097,000 in 2021 to $1,313,000 in 2022), Victoria, BC (+14.93% from $885,117 in 2021 to $1,017,292 in 2022), and Winnipeg, MB (+12.66% from $388,291 in 2021 to $437,460 in 2022). Meanwhile, more modest price increases were seen in markets including Calgary, AB (+5.85% from $499,229 in 2021 to $528,440 in 2022), Edmonton, AB (+4.73% from $390,490 in 2021 to $408,961 in 2022), Red Deer, AB (+3.24 % from $345,576 in 2021 to $356,779 in 2022), Regina, SK (+0.42% from $322,600 in 2021 to $323,950 in 2022), Brandon, MB (+1.75% from $304,929 in 2021 to $310,252 in 2022) and Saskatoon, SK (+1.45 from $368,079 in 2021 to $373,410 in 2022).

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/re...1302&mc_cid=5e6f88823e&mc_eid=b81cde227f