Housing costs

[danbrotherston]

Lol...I also think people pay too much in rent on housing.

As for how to reduce rent costs..that is a challenge, and I don't have any easy answers, beyond the fact that parking minimums and other anti-development policies that prevent infill development and prioritize sprawl make the situation worse.

But it does come back to income inequality, if wages had grown at a similar rate to housing...there wouldn't be an issue...

If income had grown at the same rate as housing than housing would be much more expensive. The market dictates the price of housing. Low-interest rates have an effect on the housing market.

Currently, I think KW is doing a decent job of filling in either old land and/or vacant land. Just in the Homer-Watson/Blockline Rd, we have 6 fairly large apartment buildings that weren't there that long ago. Though I don't believe it's all anti-development policies, quite often it's a lot of NIMBY'ism. Many people are OK with high density and infill projects - just as long as it doesn't affect them. It's funny actually to watch the Arrow apartment finally go up, as Auburn had such a fight with that, which if memory serves me correctly, dates back to 2006 or 2007. It shouldn't take 14 years or more to complete something.

The "market" for housing is not a free market...low interest rates, parking minimums, zoning restrictions all affect the market. The market for income too is not a free market, and since the 70s substantial effort has gone into depressing the labor market in North America.

But the suggestion that income growing at the same rate as housing is somehow leads to a situation where housing is more expensive supposes that the economic forces which have depressed income and inflated housing have remained the same and the numbers have simply been translated, that is obviously not what I meant, instead I am obviously suggesting a hypothetical world where housing hasn't become unaffordable because the market forces depressing income and inflating housing which have made it unaffordable were never applied. I was pointing out that the forces which have driven inequality up and income down are just as important as the ones which have driven housing up.

As for the claim that we are developing a lot of housing, yes we have had a recent resurgence of development, basically going from near zero infill to non-zero infill.  But in a historical context, housing is still being built very slowly and there are still enormous hurdles to any development. This is why we see large notable buildings which on the whole, add only a small amount of housing, instead of thousands of smaller developments that would add more total housing and lead to a better community. There are vast swaths of the city where there has been zero development, and population has been decreasing--this is not a situation which leads to affordable housing.

As for policies, NIMBYism is powered by policy, NIMBYs get to come out and scream at council to reject developments specifically because those developments require council approval because the zoning code is restrictive. Yes, just like bike lanes, you will never find someone who "opposes" them, they are only ever opposed when they affect that person...it does not change the fact that these folks are against development/change even though they claim not to be. Fundamentally, change is a necessary thing, stopping it creates problems. But the problem is not these folks, it's a natural human tendancy, the problem is a government which panders to them with policies which stop change. Without those policies, those folks would get angry, but eventually just learn to live with the change.