1668 King Street East | 22+23 fl | Proposed

[nms]

Some of the reasoning behind some sort of a ratio for adding affordable housing to increased density requests:
1. Most of the land in desirable areas (ie along the LRT route, or in the downtown core) is already owned by private developers or is priced to a level that is out of the reach of affordable housing groups (eg Habitat for Humanity, SHOW etc)
2. We will have to wait an awful long time to cobble together $300,000 to $500,000 "peace offerings" from developers in order to get ANY affordable housing built.
3. No matter which way you cut it, society is having to pay for the cost of building affordable housing (or not when you consider the other social costs). If the housing market is hot enough that developers can't wait to build it, a tax on new housing would one way to fund these projects. The alternative is to not tax new builds and put the entire burden on existing housing stock to fund new affordable housing projects.

[neonjoe]

We really need to get rid of Single Family Home Only zoning. This will naturally help increase housing supply. Homeowners, especially retirees may look for a way to have some supplemental income and rebuilding or converting a lot into a duplex or triplex is a good way to go. A lot of the older suburbs have lots which are a lot bigger than the newer ones. These tend to also be the ones with older residents.

[jwilliamson]

3. If the housing market is hot enough that developers can't wait to build it, a tax on new housing would one way to fund these projects.  The alternative is to not tax new builds and put the entire burden on existing housing stock to fund new affordable housing projects.

This is the part I disagree with. The housing construction market is no where near hot enough. If we were building enough homes, there wouldn't be an affordability problem. We ought to put the entire burden on existing property owners, but since they have the most political power, we instead put the burden on those who need to buy homes.

[ac3r]

Updated the thread as this appears to have went through yet another redesign. The towers are now only 22 and 23 floors with a stepped effect, resulting in both towers having 8 and 12 floor sections. The design is also drastically different, with less of a rectangular wall like design.