Population and Housing

[tomh009]

Yes ... but the money for infrastructure needs to come from somewhere, either development fees or property taxes. Or improved provincial funding (oops, fell off my chair, have to stop laughing so hard).

Well I guess my question then is how did it all seem to work prior to the massive increases by the municipalities? Why did many of them raise the DC's so aggressively? Was it because they could? Seems short sighted

It worked before ... until the province downloaded around $4B of costs onto the municipalities, who then had to find the money somewhere.

[bravado]

Well I guess my question then is how did it all seem to work prior to the massive increases by the municipalities? Why did many of them raise the DC's so aggressively? Was it because they could? Seems short sighted

It worked before ... until the province downloaded around $4B of costs onto the municipalities, who then had to find the money somewhere.

They found it in the wallets of the young and the next generation - not certain that's much of a solution...

As for the discussion above, if a city can't afford to maintain what it has and defers maintenance to keep taxes manageable - then a new subdivision comes in and requires enough sewage capacity to replace the aging water plant, did the new growth fund that or did it just subsidize the decisions of the existing residents to defer maintenance until someone showed up who could pay?

Hell, Kitchener has even been one of the most egregious when it announced that new rec centre fully funded by development charges (aka, a tax on the young) and seemed to brag about it. Here's hoping that only new residents can use it in the spirit of fairness.

[creative]

A friend of mine used to work in engineering for the city of Kitchener. About 15 years ago they appeared before council and told the city that if they didn’t start fixing infrastructure that things were going to get really bad. Since then a line item has been added to it he city budget and infrastructure is being replaced. As roads and services are replaced, bike lanes and multi-use trails are added where feasible. All funded by property tax.

[creative]

It worked before ... until the province downloaded around $4B of costs onto the municipalities, who then had to find the money somewhere.

They found it in the wallets of the young and the next generation - not certain that's much of a solution...

As for the discussion above, if a city can't afford to maintain what it has and defers maintenance to keep taxes manageable - then a new subdivision comes in and requires enough sewage capacity to replace the aging water plant, did the new growth fund that or did it just subsidize the decisions of the existing residents to defer maintenance until someone showed up who could pay?

Hell, Kitchener has even been one of the most egregious when it announced that new rec centre fully funded by development charges (aka, a tax on the young) and seemed to brag about it. Here's hoping that only new residents can use it in the spirit of fairness.

To be fair the city of Kitchener has been pretty good at providing community centers, playgrounds and sports fields in existing neighbourhoods. The new rec centre is being built in the middle of one of Kitchener’s fastest growing communities with few existing facilities. The primary benefactors will be the people living in the community and young families. Yes others from outside the area will use these facilities but will most likely not be the primary users.

[tomh009]

It worked before ... until the province downloaded around $4B of costs onto the municipalities, who then had to find the money somewhere.

They found it in the wallets of the young and the next generation - not certain that's much of a solution...

I don't think it's all (or even most) young people buying the new houses (and paying development fees) as housing is largely out of their reach. Young people are, for the most part, renting (and, indirectly, paying property taxes). Shifting money from development fees to property taxes will somewhat ease the prices but also increase rents.

The question of who should pay for the new municipal infrastructure is a valid one, but I don't think it maps tidily to age demographics.

[bravado]

A friend of mine used to work in engineering for the city of Kitchener. About 15 years ago they appeared before council and told the city that if they didn’t start fixing infrastructure that things were going to get really bad. Since then a line item has been added to it he city budget and infrastructure is being replaced. As roads and services are replaced, bike lanes and multi-use trails are added where feasible. All funded by property tax.

I think it would be fascinating if someone in city hall could openly state that we have x km of pipes in the city. We replace y km per year. Pipes last for z years. I don’t think that math will look very good if it was ever released.

[timc]

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the city doesn't know how many km of pipe there are.

[bravado]

I mean obviously it’s a simplification of a huge complex system, but this is the sort of thing laymen like me find attractive from the Strong Towns people.

Do we have more square metres of paved surface per resident today vs 50 years ago? Is that the same for pipes and all sorts of public liabilities? Is anyone looking at this before they do the budgets? Is this sort of thing even possible to discuss when approving new suburbs vs infill?

All this stops with Ford, but either way we have plenty of “fiscal conservatives” in local government who don’t really seem interested in diving into any part of municipal finance…

[nms]

I mean obviously it’s a simplification of a huge complex system, but this is the sort of thing laymen like me find attractive from the Strong Towns people.

Do we have more square metres of paved surface per resident today vs 50 years ago? Is that the same for pipes and all sorts of public liabilities? Is anyone looking at this before they do the budgets? Is this sort of thing even possible to discuss when approving new suburbs vs infill?

All this stops with Ford, but either way we have plenty of “fiscal conservatives” in local government who don’t really seem interested in diving into any part of municipal finance…

Cities have factor infrastructure renewal into their long-term capital forecasts. Here is what the City of Waterloo staff put together for 2024-2026 (PDF).  I did not drill down to look at the finer detail.

[ZEBuilder]

A friend of mine used to work in engineering for the city of Kitchener. About 15 years ago they appeared before council and told the city that if they didn’t start fixing infrastructure that things were going to get really bad. Since then a line item has been added to it he city budget and infrastructure is being replaced. As roads and services are replaced, bike lanes and multi-use trails are added where feasible. All funded by property tax.

I think it would be fascinating if someone in city hall could openly state that we have x km of pipes in the city. We replace y km per year. Pipes last for z years. I don’t think that math will look very good if it was ever released.

The City of Kitchener solely owns 777km of watermain, dually owns 24km and the Region owns 112km of watermain, all as of 2021. Maintenance of all infrastructure is done by the City, the Regionally owned infrastructure's replacement cost is entirely paid for by the Region however. 

For the most part life cycles range from 50-100 years for watermains. Cast Iron (phased out by the 80s) has a life cycle of approximately 50 years. Ductile Iron (phased out in the 90s) has a life cycle of approximately 80 years. PVC (current best practice) has a life cycle of approximately 100 years. Other types of pipe that are within Kitchener include CPP (Concrete Pressure Pipe) which generally have life cycles in the 80 year range. With proper preemptive maintenance these can be extended for decades longer and has been done in some cases.

As of 2021 there was 175km worth of Cast Iron, 325km worth of Ductile Iron, 362km worth of PVC and 51km worth of other pipe types. 

The Cast Iron pipe was predominately installed pre 1969 with a small portion in the 70s, some of it predates the 40s. This infrastructure is at the end of life for the most part, as mentioned before its life can be extended well beyond the 50 years and in some cases in the city it is approaching 100 years old. It will all need replacement in the coming years however, the 2021 expected cost to replace all the CI is 170 million dollars (200 million now). Many of the roads with CI have road reconstruction projects upcoming or recently completed for example East Ave last year. However there are piles of other streets without road recons that have CI, some are coming up for reconstruction, others are likely a decade or more away at least. 

There are some really short sections of CI left in places which will eventually be replaced but for now if it isn't causing issues it tends to be left untouched, the same happens in other municipalities. For example there is a very short section of CI pipe that still remains on East Ave between Krug and Cameron which wasn't part of the reconstruction scope, it ended up breaking when the contractor was doing the reconstruction which resulted in the contractor fixing the break and for those on site to have a very long day (16+ hours), it isn't intended for reconstruction for a couple more years at least.

Ductile Iron was predominately installed from the 60s to 90s with much of the infrastructure installed in the 70s and 80s (about two thirds), this infrastructure is now at or past its halfway point of its life cycle, for the most part it is still good for a couple more decades.

PVC isn't close to the halfway point yet with most pipe still having a service life of 70+ years.

From projects that I know about the city is doing 4km of total reconstruction on roads with CI this year alone, it isn't a dent in the total CI pipe amount (Roughly 200 million to replace). There's also a bunch of engineering work happening behind the scenes on a couple of other large reconstructions but again it will take literal decades to replace the existing CI at the current rate and at that point there will be a very rude awakening for the city and tax payers.

[bravado]

Here's an educational and possibly counter-intuitive study about the risks of fire in housing types over the years.

https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-anal...protection

[...] There are also concerns, particularly in high-rises, about firefighter access and the ability of residents to escape from upper floors during a fire. Beyond design, critics of multifamily housing have expressed concern about demographic factors, such as concentrations of older or lower-income residents, that have been associated with increased fire risk.2

However, these concerns are largely not supported by research, and, in fact, multifamily housing in the U.S. has been getting safer over time. Fire safety researchers have documented a downward trend in the number of injuries and deaths in apartment building fires since 1980.3 The rate of deaths in multifamily buildings, for example, fell from 7.1 deaths per 1,000 reported fires in 1980 to 5.2 deaths per 1,000 fires in 2023, a lower rate than in single-family homes.4 But to date, there has been little research on the relative fire safety of modern (post-2000) multifamily housing in the United States compared with other types of housing.

New research from The Pew Charitable Trusts now demonstrates that multifamily buildings constructed since 2000 enjoy far better fire safety outcomes than other types of housing, because additional safety measures, such as self-closing doors, fire-safe materials, and sprinklers have been adopted widely.

I feel like the fire safety story is one of those unspoken ways that unrelated things, like the Fire Department's opinions, can control our housing policy in un-scientific ways.

[plam]

Here's an educational and possibly counter-intuitive study about the risks of fire in housing types over the years.

https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-anal...protection

I feel like the fire safety story is one of those unspoken ways that unrelated things, like the Fire Department's opinions, can control our housing policy in un-scientific ways.

Thanks! Two comments on that.

1. North American fire departments seem to think that they need super large trucks and so they have impacts on road design. This does not seem to be true in other places. (NZ fire trucks are also pretty big, but they do manage in places with narrow streets like Wellington, although they don't have enough ladder trucks at the moment).

2. This study is probably true of the US, where there has been a functional government until recently. It may be less true of the UK, for instance, where they have had a Conservative government for far too long, and the fire safety standards were broken, resulting in e.g. the 72 avoidable fatalities from the Grenfell Tower fire. I don't know that I would trust the US government to be competent going forward.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/4/...iry-blamed

‘Decades of failure’: Who has UK’s Grenfell Tower fire inquiry blamed?

‘Unscrupulous’ manufacturers of dangerous materials, ‘dishonesty and greed’ and regulatory failure all caused the disaster.

...

Ed Daffarn, another of the survivors of the fire, blamed the culture of deregulation spearheaded by the previous Conservative government for the disaster.

[tomh009]

Somehow they can manage with smaller-scale fire trucks in Tokyo. And their buildings are far taller than ours ...

[Acitta]

Somehow they can manage with smaller-scale fire trucks in Tokyo. And their buildings are far taller than ours ...

Do they build buildings less prone to catching fire? It seems like we build flimsy houses out of wood that catch fire and burn down easily.

[creative]

The 3 trucks on the right look pretty big.