Population and Housing

[danbrotherston]

[danbrotherston]

[jwilliamson]

Between the dark grey road, the light grey sidewalk, and beige and grey architecture this is incredibly bland. Some trees would really help here, but I suspect the lack of permeable surfaces means any trees will struggle to grow.

I like the form of the buildings, the windows are interesting, looks like there are rooftop patios which is great.

Finally, I don't understand why if there is a lane way going behind the buildings for garage access they also have have such a wide road in front for cars. If they ripped that out and replaced it with gardens, trees and a walking path it would be much more pleasant.

[tomh009]

Brezhnev would have approved of the colour scheme.

That said, the building design is not so bad. But was there a sale on beige and grey stucco?

[danbrotherston]

Yeah, the roads are just utterly unnecessary and incredibly wasteful.

But yeah, it's the buildings mostly I find interesting, I too like the rooftop patio, although I wonder how well that works in practice, I love a good deck, but it might be a bit weird to have to go up to the roof to get there (FWIW the deck on the front of these is kind of interesting: https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.4540224,-...384!8i8192).

As for why they do laneways AND excessively wide residential streets....I have no other answer than our insane car culture. It's stupid, because the idea of a laneway behind is appealing for it's ability to REMOVE cars from the street in front of my home.

[nms]

Without knowing the address to look at an aerial view, my guess would be that the interior laneways are intended for emergency access and/or waste collection. More than a few trees would make this space so much better, but seeing as they have pushed the building envelope right to the side walk, and the developer has opted for wide sidewalks rather than space for trees, there isn't much chance that much of any kind of greenery will be planted here to provide shade and weather relief.

[plam]

Without know the address to look at an aerial view, my guess would be that the interior laneways are intended for emergency access and/or waste collection. More than a few trees would make this space so much better, but seeing as they have pushed the building envelope right to the side walk, and the developer has opted for wide sidewalks rather than space for trees, there isn't much chance that much of any kind of greenery will be planted here to provide shade and weather relief.

Montreal has some trees planted in the sidewalks where there aren't many setbacks, if I recall correctly. Probably not awesome for the trees.

[westwardloo]

I have no love for Markham as a city, but I do like the new suburban developments happening there. They are relatively dense for suburbia, follow a grid pattern for the most part, the various subdivisions are actually connected, by local roads not just major arterial roads, they have lane ways so the front of the houses aren't 50% garages. 

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.8926317,-...authuser=0

Retail is still primarily strip malls and reliant on cars, but there are a couple streets with ground floor retail with town houses above.

[ac3r]

Local house prices will rise at ‘accelerated pace’ through 2021: https://outline.com/vA6PfH

This country is so messed up with housing and not a single thing is being done about it...

[tomh009]

Local house prices will rise at ‘accelerated pace’ through 2021: https://outline.com/vA6PfH

This country is so messed up with housing and not a single thing is being done about it...

Things are being done to increase the availability of housing. Whether they are the right things is a whole different question. But, right or wrong, many of them take significant time to have an impact.

• Intensification of urban areas (many areas, including our region)
  
• Tighter mortgage stress test (federal, proposed)
  
• Speculation and vacancy tax (BC)
  
• Foreign buyer tax (Vancouver)
  
• Non-resident speculation tax (GTAA)
  
• Granny flats/tiny homes (Kitchener and other cities)
  

P.S. No one knows yet what the housing prices will be at the end of 2021 ...

[ac3r]

I would rather have them build a ton of socialized housing (yet operate it correctly, which should be easy after the lessons learned from 20th century socialized housing) than a bunch of patch work, half assed solutions they keep offering. Taxes don't really mean anything when it comes to taking people off the street, nor does mortgage stress. Those living pay cheque to pay cheque and the homeless aren't having daily anxiety attacks because of these things, they're struggling to know if they have enough money to pay rent or whether it's safe to pitch a tent - lest the city comes knock it down or some other homeless people come rob it. Intensification in urban areas only works if you actually promote affordable housing. I have yet to see evidence of that at a local level, especially when NIMBYs are able to cancel or hugely minimize projects because they think a building doesn't look good in their neighbourhood. Tiny homes don't address this problem in any regard because you need to own property and be able to afford to make them, connect them to utilities and pay taxes on them.

Nothing serious is being done and it's really naïve to think otherwise. Time does not wait when you are struggling to come up with rent versus feeding your kid breakfast or when you're living in a tent, worried someone might beat you up for your propane gas cooker.

[tomh009]

I would rather have them build a ton of socialized housing (yet operate it correctly, which should be easy after the lessons learned from 20th century socialized housing) than a bunch of patch work, half assed solutions they keep offering. Taxes don't really mean anything when it comes to taking people off the street, nor does mortgage stress. Those living pay cheque to pay cheque and the homeless aren't having daily anxiety attacks because of these things, they're struggling to know if they have enough money to pay rent or whether it's safe to pitch a tent - lest the city comes knock it down or some other homeless people come rob it. Intensification in urban areas only works if you actually promote affordable housing. I have yet to see evidence of that at a local level, especially when NIMBYs are able to cancel or hugely minimize projects because they think a building doesn't look good in their neighbourhood. Tiny homes don't address this problem in any regard because you need to own property and be able to afford to make them, connect them to utilities and pay taxes on them.

Nothing serious is being done and it's really naïve to think otherwise. Time does not wait when you are struggling to come up with rent versus feeding your kid breakfast or when you're living in a tent, worried someone might beat you up for your propane gas cooker.

Yes, if we are talking specifically about affordable housing, then most of those actions do not help.

I will disagree on the tiny homes/granny flats, though: it enables the homeowner to rent out the separate dwelling, rather than duplexing the main dwelling on the property. So, it should add some less-expensive units on the market, but it's no silver bullet, and the impact will be gradual.

We really should take this to the affordable housing thread ...

[danbrotherston]

Okay, I don't understand what this discussion is even about, didn't we have a regional plan already, that was heavily compromised to favour sprawl developers, but none the less approved.

Now they're asking for more?!

https://www.therecord.com/news/council/2...-land.html

Also, explain to me why these folks are arguing that dense walkable developments are "unaffordable" yet the market (you know the thing which decides prices) wants sprawl instead? If housing is unaffordable, it's because it's in demand and supply hasn't met demand. Sooooooo....the market WANTS urban walkable development, not cheap sprawl.

[ijmorlan]

Also, explain to me why these folks are arguing that dense walkable developments are "unaffordable" yet the market (you know the thing which decides prices) wants sprawl instead? If housing is unaffordable, it's because it's in demand and supply hasn't met demand. Sooooooo....the market WANTS urban walkable development, not cheap sprawl.

Yes times a million! Something can’t be both expensive and frequently purchased unless it is popular! The market is, in fact, demanding dense urban developments, not single-family houses to infinity.

But of course we only cite market forces when they lead to the status quo.

Also, don’t forget that it is illegal to buy a bunch of sprawl houses and redevelop as dense urban form. Why does it need to be illegal if nobody wants it?

(yes, I know it doesn’t really make sense to redevelop 5 houses to be dense urban form, since real urban areas depend on having many blocks of dense development near each other; but it isn’t even allowed)

[westwardloo]

Okay, I don't understand what this discussion is even about, didn't we have a regional plan already, that was heavily compromised to favour sprawl developers, but none the less approved.

Now they're asking for more?!

https://www.therecord.com/news/council/2...-land.html

Also, explain to me why these folks are arguing that dense walkable developments are "unaffordable" yet the market (you know the thing which decides prices) wants sprawl instead? If housing is unaffordable, it's because it's in demand and supply hasn't met demand. Sooooooo....the market WANTS urban walkable development, not cheap sprawl.

Have to disagree with you on the regional plan favoring sprawl. Our region has some of the tightness land protection policies in the province. Waterloo has literally no more available land. It will be 100% infill from now on. Kitchener has a small slice of land in the southwest corner of the city, which will be completely developed out within the decade. Cambridge is in a similar boat, but they actually have a large tract of land near the airport, but I believe they are hoping that that is mostly employment land.  

The market actually wants both. Some people (me included) prefer to live in a downtown core with lively streets and communal amenities.  While others prefer the new detached home with a backyard. Some of the suburban developments are so popular right now you have to sign up for a lottery just to get a chance a buying.  I think the region has done a fairly good job a densifying and infilling in the cores and along the LRT spine. I do think if the region is realistic about meeting its population targets (almost a million people) it is going to have to open up the country lane boarder slightly. Plan for this, decide on strategic land to open up. Personally I can think of a few, the Bridgeport peninsula is where I would start. Fairly close to both downtown cores and can be connected easily by transit. The land between the Conestoga river and waterloo near the blackberry HQ and North Dumfries between Blair and Galt. 

The region needs to accept that more land will need to be allocated to housing needs in the future and plan ahead. The developers will eventually sidestep the region and go directly to the province, resulting in piecemeal built city.  Provide strict guidelines to new suburbs, which included density targets, minimum multi-unit residentials, grid layout that will connect with future developments, bike infrastructure, parks that aren't hidden by rows of housing, and walkable community nodes that aren't just a sea of parking at a grocery store. Maybe this is too much to ask of our 8 government planning departments. It is most definitely too much to ask of the greedy developers. 

Maybe I am wrong and the region can accommodate 300,000 people in shoebox towers in the downtowns or at various midrise infill projects that take years to build due to nimby protests. In the mean time I am glad I got into the housing market a couple years ago, because prices will probably continue to skyrocket in this region due to the artificial constraint.