Victoria and Park | 25, 36, 38 fl | Proposed

[sluismcfc]

This is my favourite quote:


So this lady understands we need more affordable housing and therefore she opposes...more supply of housing.

Meanwhile, the developer "will commit to 50 affordable housing units (ownership at $368,000) as well as a financial contribution to an affordable housing provider to build units elsewhere in Kitchener." 

So if she has her way, there will be 1000+ fewer units of housing supply, including no affordable units, and no donation to an affordable housing provider in Kitchener. I would love to hear her try to explain exactly how that specific outcome helps contribute to resolving the need for more affordable housing. And since it obviously doesn't, I'd actually be even more interested to hear what her true complaint is and then have a discussion about why that should outweigh building as many housing units as possible on this piece of property. It'd be fascinating to know if, once you boiled it down to whatever is truly bothering her, she would come out and say, "Yes, I understand this helps address the issue of affordable housing in Kitchener, but I believe an extra hour of shadow per day on my house (or insert whatever harm she is worried about) is not worth that." I'd have so much more respect for these people if they just said that and then we could have an honest discussion about individual vs. collective rights and what the correct balance is.

How do these units work?  So ownership at $368k, and then once someone owns them are they worth market value and can be sold as such?  Or are they tabbed as "affordible" units long term

I would assume something registered on title that prevents them from being sold at a price higher than some ratio relative to median income or market prices. Usually the numbers you see are 30% of median income as a yearly housing cost or market cost less 10%. It may also be tied to time horizon of 20 or 50 years (just numbers I've seen recently for other projects).