Special thanks to HousingNowTO for giving us a tour of affordable housing sites in Toronto and providing some of the resources we used to make this video! Follow them on Twitter (twitter.com/HousingNowTO) and check out their Toronto affordable housing tracker (housingnowto.com).
The audacity it takes to demand a smaller building and then complain there isn't enough affordable housing in the building, resulting in 0 affordable housing being built so far
I shit you not, at the area i lived in, the condo board actively opposed the new condos being proposed there because it would 'ruin the view over the golf course' and then they also opposed it because the golf course would be turned into a public park and returned to nature, and their complaint was it would have 'too many animals'.... TOO MANY ANIMALS? actually hilariously depressing. edit - This is the DVP and Eglinton in Toronto if anyone was wondering where, which seems apt for the location of this video aswell.
I heard of a similar case in an area I used to live in -- rich NIMBYs opposed nature trails being developed because they believed it would "attract criminals."
Thats their argument, not their reason. It would lower the value of the building during a rental crisis. Less properties nearby means high as they want prices.
Imagine if we let business owners vote on how many new business licenses could be given out per year and for what - we'd have nothing but monopolies. If people are treating houses like investments, then they need to be limited in their ability to prevent others from entering the market.
I completely agree. NIMBYs have vested interests. They're just as bad as lobbyists. Thing is we are talking about older generations that bought into the debt game whereas the younger ones have no concept of it. NIMBYs will actually be financially ruined if they're reverse mortgages go bust.
In other words, too much weight is given to neighbourhood opinion in land zoning / planning / construction and too little weight is given to non-landowners. Landowners and homeowners somehow got secret extra votes in urban / country planning, making the "democracy" similar to for-profit corporation in this aspect.
@@billyswong This isn't really true in the same sense. Home owning isn't the same as the per dollar "vote" we have in shareholders in capitalism. While homeowners can and do price people out so only more affluent people can effectively "vote" it would be bizarre if people who aren't vested in a community could vote on how an area is planned. And again unlike corporations with monopolies that are beholden to shareholders that are voting by the dollar amount you can just move to a different area. The reason why we have to take these "extra steps" is because the alternative is getting rid of local autonomy. You really think having a central authority is automatically better? It's true that where housing works we might see central authority but that doesn't mean central authority will automatically give us good planning. It's inherently anti-democratic. Instead we need a community where everyone is on the same page with the same incentives to support housing abundance. Then everyone would want to live in such a place and then places that are gentrified shitholes with houses that are a century old they bought for a million dollars won't matter because no one will ever want to buy there. The home owners will change their tune quick. Plus then the "lost value" can be reflected in new home owners paying less for homes so they can instead use that money to make real improvements instead of speculate.
cities need to straight-up ignore what neighbours say when it comes to affordable housing, public transit expansion, etc.. democracy doesn't function properly when everyone is uninformed, selfish, and classist.
Technically it isn’t the NIMBY’s land so as long as they can somehow bully them harder, maybe by institutionally devaluing there opinions or making the definition of things like “stress” less favorable to NIMBYs, other parties are free to do whatever it wants on its land, especially if it means creating a lot of housing
Exactly. Part of living in a free society means you can't dictate how others use their land and how they live their life. NIMBYism is a fundamentally anti-freedom ideology.
The worst thing is: The longer a project is drawn out in this way, the more expensive the units are going to get because the investory have to make back more money.
If every neighborhood rejects affordable housing than they aren't unique in character. They are just trying to be the same as every other suburban neighborhood so their home values don't get negatively affected by "undesirables" living near them.
That myth that introducing new housing into neighborhoods, affordable or not, negatively affects property values irritates me to no end. If anything, building new housing in neighborhoods may actually INCREASE property values for existing homeowners. So NIMBYs and other "concerned" homeowners should if anything be supportive of new housing and transit, etc. Mixed income, transit accessible, and pedestrian friendly neighborhoods are the most desirable places to live anyway from a land value perspective.
@@musicotensai sure tell that to someone with a mortgage on a property for $800,000 that now is worth $600,000 due to a subsidized sometimes crime ridden public development next door.
I cried when I saw that the original plan had 4 bedroom units. That stuff is unheard of here due to how much demand there is for housing. I don't understand why people here in Toronto can be so cruel. It's like their pass time hobby to oppose any development. Tired of hearing all these excuses every time I join a local proposal in my ward. Its tragic when consideration like sunlight and parking for cars get more priority in the city than houses for people. Legit what world do we live in. Also cant recommend HousingNowTO enough. These guys are rockstars.
Rich people will hoard as much wealth as possible, even if it means families won't have adequate housing. All these wealthy NIMBY's really care about is the value of their homes.
4 bedroom units close to a train station and a road with bus service... now you only need a school and a grocery shop there and people would literally kill for that!
The 4 bedroom units may have been removed by the developer when the project was scaled down. 4 br units get less rent per square foot (or meter), so the numbers don't work as well, particularly when the project gets smaller.
@@jaekim6433one look at that neighborhood and it doesn’t look rich. Looks like middle class credit card debt ridden, car loan infested neighborhood. If their property “value” goes down their ability to take out good loans against their equity is lowered. We are addicted to debt.
Also, I think it just takes a few people to gum up the process. It would be an interesting detail to know how many individuals were involved relative to the total area population.
Zoning authority needs to be removed from municipalities. Given that stories like these are common in almost all Canadian municipalities, it's clear that this is a systemic problem.
or attach infrastructure funding from the Federal government with strings attached. No funding for shiny new stuff without meeting certain density and urban dev standards
Single family housing need to be removed in cities. They serve no other purpose than luxury when you could have the same square footage in a luxury mid rise or highrise tower. They are waste of space, space that could go towards improving the quality of life for everyone in the city not just the rich.
there's like this ourobouros of NIMBY logic where - you can't have big towers, they're ugly, they concentrate poverty, all that Pruitt-Igoe stuff - you can't have social housing in normal neighbourhood without giving the neighbours a million chances to say no or cut it back, which they inevitably will - can't put it on faraway greenfield because tbf that's actually bad I guess the Landlordist compromise position is rent assistance to landlords, which, hey, I want free money too!
In the age of remote work (which implies the possibility of remote versions of some types of social work), how bad is a greenfield site, really? Maybe give them new homes there, then have a strategy of expanding the nearby city into the green field overtime so their homes go up in value?
@@ayoutubechannelname because the poor people who would be living there are not the same people who have remote work jobs. Realistically, they work in manual labor or retail, so unless that new housing is accompanied by a massive mass transit system, it simply isn't helpful to the people that needs to be helpful to
@@Joesolo13 How are farms (which fit under the British-derived term “greenfield”) considered habitat? If we want to restore habitat, the problem to address is primarily the vast acreage of farms and, to a lesser extent, busy motorways through remote areas. Dutch style greenhouses are indispensable in that regard, as well as public transit.
Many years ago a neighbour committee was trying to block a proposed townhouse development by complaining about the type of people who would be able to purchase the houses. The starting price of the houses was almost double what I paid for my house less than a decade past. The development was completed.
Man, NIMBYs really get under my skin... great video! I'm curious about your take on Ford's cut & paste of the Greenbelt. When I express concerns to my representatives the answer I get back is that we are expecting an influx of immigrants to Ontario and we need to provide housing for them, but I really doubt the type of development they are planning has any value to new Ontarians. Seems to me there are ample opportunities to densify and improve our city/community centers, especially in cities around Toronto, that would be better suited to providing affordable housing as well as improving infrastructure for everyone in the city. Instead it seems they want to use up all the agricultural and greenspace to build low-density, isolated, car dependent, expensive mcmansions, the type of projects that happen to have the best margins for developers, and the worst impacts on our cities and infrastructure. I'm not opposed to more development, but to strip conservation organizations of any authority in order to facilitate more suburban sprawl seems short-sighted and lazy at best. I guess for new housing It's the path of least resistance - less NIMBYs in rural areas, but I'm certain these houses will not be affordable. Meanwhile in Pickering, we have main roads with incomplete and unsafe sidewalks, no bike route to the GO station, weak local public transit systems, and ever increasing traffic problems. Densifying would at least provide some incentive to make this a livable city, and a lot of the work could be offloaded to developers, but the most common narrative I hear is "more condo towers means more crime". I feel like I'm going insane... sorry for the rant, love your channel!
In a growing region it doesn’t make sense to assume urban boundaries will stay the same forever so we don’t consider the Greenbelt sacrosanct in a way that many others do. With that said, if we’re going to develop some of the land we should at least get a lot of housing out of it (and use the opportunity for better neighbourhood design). So we don’t support the current proposal as we understand it (Paige Saunders did a quick analysis and indeed found that it would be low density sprawl) but we could in theory support a different proposal for something like medium-density mixed-use low-car neighbourhoods.
@@OhTheUrbanity Absolutely! Thank you! I get frustrated that the debate gets reduced down to "more housing" vs. "save the greenbelt"... I'm not opposed to responsibly re-zoning the greenbelt lands, as long as it's with a goal of better cities, not just more unchecked suburban sprawl.
@@OhTheUrbanity This is an awful take. We have gulf courses beside GO stations in this video. Suggesting we should change the urban boundary, in an incredibly environmentally sensitive region that overlaps with a very limited amount of high quality farm land in Ontario, is negligent. The green belt is based on protecting water ways that feed into Ontario Marsh lands and support not only ecosystems, but industries like fishing. There are huge swaths of SFZ in downtown Toronto, literally beside transit stops. Suggesting that should be protected over the greenbelt is the least urbanist argument I've heard.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 Fair points, I agree there are many opportunities to densify within current boundaries, care needs to be taken around waterways to protect sensitive ecosystems, and protecting the agricultural lands we have left is important, and it seems current government disagrees. But as cities continue to grow, eventually urban boundaries will need to as well, and I think it's better that the growth is inside the greenbelt rather than outside where communities will be more isolated, car dependent etc. The key is to make sure the growth happens responsibly, and I don't trust the current government to do so.
@@arden0 Respectfully, I don't agree those boundaries ever need to move. We have huge amounts of SFH to rezone. And we have cities like Kingston and London and Niagara that can be built into their own urban centers and connected by HSR to Toronto very easily. Let along Hamilton and Oshawa and Markham. Making any allowance to expand the boundary is support of low density autocentric development, you don't make your new urban centers on the fringe of the suburbs.
The myth of "consensual" Toronto housing developers: I consent! the millions who want to live there: I consent! Margaret Atwood: I don't! Isn't there someone you forgot to ask? 🤔
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 nah she was a vocal opponent of a tower being built in her neighbourhood a couple of years back, with the usual litany of NIMBY reasoning haha
@@TimTeboner I was actually involved in this (tangentially). The project was a low-rise luxury condo. Atwood promised to drop the case if the design was re-oriented around affordable housing. I don't really have a strong opinion on this case, but the facts have been muddled.
@@johnnycopping2113 to be fair, labeling a development "luxury" housing and saying that your objection is that there are "not enough affordable units" is a classic NIMBY move, just wrapped in language palatable to progressives. It achieves the same ends.
In law there is legislation called anit-SLAPP to prevent lawsuits solely for the purpose of delaying, intimidating and making the defendant waste money. It would be nice to see something similar like anti-NIMBY legislation to prevent bad faith arguments against developments. It's wild to me that people who can't even define "neighborhood character" are allowed to comment on these projects.
A lot of the problem stems from the prevailing cultural narrative over the past several decades about homes as investments and reliable stores of value. And I'm not talking about property hoarders gobbling up multiple units. For most people, the majority of their wealth is tied up in their home, and society has spent their whole life telling them that that's a desirable outcome and the sign of having "made it". Home ownership predicated on stable, high home values is a key part of many people's retirement planning, and homes are the primary vehicle for inheritance in most families. This creates a vicious cycle that presents some really thorny game-theoretic challenges. When you realise how tightly coupled are the values of existing properties to the values of new construction in the area, and you place that in the context of the homes-as-investments narrative, it's hard not to be a bit empathetic with NIMBYs. Don't get me wrong, NIMBYism is a huge problem that's destroying many cities, but it's a collective action problem, not a failure of individual decency. If new, affordable housing is built in the same neighbourhood as the upper-middle class home you worked your whole life to afford, you're going to watch some of the wealth you'd been counting on leaving to your children evaporate overnight. You're going to become locked into your current home, because suddenly it'll no longer have the same value as equivalent homes in other areas, so you can no longer afford to move without accepting a decrease in your standard of living. So it's only natural that people, individually, resist these changes; that's where all of their interests are aligned. It's not an easy problem to solve. The best solution might be to approach housing more like Singapore-not as an investment but as a basic right, where the government owns most of the supply, and you lease from the government-but that's probably politically impossible in most places. Finding ways to recalibrate the system to better align the interests of the city as a whole with the interests of individual homeowners is a difficult challenge, but it's a critical one to tackle if we're going to see the change we need. And it'd be a great video topic!
In the UK, the council housing seemed the best care for, compared to private multifamily housing. But, it means that the government gets to tell you where you can live. There were frequent news stories about people not being able to convince council that they needed to live in that city.
Excellently stated. The problem is that treating a basic human need like a stock investment was always a terrible idea, but moving away from that model will require that people who bought into it lose most of the value they got out of it. To make matters worse, since having a house requires wealth, the people that have them are better able to prevent any changes from being made to the system. It's like trying to get politicians to pass anti-corruption laws.
@@bearcubdaycare tbf we're already told where we can live by a variety of factors. Cost, zoning, regulations (environmental and others), not to mention property rights themselves.
@@pendlera2959 that's the terrifying dilemma we're in. the crazy high cost of housing makes a whole bunch of problems but you can't deny that bringing the cost of housing down also means a whole lot of people would lose a whole lot of money. especially older folks who need it for retirement. but then that would beg the question, if the government increased pension payouts somehow while building affordable housing would that start to resolve the problem better? that's what i'm thinking. another thing to think about is that if the prices go up infinitely the market will crash because at those high price points you'll eventually hit a liquidity crisis since nobody anymore is willing to pay the huge prices associated with that item, e.g. nobody there to sell to.
@@bearcubdaycare The city that strikes the most realistic compromise is probably Vienna. Vienna's housing market would be an improvement for almost anywhere, and they basically push the British council flat model to it's apex. I don't know what the best answer is to the underlying problem here, but I think other cities could approach a market more like Vienna's more incrementally than the radical change that would be needed to imitate Singapore-and Singapore's model has a different set of drawbacks, too. The commoditisation of housing is a deep problem that doesn't admit easy solutions. It needs to be grappled with seriously, and unfortunately, just wringing our hands and imploring people to altruistically vote against their individual interests for the collective good isn't going to cut it. In other words, NIMBYism is a massive problem that can't really be blamed on NIMBYs.
Have you seen CItyNerd's video on urban golf courses? Those satellite pictures of the proposed development really reminded me of that. So much potential.
A lot of it is (rightfully) protected ravine land and at high risk for flooding. But that said, a chunk of it would be prime for some housing, and the rest primed for a megapark.
I'm really excited for the Senakw development in Vancouver. Being built without any of the normal processes since it's on Native land, really shows you what types of density the market would allow without all the red tape and NIMBYs.
The density of that project is on another level. 10 acre site with a future population around 9000 puts it at 230,000 persons per km². It will be up there with the densest administered areas in the world.
@@AppleCheese12345678 Unfortunately, I can’t share your excitement. “High-rises are the lazy architect’s density” - Jan Gehl This project is a prime example of so called “Great Bargain” - it is an attempt to overcompensate artificial land scarcity created in Vancouver by land mismanagement. Density stacking will only inflate land value - making all housing less affordable. This is why projects like this could not resolve affordability problem, the only viable alternative is to up-zone all RS zones (~80% of territory). The only form of housing which could be abundant is market housing. To make market housing affordable we need to make significantly more land available for development. It should not be concentrated - rather dispersed all over the city in a form of missing middle. Kitsilano is a relatively dense community, but it should not be exempt eight. However, we can’t ignore the fact that some of its residents are among top tax payers in this country. Replacing a single family home with a tower we are always driving land values up and at the same time decreasing property tax on a per capita basis. Senakw could be dense, but It can’t be walkable - it is everything but “human scale”, not a “15 minute city” either. There is no infrastructure for proposed 9000 residents: Henry Hudson School is at full capacity already, no daycare facilities, no grocery stores (Nofrills is over 15 minute walk), no healthcare facilities (St. Paul’s Hospital will be relocated), no transportation. Burrard Bridge is not a part of reserve land - and a transit hub on a bridge is a perfect recipe for disaster. City car, previously mentioned in the project proposal, is not happening any time soon because of the Broadway SkyTrain, which is too far to walk. The single proposed street will be packed with delivery vehicles. My best guess - they will end up building parkade at Molson’s land later on. There’s no guarantee that any units will remain rentals and especially “below market rentals”. Nothing could prevent this development from transforming to 100% investment condos at any time - the city has no control. It would likely benefit developers and investors like Westbank, but indigenous people and the city will be left to deal with all the problems. I would rather use this land for waste to energy facility similar to CopenHill. It could cut emissions because all our garbage trucks are now driving to Delta. Produced energy could be used for district heating and EV charging.
@@antonburdin9756 Lots of density and a quick turnaround on the project are probably my top two. While it's possible to get that sort of density elsewhere it can take a real long time to work through the planning process with the city and I really REALLY want Senakw to highlight how drawing out the planning process hurts affordability. They don't have to scrap every bylaw ( though some probably should be ) but they absolutely have to staff up the city departments responsible for approving whether or not a development is in compliance with one bylaw or another.
A city near me used a mall as a transit hub, but it didn't work, as few want to go to the mall. More recently the university has become a bit of a hub, more successfully from what I know. I think that the mall needs to be redeveloped into mostly housing, but it doesn't work as a transit hub before then.
Density stacking will never resolve affordability problem - it inflates land value, making all housings less affordable. If you have land tax it is even worse - towers doesn’t pay much on a per capita bases.
@@antonburdin9756 Demand makes land value increase, not density. Density increases supply. Why would towers not paying as much per capita make affordablilty worse? It means that low density uses are pushed to redevelop, since they pay more tax per capita, and thereby add supply.
American, Canadian and Indian should make it so that the zoning codes and managed at the national level and not the local government to prevent NIMBY movements just like how Japanese government did.
@@shauncameron8390 you did when you let the government do eminent domain with ethnic enclaves to build freeways that tore through downtowns. Such hypocrisy.
While this would in fact take away any power from NIMBYs (but also from reasonable complaints), it wouldn't fix the other issue: The separation of residential and small-scale-business has to go and at least some level of walkability needs to become a protected right. Maybe even a plain ban on developing new areas at the city borders instead of increasing density.
is public transit in quebec (more specifically montreal/quebec city) better than ontario? does the province of quebec have their own version of Go trains? I'm considering moving to either quebec or out the country to france when i finish high school. simply for better public transportation and walkable neighbourhoods.
@@gothamtransitauthority7990 Cant speak about Quebec City, but I have been living in Montreal for 2 years. It is efficient with its exo train service (pretty than the GO train), Metro system and buses not near Île-Ouest. GO Train itself isnt ideal ik buts better than VIA Rail
@@gothamtransitauthority7990 Public transit is good in Montreal. It drops off everywhere else sadly, though some places are really trying to get better service.
NIMBYS: People who refuse to allow anyone to build a better community, while also refusing to go anywhere that requires them to get out of their cars. Nimbys gave us Stroads.
I feel like not all stakeholders have equal voice in this debate. New and protential residents are underrepresented while existing residennts are overrepresented.
It might be interesting to compare the concern for property values caused by changes to the neighbourhood among home owners in countries where people move a lot (e.g. US) to home owners in countries where people buy a house once and rarely move after that (apart from medical reasons at old age perhaps).
I think many of the NIMBYs in the USA are people who do not move a lot. Anecdotally, most I’ve seen at local meetings are people who introduce themselves by staging how long they’ve lived in the neighborhood, which is typically measured in decades rather than years.
The town I live in has had success getting affordable housing built, through churches and Habitat for Humanity, multiple projects completed in the last few years. I think that having it driven through churches and charities frames the question right. But pleasant buildings also help. A large apartment complex built near me a few years back is quite pleasant looking, well tended, borders a multiuse pathway, and friends who've lived there rate it highly. The affordable projects that have been built around town recently all look good, and have all been well tended.
The exact opposite happened near me, below market apartments were built downtown and the property management company isn't really maintaining the property or some illicit activities by tenants in the parking area. Also habitat built a home in a neighborhood that is about 700 square feet 2/3? bedroom, totally out of character to the homes nearby (it's essentially a mobile home mixed in with stick builts ). Then the tenants completely trashed the property and the yard creating an ongoing eyesore.
Boomers: "The younger gens are lazy! Why can't they move out of their parents' homes, or stop living with roommates?" Also boomers: "NOT IN MY BACKYARD! DON'T BUILD MORE HOUSING IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD! RHEEE!"
Why do some people keep bringing up age where all ages have all different views. You end up ostracizing people who agree with you. Age is something we can't control so why browbeat people for it? The group you're talking about is Nimby (not in my backyard). It's in the title of their video.
@a it's because the older gens are the ones with the most power, money, and influence. They are also the ones who constantly reject re-zoning laws that would allow for more new multi-family housing units to be built in lieu of new. single family housing being built.
The constant vague remarks about 'saving the character of the neighbourhood/community' without specifics really just feels like a not so subtle way of saying 'we don't want the poors to live nearby.' I live directly across the street from public housing and I've never had a problem in ten years. Also, I sincerely doubt all of the homeowners at 90 Dale are looking to sell anytime soon so their hand-wringing about property values is just them making up things to be worried about
I think that the german model - when we still used to build social housing which we unwisely decided to stop a few decades ago - is the best one. Learning from historic problems caused by concentrating primarily "poor" people into a building/city area, the german model in its final years instead build mixed units aimed at different demographics: The idea was that to avoid "ghettoisation" you have to make sure that not only "poor" people go there but that also middle class and yes, even upper middle class people dwell there. This avoids the poor reputation of certain non mixed areas and as such also benefits poorer residents who suffer far less from not getting a job because of their adress. It also stabilizes the socio demographics of the area, avoiding most of the effects that make existing neighbours repellent on the idea of social housing. Having middle class citizens living there also makes it much more difficult to cut away at the services offered by the city there. It is easy to neglect citizens who often dont vote or even arent allowed to vote in local elections... but as any consilor will attest you, pissing off the middle class is generally shied away from... because those people if sufficiently angry can and will make your life very very miserable and in fact are often quite capable of ending your political career.
This is just painful to watch, a bunch of idiot neighbours using whatever nonsense to block housing, yet potential future residents get no voice. Ontario's planning system, even post Bill 23, are still very broken.
The size of the golf course across the highway pisses me off. Golf is suck a waste of space. Imagine how many units could be built there, but instead its being used so some rich people can hit a little ball with a metal stick
Half the price of a Toronto home is due to regulation, the other half is genuine value from being close to important stuff and the convenience of living in the city.
Great video as usual. Speaking of affordable housing; I have good news to share. The Lutheran Development Group (a non-profit property developer focusing on affordability) recently got a nearly 2 million dollar grant from the state to help their rehab efforts! I was very surprised yet encouraged Missouri finally did something to help address the issue here in the Lou! :]
Thank you for this well-researched video. This is an undeniable crisis and you highlight very the many subtle and insidious ways NIMBY-ism is exacerbating this crisis. What I find to be more frustrating than the obvious hypocrisy and selfishness that fuels this way of thinking, is just how unaware I believe these individuals truly are. Either that, or they are so incapable of having empathy for the needs of fellow human beings. I am certain at least half of these opponents have children of their own and yet are advocating in exact contradiction to their children's needs.
Thank you! Unfortunately I think motivated reasoning is very powerful. When people don't want their neighbourhood to change, it's really easy to convince themselves of things like "well, building more housing won't actually help the housing crisis", and so on.
8:13 not to mention the high quantity of units would likely decrease the market rate as well, leading to less need for the affordable units. I'm still in the decommodify housing camp, but until then, we need to do stuff like this.
If memory serves, a similar thing happened in Montreal a few years back. Though from what I recall, mid-constructions, the contractor decided to not build the community center and HLMs because they wouldn't be profitable enough. A fight with the city ensued for which I am not aware of the result.
Now I wonder if we also have NIMBYs like that here in Austria....affordable public housing is so common here and spread out around the city that I think it is more accepted here. I understand that no one wants tall buildings when you live in a single family home. But public housing here is where a lot of middle class families live, so I think we are more used to living around others from different economic backgrounds. Even though I grew in public housing I never considered that this might something that is looked down on elsewhere. Not saying it is perfect here (owning a home still is very expensive) but when I look at other countries it seems like we do something right when it comes to rentals.
What the NIMBYs really want is exclusivity. The trick is drawing them out enough to get them to forget to euphemize and to say the quiet part out loud.
You need to remove all the ability of people to dictate what others can do with a property. Get rid of all the rules that allow a lawsuit that lets people stop construction for selfish reasons.
when you live in a place where a sprawling set of small munis refuse to allow greater density (by adjusting zoning along with some of the other means mentioned in this video), you get stifled growth eventually primarily dramatic wage inflation because of high cost of housing with such constrained supply. only so many people (or for so long) will be able afford such inflation because eventually it will encourage them to sell and move out (probably far far away where cost of living is lower).
I love that "Loss of green space" was in their reasoning to stop this. Likely a fallacious excuse by the same kind of people who want endless suburbs and parking lots.
I think preservation of greenspace is important. When you increase density, reducing greenspace is a surefire way to make sure other people fight new density as hard as possible. I'm sure these people would be just as happy to ban immegrantion to Toronto or ban all new building so their property continues to go up in value.
I live about 20 minutes from this site, and there is absolutely nothing unique or characteristic about this neighbourhood. Maybe, boring suburban wasteland with vast tracts of undeveloped land surrounded by nothingness. Which if you think about it is characteristic of Scarborough, better not change that with homes and people and new business. This is maddening! There is so much potential in Scarborough and it just lays undeveloped compared to Toronto despite how much land and roads and infrastructure that are there just ready for people to build there lives on in Canada's biggest city!
Kind of depressing to watch through to the end. Vox recently did a similar piece about the high cost of building affordable housing in California. Thanks for doing this. 😮
Woah you guys linked an article from Tom Mrakas, mayor of my hometown! He's honestly one of the better mayors in Ontario and really has done a lot of good for Aurora!
Vacant land, beside train tracks, beside a 17 story tower, 200m from a BRT line, 500m from a very high capacity train line platform. That whole neighbourhood should be zoned to allow for medium/high density development. Enjoy your huge jump in land value as developers will buy it from you.
Hi. Your video got me thinking about how homeowners are way too much net worth tied up in their homes, and are not at all invested in the wider community. I think that causes misaligned incentives. I feel like we ought to find a way to get people to be more invested (financially) in their community, not just their house. I wrote a blog post about it, and I left the link here in a comment, but I think UA-cam might delete it automatically because it's an external link. Oh well. If you are interested in the post I can share it.
Just build more housing, affordable or not. If you couple that with restrictions on foreign buyers and short-term rentals (AirBnB), you’ll have wealthier buyers moving out of apts to take luxury units. And you’ll have more housing for everyone in the end. We get to caught up in making it income restricted & it slows the pace of housing growth dramatically.
2:15 That's the worst example here: It's often said that appartements are only good if you don't have kids (though this also is associated with other undetached houses) even though this isn't an inherit feature but the fact that this building had them planned but got shut them down really is a self-fulfilling prophecy or even sabotage depending on the motive.
Most kids growing up in a "Commie Block" neighborhood would disagree. There is nothing better as a kid to have your friends close by, a place to kick a ball and some bushes and trees to have a base in. Well, it used to be the best.
Honestly there should be a limit to the amount NIMBY's are allowed to complain. Give them 6 months, and that's it. No more. Also end the existence of the yellow zone regulations in Toronto, which removes at least half the power of the NIMBYs ("the character of the neighbourhood")
@MW Mobile look my frustration comes from the fact that housing in the city of Toronto is treated like a luxury rather than a necessity. The examples you just mentioned can be approved, though imo, they should only be approved so long as there's housing on top of them You are right that discussion and difference are important to democratic institutions But all parties must enter in good faith Most of the time the attitude on display here is NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE GO AWAY There's a reason I say yes there needs to be time to voice concerns But when there is a housing shortage to the point of causing increasing homelessness and probably tipping the scales in terms of violence on the ttc, the calculus of those discussions shift
As a Malaysian who lives in Kuala Lumpur, with 6 condo blocks totalling 7000+ units being built in my vicinity which will have access to 2 current LRT stations and 2 future MRT stations , this is absolutely infuriating and frustrating. Not everything is great in the first world.
I'm not really into jumping toward high density or high rise buildings just to pack an area either, I would prefer more medium sized, mixed and improved city layouts in general, but it seems the opposition just doesn't like the idea of more and/or poor people in the area at all. Too concerned about their inconveniences like losing "views" (a highway and a row of trees blocking a golf course), having neighbors (socialization woes), or having competition (can't have them lowering property values).
Lived there in '89 when they built 90 Dale Avenue ..... on my old BMX trail. Finding sympathy for those guys a bit hard to come by. Also, the "proposed" short path to the GO station has sort-of existed since at least the 1970s.
@@OhTheUrbanity It can get pretty muddy. Been a year to two since I've looked. Metrolinx briefly blocked it under the bridge in the 2010s, then moved the fencing to just cover the tracks and leave the path open.
Current tax and land use policies benefit only investors. Artificial land scarcity and density stacking will only inflate land value - making all housing less affordable.This is why projects like this could not resolve affordability problem, the only viable alternative is to up-zone all RS zones (~80% of territory), and it is worth doing if we want to resolve affordability crisis.The only form of housing which could be abundant is market housing. To make market housing affordable we need to make significantly more land available for development. It should not be concentrated - rather dispersed all over the city in a form of missing middle. It could destroy some land value - good for affordability but could be problematic for economy. “Pace of zoning change” policy aligned with population changes could prevent land from further appreciation (some kind of Goldilocks rule).
If all the people who opposed developments were required to pay the full price of the infrastructure their neighborhood requires AND were forced to help pay a part of the fees that they cause to developers (with the fees being reimbursed if the justification had merit), a lot of NIMBYs would be begging to have more people around them to pay the bill. Hard to admit, but humans are remarkable at shooting themselves in the foot to avoid a 1 in a million chance to be struck by lightning...
I find it strange that America your land property is yours and it's valued very highly to the individual and their rights for it. Why is it people think that they own their neighbor's property and think that they can control that too? Not in my backyard
I think this could work, but also worry that it could backfire. They could use the protests as a talking point, saying "look what kinds of people want to move into the proposed development! These people are making our lives hell now, imagine what it will be like when they live here!" I don't know though. The benefits of the protests probably outweigh the potential costs
People who can't afford housing should just start living in their cars and tents on the street in this neighbourhood. The residents can either accept the development or accept people living in cars and tents on their street. Either way, people have to live somewhere.
@@sangokudbz79 I think you've missed the point. The protests would be to stop residents from blocking the construction in the first place. You wouldn't be protesting while the construction is happening.
One thing to remember is golf courses are often in flood plains, which is why Florida is so full of them. So it may not be possible or smart to develop there. That said, I agree it's a waste, at minimum those should be parks and I'm sure some level of development is achievable.
@@WillmobilePlus If we vote to elect politicians that enact policies that limit the ability of a small group of selfish NIMBYs to prevent necessary housing that benefits the entire city, that's still democracy.
@@WillmobilePlus Some NIMBYism is fine. I certainly don’t fault people who protest or protested the construction of new freeways or widening of existing ones through urban neighborhoods. That’s not what this is about though. It’s about affordable housing and these NIMBYs are just being selfish.
@@WillmobilePlus The problem is the people are denying other people access to a basic need. Imagine if we let business owners vote on how many new business licenses could be given out per year and for what - we'd have nothing but monopolies. If people are treating houses like investments, then they need to be limited in their ability to prevent others from entering the market.
@@WillmobilePlus If the monstrosity is the only option for that community, then yes, they should have no right to prevent it from being built. I mean, sure they have the right to complain, but their complaints should not have legal weight. It's like public schooling or water treatment - if it's needed for the good of community, you shouldn't get to prevent it from being built just because it's ugly or might hurt your own property values. Because property values are dependent on artificially low supply, all new housing is a threat to homeowners, and therefore they should not have free reign to prevent new supply or else all of society will suffer for their benefit. Perhaps a compromise would be for the city to say "we're going to build X amount of new housing whether you like it or not. However, you can decide from these preapproved areas where it should be built, and choose from these preapproved designs." So people can have some say in the building project, but not actually tank the project. It boils down to corruption: property owners treat their properties as investments, and are taking advantage of current laws to harm others. There are no easy or nice solutions: if they won't play nice and let other people join in, then you have to treat them like colluding price-fixing businessmen and stop them by force. Renters might not count as entering the market, but if people are forced to overpay for rentals when supply is limited, they can never build up the money to buy. Thus, limiting the supply of rentals is a method for keeping people out of the market.
I feel that people are painting this resistance out as a bit of Downton Abbey type snobbery. We often forget that many people living in these areas are working families that are mortgaged to within an inch of their lives. They are worried for their future, not their social standing. I live in a very mixed area of Toronto (that was always mixed) which is mostly great but it is also undeniable that affordable housing will bring with it a small number of people that will cause a lot of problems and drag entire neighbourhoods down. The affordable aspect is obviously irrelevant. It is the drug addict that breaks into your garage and pulls the fire alarm at 3am (twice a month ...) before ODing behind the grade school that is a problem and you usually get one or two of those along. If you can fix that I think most resistance will go away.
Zoning rules stopping density construction should be taken away from municipalities. The fact you own a piece of land shouldn’t give you monopoly of what can be done in land next to you that you don’t own. If you don’t want a land to be used for a condo tower then go buy it.
Low-density housing is the most highly subsidized housing in the country. The infrastructure costs are huge, and even if some initial infrastructure comes from the developer the long-term maintenance is killing municipal budgets. The NIMBYs are the second biggest welfare recipients around, below the corporate welfare bums.
People in Scarborough: "We always get the short end of the stick, no one ever wants to develop in Scarborough." Also People in Scarborough: "We don't want new development."
If we're going to do more housing in urban areas, we need to avoid the type of problems like Cabrini Green in Chicago and the poorly built and designed apartment tower blocks in London (e.g., the Grenfell Tower fire).
I swear the same people who complain about new housing construction in their area are the same people that buy up local houses to turn into short term rentals so they can make "passive income" to pay for their big single family home.
I think when a lot of people hear 'affordable housing' they think 'slum'. There is some precedence for this, there are several postwar housing schemes I know of which, while intended to give people better housing, ended up becoming somewhat dystopian. The tendency for developers to seemingly try to make these things as hideous as possible doesn't help matters. This particular proposal is no exception, the design could be far more attractive. If you want to get approval, build something that people will want to look at, give it a bit of class. Also give it lots of insulation, there is nothing affordable about a cheap house that is cold and damp and costs a fortune to heat.
Of course, if you used the cheapest building and maintenence and stuff everyone in there that has no work, you end up with a slum. And of course, you could also make a nice mix of cheap 1-rooms, expensive luxury lofts and flats for families in one bigger house.
yes. there's also other nice things that could be done, like not putting all the amenities together in one room. 'O block' buildings often apparently stank of piss because there was one bathroom in each building and people would instead just opt to empty their bladders in the hallways. so, don't make it a shit experience just because it's subsidized housing, and also, and this sounds counter-intuitive, but add some market-rate housing into the affordable developments. mixing social classes prevents crime from multiplying.
While issues of design and construction are legitimate concerns, I always find it completely ironic when people living in neighborhoods filled with cooking-cutter tract homes such as these expect gold-plated designs next to them. The rest of the neighborhood is highly deficient in terms of both architecture and urban design. I get that it is a bit subjective and we SHOULD demand greater design standards in ALL types of housing, but the bar is generally set so much lower for single-family housing subdivisions than new multi-family projects.
This may seem counter intuitive but adding less affordable housing might increase supply overall. By having a lower percentage in each development there would be more cross subsidy, better mixing of different social classes (lower risk of ghettoisation), and it may be easier to get more projects approved and built. More supply=lower cost, if lots of homes get built (instead of being stuck in the planning process), they become more affordable. It would be interesting to compare this development to ones which have been approved and see what the differences are.
Still have Twitter? Vote for us in an extremely important YIMBY Twitter bracket: twitter.com/YIMBYLAND/status/1641093045432221698 (or don't, it's not actually that important)
Normally I wouldn't be very upset by this revision. There is still a high density of rental units. However, the proximity to the train station changes that. Anything within a 15 minute walk to a GO station should receive expedited review and should be protected from neighborhood objections. If you live in a low density neighborhood near a GO station, you need to move.
So if I live in a low density neighbourhood and don't want to move I should fight tooth and nail to prevent a GO station from being built within a 15 minute walk of my home.
@@studentofsmith Lolz to your user name, here are some Adam Smith Quotes for you. “Ground rents are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Ground rents are, therefore, perhaps a species of revenue which best bear to have a particular tax imposed upon them.” “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.” “A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground.”
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 Adam Smith also saw production in agricultural terms and concluded that doctors were not productive because they didn't produce anything. But you're not addressing my point which is the opposition to GO stations that will be generated once people realize densification will follow.
@@studentofsmith Its a fair point, although he was right about landlords. I think thats really fine as a result. For one, you can do what Ford did with rent restriction, and say this policy is only true for existing stations. Secondly, for the most part, stations already (or are currently being expanded to) form a pretty wide ranging network. Expanding into more rural areas past Bowmanville or Hamilton etc doesn't really have a base to push back. Third, it's much easier for Metrolinks as a government agency to cram a project through than dozens of individual developers fighting their own projects. Plus doctors are in fact useless.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 "Plus doctors are in fact useless." You've been making good, logical points; why would you discredit yourself by saying something like this?
Shelter is a human need and should be community owned, maintained and operated without for profit corporation ownership permitted. Democratic use of land is the only fair way and NIMBYs concerned should be listened to then promptly ignored if it prevents development of the community. The desire to maintain the character of a neighbourhood is not a reason to stop community development and NIMBYs have no real clue what will be beneficial to their property value.
Thank you for contextualizing the comparisons for the sake of form factor. Likely out of scope, but what of the atomizing nature of high rise units (12+ storeys) from a community perspective?
Great video. NIMBYISM at its best.Bottom line is every homeowner is supportive of public housing unless its in their neighborhood or when its time to sell their house. People are extremely selfish and in the end no one acts in the interest of others or the greater good.
@@shauncameron8390 Because, the ridiculous housing prices in Toronto and Vancouver has been caused by the government who restricted buidling of housing affordable and non affordable. This has skyrocketed the house prices and consequently the rents too. Its not fair for anyone if a house cost 1.5M and they are making a median salary in Canada of 44K. This means 95% of the population will never be able to buy a house, why the greedy property owners are charging extortion rents. This a house of cards that is going to colllapse once the immigration of 300-500K of immigrants is cut off!!! Only the immigrants arriving with suitcases of money are buying $1.5M + houses and condos. God forbid you were born in this country and make a crappy median salary, and have to pay canadian level taxes that do NOT have to paid in other countries
@@mateofernando5066 66% of ordinary Canadians are home-owners. So's who's this 95%? The rents are no more extortionate than the property taxes, mortgages and interest, etc. the property-owners pay to greedy government and banks.
NIMBY's are such a cancer in cities. the rising cost in cities and criminalization of homelessness is making them completely unlivable wastelands. i have completely given up on my hope of ever owning a home or any hope of stability.
If the proposed new building looked like Chateau Frontenac there would be a lot less opposition. People don't like ugly buildings. Design pretty ones and a lot of the nimby complaints go away.
As far back as 2002 it was clear from public consultations that neighbours opposed medium- or high-density residential as well as affordable housing. They preferred it to stay undeveloped or at most be more low-density housing.
@@OhTheUrbanity Have you heard of a place called Poundbury in the UK? It is a housing project built by Prince Charles, it has more social housing than a normal development, the social housing is high quality and indistinguishable from the homes built to be sold. Over the last 20 years the rich are willing to pay an average 30% per sqft more to live in Poundbury, next to poor people than in any of the nearby developments. Because it's a beautiful place. So of course every modern architect absolutely hates it. Architects would rather die than build beauty, the rest of us would rather kill the architects than allow any more of their dystopian creations get built.
@@disposabull "Architects would rather die than build beauty, the rest of us would rather kill the architects than allow any more of their dystopian creations get built." It don't think it's fair to blame architects; a lot of them are artists at heart and deeply crave the opportunity to create something beautiful. But they're limited by what developers are willing to pay for, and usually that's cheap, bland, cookie cutter crap. Good designs cost money; Prince Charles clearly didn't hire the cheapest architect or only pay for the bare minimum of exterior ornamentation. In fact, I bet if the "low income" housing plans looked better than the local norm, people would oppose it because they would hate the idea of poor people living in nicer housing than them.
@@pendlera2959 The public supported the Prince, the architects eviscerated him. An architect shouldn't be "an artist" that seeks to challenge people. An architect isn't a builder, isn't a structural engineer. An architect is supposed to create beauty. It's literally the only reason the job exists. But instead, architects build dystopian hellscapes that traumatise people and create dysfunction.
@@disposabull I'll admit, I don't know the specifics of the Poundbury project. (Though I intend to look up more about it - thanks for bringing it up! Very interesting.) But I'm an artist and I've interacted with a lot of other artists, many of whom want to become architects. Most of us want to make the world a more beautiful or at least more visually interesting place. "An architect shouldn't be "an artist" that seeks to challenge people." The whole "art should challenge people" is a stereotype that only applies to a tiny amount of artists. Those kinds of artists are more like visual philosophers and it's not fair to act like all artists think that way. I agree that an architect should try to create beauty, and I think most want to. But consider how much backlash people get just for painting their house a bright color. Is it really so hard to imagine that kind of intolerance of deviation from the norm routinely coming from low-cost housing developers?
The issue is the term itself. "Affordable" implies cheap, meant for low-income people. Often it implies that the residents are living, in part, on other people's backs through government give-ways. It spawns a host of issues, real or imagined, in the minds of people living nearby. These people probably won't openly say, "We don't want poor people living near us" (NIMBY exemplified), so they come up with a host of other reasons for their opposition, some of which are valid. For example, such housing tends to be built as cheaply as possible and is very often inadequately maintained, so it starts looking rundown very quickly. Many residents of such housing have life challenges that shift their focus away from caring for their dwelling, further contributing to the run-down appearance. Much of our existing housing becomes more "affordable" IF people are realistic in their expectations. A typical single-family home becomes "affordable" if it's shared by several working single people or even two families. Young married couples can choose to remain childless until they can afford a home large enough to house children. Elderly people should consider sharing housing with other elderly people. Or, like in many Eastern cultures, people should consider multi-generational arrangements. I know these concepts won't be popular, but truth is rarely well-received these days.
The proposed development that is the focus of this video is an apartment complex; upkeep and maintenance would be handled by the building management, not individuals with "life challenges." The proposal, from the beginning, included affordable housing units as a minority of all units, most of which would be market-rate or higher and presumably in the same buildings, so the affordable housing in this case wouldn't be any more "cheaply built" than ordinary apartment housing. NIMBY opposition, by increasing the non-construction costs of any housing development, ironically pressures developers to build more cheaply in order to keep the project financially feasible. These other reasons do not apply here, and I would imagine, don't apply in a lot of other cases, although I will allow that they might be behind the stereotype-fueled opposition to developments that include affordable housing. There are so many points I find frustrating about this situation, but one of the most galling is the fact that the NIMBY opposition managed to eliminate the four-bedroom units for families. Splitting rent with more and more roommates and housing entire families in one bedroom is a short-term "solution" that proposes we accept a relentless contraction of our private living spaces so that, e.g., the NIMBY neighbors (the owners of the multi-story condo tower next door 4:59 ) don't have a multi-story apartment tower "changing the character of their community."
@@skoosharama Every case of proposed "affordable" housing is different, but they all carry the _poor people moving in_ connotation, and that is the primary though usually unspoken objection. Even when such housing is centrally maintained, it will not get proper attention when its residents are not fully paying for said maintenance. Shared arrangements are a historical solution with long-term viability. Not long-term for a given individual or family necessarily, but for people as they enter and work their way through a demographic/economic cadre. The "modern" challenge to what has always worked is the now pervasive "I should be able to have exactly what I want right now and someone else should pay for it" mentality.
@@rangersmith4652 Instead of demanding that poor people accept that they need to share tighter and lower quality housing, why not demand that businesses and landlords share the wealth they've been hoarding through low wages and high rent? Let's do some math: the average grocery stocker stocks about 60 cases per hour. Each case has about 12 items in it. That's 720 items per hour. The US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, or just over one penny per item stocked. If you wanted to pay each stocker $50 an hour, you'd have to raise the price of each product by a whopping 6 cents. The reason people can't afford to live on their own is because they're being underpaid and because landlords and homeowners are using politics to keep rents and house prices higher than they would otherwise be. It's not "I should be able to have exactly what I want right now and someone else should pay for it"; it's "I'm contributing a lot more value to society than I'm getting out of it, and that needs to change."
@@pendlera2959 I'm opposed to government mandates regarding wages, period. If workers think they're underpaid, that they are "contributing a lot more value to society than [they are] getting out of it, and that needs to change," they should talk to their bosses about a wage increase and explain why they're worth it. Or they can attain skills that will get them a better-paying job. There are lots of ways to do that. Let's do some more math. If you raise the price of every grocery item by $.06, and the average family buys 100 grocery items per week, that's $6.00 per week or roughly $25 per month added to every grocery bill. And it's not just groceries. All prices go up in kind. But it doesn't end with the shelf stocker. If you pay a grocery stocker $50/hr, his or her supervisor certainly deserves more than that. Tack that wage increase onto the grocery price. And the manager should be earning more than the supervisor. Tack that wage increase onto the grocery price. And the cashiers will get the increase as well. Tack that wage increase onto the grocery price. Now, with just three additional people who must be paid more (let's simplify it by assuming that same .06 per item covers each increase), the aforementioned family's monthly grocery has increased by $100. And again, since mandating that grocery workers get $50/hr will mean all other minimum wage workers get it as well, all other prices will also rise proportionally. Forcing an increase in the lowest wage forces increases in all wages, adding to the "wealth" of everyone, inflating the supply of money even more than government is already doing, and driving inflation higher. Or business owners can't pay the higher mandatory minimum and remain viable, so they lay people off to keep their total payroll in check, or they raise their prices to maintain their profit margin, or they close up shop altogether. In all of these scenarios, people lose jobs, prices increase, and the few people who get paid more have no more buying power than they had before because the increased supply of money has inflated the price of everything. Stocking grocery shelves isn't meant to be a career; it's meant to be a first job or supplemental job. It's the same for almost all no/low-skill jobs. But let's say the value of a shelf stocker is deemed the same as, say, a platoon sergeant or a registered nurse. It's arguably an easier job that requires no schooling or special training and carries much lower potential liability, so why would _anyone_ choose the military or nursing when grocery shelf stocking pays the same?
@@rangersmith4652 Are you opposed to government regulations and bureaucratic processes getting in the way of housing developers building enough housing to meet market demand? Because that is what this video is all about. Single-unit zoning is heavy-handed government regulation. NIMBYs are exploiting the approval and appeals process set up by government bureaucrats and politicians to tie the hands of housing builders and property owners. They even use the rhetoric of class warfare (when it suits them), invoking the spectre of the big for-profit developer heartlessly seeking profits by steamrolling over the ordinary people of the neighborhood. The families who don't get new homes due to their opposition go unmentioned in this telling of the tale, of course.
People want guarantee of luxury in the new building, because those who already have flats would like to move to a newer, more luxurious one and rent their old flat for insane amount of money.
Like you two, I also left Toronto for Montreal. It was the best decision I could have made. Toronto is a city that fears innovative ideas and anything that doesn’t support the 1%. Unfortunately, given the city has had its housing crisis and high rating on the unaffordability index for quite some years now, I can’t see there being a change. At the end of the day, the policies that politicians make are the direct result of the tolerance of the jurisdiction’s people. People in Toronto don’t stand up against this problem and in fact, their approval of ridiculous urban planning projects is indicative of their unwillingness for it to change. Good riddens, Toronto!
i wish we would normalize social housing that's not bound by profitability and allow governments to build it easier. in some places (like vienna and singapore) it is normal for pretty much anyone who wants to be able to live in public housing (like everyone but the richest 20%, not just a neglected place to put poor people) which improves personal finances (and by extension the economy and mental health and staves off widespread homelessness and addiction) and also helps keep shelter from becoming a commodity and trading asset who's value needs to grow indefinitely to satisfy investment. they can actually be really nice neighbourhoods with nice places to live and thrive, unlike what some people would have you believe about social housing. other non-market housing like co-ops can also be very good especially when they have their initial costs and property taxes subsidized and with low interest rates
YES I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE DON'T REALIZE THE PRIVATE MARKET WILL NEVER SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. THEY CAN BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION BUT THEY WILL NOT BE THE ONLY SOLUTION. GOVERNMENT HOUSING WILL NEED TO BE DONE!!!! Gahd dammit!!! B - I - N - G - O ‼️
It’s funny how the say “unique character of neighbourhoods” yet almost every suburban neighbourhood looks exactly the same. Detached houses with roads and driveways and nothing else around can’t have any character
id argue something akin to a lawn tax, i dont think government backed affordable housing would help because it would just use scarce and increase the prices due to messing with supply and demand. The solution would be to tax unused spaces and legalize all kinds of new housing projects as well as BANNING protest of new private development of any size, if someone wants to build a dozen shacks on their lawn let them do it
Hmmm I kinda like that. make it a very high tax on underutilized land. I dont think we schould ban protesting city leaders can simply ignor it. The problem is the NIMBYs will then sue the developer ussualy on some old enviromental law that really has nothing to do with it but costs alot and delays the build enough. Getting rid of alot of these enviromental laws or atleast making them updated and more specific and/or not allowing NIMBYs to have standing to sue. I think this is more of a problem in american but think its still a big issue in Canada.
@@Ryanrobi legally consider such cases frivolous and grounds for prison for life for that that organize them. im also not entirely against just jailing anyone who protests more development
Another factor not mentioned in the video is the demand side of the equation. The Federal government of Canada doesn't match immigration to housing supply. Hundreds of even thousands of homes cannot keep up with the Million people that Canada welcomed in 2023.
People shouldn't have a say in how land that they have no ownership stake in is developed, managed or maintained. It inevitably results in NIMBY policies that create a land cartel between city and owners that causes persistent shortages in housing. Every city engaging in NIMBY policy deserves bankruptcy.
Special thanks to HousingNowTO for giving us a tour of affordable housing sites in Toronto and providing some of the resources we used to make this video! Follow them on Twitter (twitter.com/HousingNowTO) and check out their Toronto affordable housing tracker (housingnowto.com).
The audacity it takes to demand a smaller building and then complain there isn't enough affordable housing in the building, resulting in 0 affordable housing being built so far
How’s it goin, fellow bots? Er, uh… I mean, “beep boop beep boop”🤖
Ask them if they would prefer more homeless in their neighborhoods.
@@Acidlib ?
@@Acidlib Hah. Removed them!
Basically that is what NIMBYs do in the west coast all the time. Like screw everyone's housing as long as my real estate values continue to rise.
I shit you not, at the area i lived in, the condo board actively opposed the new condos being proposed there because it would 'ruin the view over the golf course' and then they also opposed it because the golf course would be turned into a public park and returned to nature, and their complaint was it would have 'too many animals'.... TOO MANY ANIMALS? actually hilariously depressing.
edit - This is the DVP and Eglinton in Toronto if anyone was wondering where, which seems apt for the location of this video aswell.
NIMBYs will go to no end to oppose a project or a program that they deem threatening to their status quo.
I heard of a similar case in an area I used to live in -- rich NIMBYs opposed nature trails being developed because they believed it would "attract criminals."
too many animals managing your condo they mean
Thats their argument, not their reason. It would lower the value of the building during a rental crisis. Less properties nearby means high as they want prices.
You can't win with these people
Imagine if we let business owners vote on how many new business licenses could be given out per year and for what - we'd have nothing but monopolies. If people are treating houses like investments, then they need to be limited in their ability to prevent others from entering the market.
I completely agree. NIMBYs have vested interests. They're just as bad as lobbyists. Thing is we are talking about older generations that bought into the debt game whereas the younger ones have no concept of it. NIMBYs will actually be financially ruined if they're reverse mortgages go bust.
BINGO
In other words, too much weight is given to neighbourhood opinion in land zoning / planning / construction and too little weight is given to non-landowners. Landowners and homeowners somehow got secret extra votes in urban / country planning, making the "democracy" similar to for-profit corporation in this aspect.
@@billyswong Not extra votes; the rich are the majority oppressing the poor. It's like racism but about money rather than skin.
@@billyswong This isn't really true in the same sense. Home owning isn't the same as the per dollar "vote" we have in shareholders in capitalism. While homeowners can and do price people out so only more affluent people can effectively "vote" it would be bizarre if people who aren't vested in a community could vote on how an area is planned. And again unlike corporations with monopolies that are beholden to shareholders that are voting by the dollar amount you can just move to a different area. The reason why we have to take these "extra steps" is because the alternative is getting rid of local autonomy. You really think having a central authority is automatically better? It's true that where housing works we might see central authority but that doesn't mean central authority will automatically give us good planning. It's inherently anti-democratic. Instead we need a community where everyone is on the same page with the same incentives to support housing abundance. Then everyone would want to live in such a place and then places that are gentrified shitholes with houses that are a century old they bought for a million dollars won't matter because no one will ever want to buy there. The home owners will change their tune quick. Plus then the "lost value" can be reflected in new home owners paying less for homes so they can instead use that money to make real improvements instead of speculate.
We're dealing with an extremely similar situation with NIMBYs protesting the development of an abandoned golf course in Denver.
cities need to straight-up ignore what neighbours say when it comes to affordable housing, public transit expansion, etc.. democracy doesn't function properly when everyone is uninformed, selfish, and classist.
Seriously. It’s just people who want to regulate their way into more valuable houses without actually producing anything of value on their own.
The problem is that city politicians are in on the scheme, too.
Technically it isn’t the NIMBY’s land so as long as they can somehow bully them harder, maybe by institutionally devaluing there opinions or making the definition of things like “stress” less favorable to NIMBYs, other parties are free to do whatever it wants on its land, especially if it means creating a lot of housing
Exactly. Part of living in a free society means you can't dictate how others use their land and how they live their life. NIMBYism is a fundamentally anti-freedom ideology.
I wouldn't personally say ignore, note that there was one and then file it away sure.
The worst thing is: The longer a project is drawn out in this way, the more expensive the units are going to get because the investory have to make back more money.
If every neighborhood rejects affordable housing than they aren't unique in character. They are just trying to be the same as every other suburban neighborhood so their home values don't get negatively affected by "undesirables" living near them.
Home values shouldn’t matter. A home is to live in but we have normalized treating homes as trade-able commodities.
That myth that introducing new housing into neighborhoods, affordable or not, negatively affects property values irritates me to no end. If anything, building new housing in neighborhoods may actually INCREASE property values for existing homeowners. So NIMBYs and other "concerned" homeowners should if anything be supportive of new housing and transit, etc. Mixed income, transit accessible, and pedestrian friendly neighborhoods are the most desirable places to live anyway from a land value perspective.
It's code phrases. What they actually don't want is poor people. They don't want drug addicts and losers milling about, only other rich people.
@@harizotoh7 Probably good reason not to want to live near drug addicts... Many are a danger to themselves and to society.
@@musicotensai sure tell that to someone with a mortgage on a property for $800,000 that now is worth $600,000 due to a subsidized sometimes crime ridden public development next door.
I cried when I saw that the original plan had 4 bedroom units. That stuff is unheard of here due to how much demand there is for housing. I don't understand why people here in Toronto can be so cruel. It's like their pass time hobby to oppose any development. Tired of hearing all these excuses every time I join a local proposal in my ward.
Its tragic when consideration like sunlight and parking for cars get more priority in the city than houses for people. Legit what world do we live in. Also cant recommend HousingNowTO enough. These guys are rockstars.
Rich people will hoard as much wealth as possible, even if it means families won't have adequate housing. All these wealthy NIMBY's really care about is the value of their homes.
4 bedroom units close to a train station and a road with bus service... now you only need a school and a grocery shop there and people would literally kill for that!
The 4 bedroom units may have been removed by the developer when the project was scaled down. 4 br units get less rent per square foot (or meter), so the numbers don't work as well, particularly when the project gets smaller.
@@jaekim6433one look at that neighborhood and it doesn’t look rich. Looks like middle class credit card debt ridden, car loan infested neighborhood. If their property “value” goes down their ability to take out good loans against their equity is lowered. We are addicted to debt.
Also, I think it just takes a few people to gum up the process. It would be an interesting detail to know how many individuals were involved relative to the total area population.
Zoning authority needs to be removed from municipalities. Given that stories like these are common in almost all Canadian municipalities, it's clear that this is a systemic problem.
or attach infrastructure funding from the Federal government with strings attached. No funding for shiny new stuff without meeting certain density and urban dev standards
Make regulations for an area. Review them every 20 years. If things follow the rules, they get approved. Not public consultation needed.
Removing all zoning isn't the answer. Zoning has a purpose, it's just been *over* zoned to favor certain types of housing.
Single family housing need to be removed in cities. They serve no other purpose than luxury when you could have the same square footage in a luxury mid rise or highrise tower. They are waste of space, space that could go towards improving the quality of life for everyone in the city not just the rich.
We have that same zoning problem here in America. Isn't there some kind of way people can get zoning reform on the ballot?
there's like this ourobouros of NIMBY logic where
- you can't have big towers, they're ugly, they concentrate poverty, all that Pruitt-Igoe stuff
- you can't have social housing in normal neighbourhood without giving the neighbours a million chances to say no or cut it back, which they inevitably will
- can't put it on faraway greenfield because tbf that's actually bad
I guess the Landlordist compromise position is rent assistance to landlords, which, hey, I want free money too!
In the age of remote work (which implies the possibility of remote versions of some types of social work), how bad is a greenfield site, really? Maybe give them new homes there, then have a strategy of expanding the nearby city into the green field overtime so their homes go up in value?
@@ayoutubechannelname because the poor people who would be living there are not the same people who have remote work jobs. Realistically, they work in manual labor or retail, so unless that new housing is accompanied by a massive mass transit system, it simply isn't helpful to the people that needs to be helpful to
@@pennyforyourthots So you are saying there is a way to make it work?
@@ayoutubechannelname Very. Greenfield means destroying habitat just because there's various barrier to actual density.
@@Joesolo13 How are farms (which fit under the British-derived term “greenfield”) considered habitat? If we want to restore habitat, the problem to address is primarily the vast acreage of farms and, to a lesser extent, busy motorways through remote areas. Dutch style greenhouses are indispensable in that regard, as well as public transit.
Many years ago a neighbour committee was trying to block a proposed townhouse development by complaining about the type of people who would be able to purchase the houses. The starting price of the houses was almost double what I paid for my house less than a decade past. The development was completed.
What are these people's addresses?
Man, NIMBYs really get under my skin... great video!
I'm curious about your take on Ford's cut & paste of the Greenbelt. When I express concerns to my representatives the answer I get back is that we are expecting an influx of immigrants to Ontario and we need to provide housing for them, but I really doubt the type of development they are planning has any value to new Ontarians. Seems to me there are ample opportunities to densify and improve our city/community centers, especially in cities around Toronto, that would be better suited to providing affordable housing as well as improving infrastructure for everyone in the city. Instead it seems they want to use up all the agricultural and greenspace to build low-density, isolated, car dependent, expensive mcmansions, the type of projects that happen to have the best margins for developers, and the worst impacts on our cities and infrastructure. I'm not opposed to more development, but to strip conservation organizations of any authority in order to facilitate more suburban sprawl seems short-sighted and lazy at best. I guess for new housing It's the path of least resistance - less NIMBYs in rural areas, but I'm certain these houses will not be affordable. Meanwhile in Pickering, we have main roads with incomplete and unsafe sidewalks, no bike route to the GO station, weak local public transit systems, and ever increasing traffic problems. Densifying would at least provide some incentive to make this a livable city, and a lot of the work could be offloaded to developers, but the most common narrative I hear is "more condo towers means more crime". I feel like I'm going insane... sorry for the rant, love your channel!
In a growing region it doesn’t make sense to assume urban boundaries will stay the same forever so we don’t consider the Greenbelt sacrosanct in a way that many others do. With that said, if we’re going to develop some of the land we should at least get a lot of housing out of it (and use the opportunity for better neighbourhood design). So we don’t support the current proposal as we understand it (Paige Saunders did a quick analysis and indeed found that it would be low density sprawl) but we could in theory support a different proposal for something like medium-density mixed-use low-car neighbourhoods.
@@OhTheUrbanity Absolutely! Thank you! I get frustrated that the debate gets reduced down to "more housing" vs. "save the greenbelt"... I'm not opposed to responsibly re-zoning the greenbelt lands, as long as it's with a goal of better cities, not just more unchecked suburban sprawl.
@@OhTheUrbanity This is an awful take. We have gulf courses beside GO stations in this video. Suggesting we should change the urban boundary, in an incredibly environmentally sensitive region that overlaps with a very limited amount of high quality farm land in Ontario, is negligent. The green belt is based on protecting water ways that feed into Ontario Marsh lands and support not only ecosystems, but industries like fishing. There are huge swaths of SFZ in downtown Toronto, literally beside transit stops. Suggesting that should be protected over the greenbelt is the least urbanist argument I've heard.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 Fair points, I agree there are many opportunities to densify within current boundaries, care needs to be taken around waterways to protect sensitive ecosystems, and protecting the agricultural lands we have left is important, and it seems current government disagrees. But as cities continue to grow, eventually urban boundaries will need to as well, and I think it's better that the growth is inside the greenbelt rather than outside where communities will be more isolated, car dependent etc. The key is to make sure the growth happens responsibly, and I don't trust the current government to do so.
@@arden0 Respectfully, I don't agree those boundaries ever need to move. We have huge amounts of SFH to rezone. And we have cities like Kingston and London and Niagara that can be built into their own urban centers and connected by HSR to Toronto very easily. Let along Hamilton and Oshawa and Markham. Making any allowance to expand the boundary is support of low density autocentric development, you don't make your new urban centers on the fringe of the suburbs.
The myth of "consensual" Toronto housing
developers: I consent!
the millions who want to live there: I consent!
Margaret Atwood: I don't!
Isn't there someone you forgot to ask? 🤔
lol is this cause she likes the island or something?
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 nah she was a vocal opponent of a tower being built in her neighbourhood a couple of years back, with the usual litany of NIMBY reasoning haha
@@TimTeboner Really puts robber bride in perspective where all the characters are very urban lol
@@TimTeboner I was actually involved in this (tangentially). The project was a low-rise luxury condo. Atwood promised to drop the case if the design was re-oriented around affordable housing. I don't really have a strong opinion on this case, but the facts have been muddled.
@@johnnycopping2113 to be fair, labeling a development "luxury" housing and saying that your objection is that there are "not enough affordable units" is a classic NIMBY move, just wrapped in language palatable to progressives. It achieves the same ends.
In law there is legislation called anit-SLAPP to prevent lawsuits solely for the purpose of delaying, intimidating and making the defendant waste money. It would be nice to see something similar like anti-NIMBY legislation to prevent bad faith arguments against developments. It's wild to me that people who can't even define "neighborhood character" are allowed to comment on these projects.
Exactly. Good idea.
Wow. I'm not a Torontoite and this was rage-inducing.
Boomers completely screwed us.
A lot of the problem stems from the prevailing cultural narrative over the past several decades about homes as investments and reliable stores of value. And I'm not talking about property hoarders gobbling up multiple units. For most people, the majority of their wealth is tied up in their home, and society has spent their whole life telling them that that's a desirable outcome and the sign of having "made it". Home ownership predicated on stable, high home values is a key part of many people's retirement planning, and homes are the primary vehicle for inheritance in most families.
This creates a vicious cycle that presents some really thorny game-theoretic challenges. When you realise how tightly coupled are the values of existing properties to the values of new construction in the area, and you place that in the context of the homes-as-investments narrative, it's hard not to be a bit empathetic with NIMBYs. Don't get me wrong, NIMBYism is a huge problem that's destroying many cities, but it's a collective action problem, not a failure of individual decency.
If new, affordable housing is built in the same neighbourhood as the upper-middle class home you worked your whole life to afford, you're going to watch some of the wealth you'd been counting on leaving to your children evaporate overnight. You're going to become locked into your current home, because suddenly it'll no longer have the same value as equivalent homes in other areas, so you can no longer afford to move without accepting a decrease in your standard of living. So it's only natural that people, individually, resist these changes; that's where all of their interests are aligned.
It's not an easy problem to solve. The best solution might be to approach housing more like Singapore-not as an investment but as a basic right, where the government owns most of the supply, and you lease from the government-but that's probably politically impossible in most places. Finding ways to recalibrate the system to better align the interests of the city as a whole with the interests of individual homeowners is a difficult challenge, but it's a critical one to tackle if we're going to see the change we need. And it'd be a great video topic!
In the UK, the council housing seemed the best care for, compared to private multifamily housing. But, it means that the government gets to tell you where you can live. There were frequent news stories about people not being able to convince council that they needed to live in that city.
Excellently stated. The problem is that treating a basic human need like a stock investment was always a terrible idea, but moving away from that model will require that people who bought into it lose most of the value they got out of it. To make matters worse, since having a house requires wealth, the people that have them are better able to prevent any changes from being made to the system. It's like trying to get politicians to pass anti-corruption laws.
@@bearcubdaycare tbf we're already told where we can live by a variety of factors. Cost, zoning, regulations (environmental and others), not to mention property rights themselves.
@@pendlera2959 that's the terrifying dilemma we're in. the crazy high cost of housing makes a whole bunch of problems but you can't deny that bringing the cost of housing down also means a whole lot of people would lose a whole lot of money. especially older folks who need it for retirement. but then that would beg the question, if the government increased pension payouts somehow while building affordable housing would that start to resolve the problem better? that's what i'm thinking. another thing to think about is that if the prices go up infinitely the market will crash because at those high price points you'll eventually hit a liquidity crisis since nobody anymore is willing to pay the huge prices associated with that item, e.g. nobody there to sell to.
@@bearcubdaycare The city that strikes the most realistic compromise is probably Vienna. Vienna's housing market would be an improvement for almost anywhere, and they basically push the British council flat model to it's apex.
I don't know what the best answer is to the underlying problem here, but I think other cities could approach a market more like Vienna's more incrementally than the radical change that would be needed to imitate Singapore-and Singapore's model has a different set of drawbacks, too.
The commoditisation of housing is a deep problem that doesn't admit easy solutions. It needs to be grappled with seriously, and unfortunately, just wringing our hands and imploring people to altruistically vote against their individual interests for the collective good isn't going to cut it. In other words, NIMBYism is a massive problem that can't really be blamed on NIMBYs.
Have you seen CItyNerd's video on urban golf courses? Those satellite pictures of the proposed development really reminded me of that. So much potential.
A lot of it is (rightfully) protected ravine land and at high risk for flooding. But that said, a chunk of it would be prime for some housing, and the rest primed for a megapark.
I'm really excited for the Senakw development in Vancouver. Being built without any of the normal processes since it's on Native land, really shows you what types of density the market would allow without all the red tape and NIMBYs.
What are your favorite aspects of this particular project?
this is it, the reservation meta
The density of that project is on another level. 10 acre site with a future population around 9000 puts it at 230,000 persons per km². It will be up there with the densest administered areas in the world.
@@AppleCheese12345678 Unfortunately, I can’t share your excitement.
“High-rises are the lazy architect’s density” - Jan Gehl
This project is a prime example of so called “Great Bargain” - it is an attempt to overcompensate artificial land scarcity created in Vancouver by land mismanagement. Density stacking will only inflate land value - making all housing less affordable. This is why projects like this could not resolve affordability problem, the only viable alternative is to up-zone all RS zones (~80% of territory). The only form of housing which could be abundant is market housing. To make market housing affordable we need to make significantly more land available for development. It should not be concentrated - rather dispersed all over the city in a form of missing middle.
Kitsilano is a relatively dense community, but it should not be exempt eight. However, we can’t ignore the fact that some of its residents are among top tax payers in this country. Replacing a single family home with a tower we are always driving land values up and at the same time decreasing property tax on a per capita basis.
Senakw could be dense, but It can’t be walkable - it is everything but “human scale”, not a “15 minute city” either. There is no infrastructure for proposed 9000 residents: Henry Hudson School is at full capacity already, no daycare facilities, no grocery stores (Nofrills is over 15 minute walk), no healthcare facilities (St. Paul’s Hospital will be relocated), no transportation.
Burrard Bridge is not a part of reserve land - and a transit hub on a bridge is a perfect recipe for disaster. City car, previously mentioned in the project proposal, is not happening any time soon because of the Broadway SkyTrain, which is too far to walk. The single proposed street will be packed with delivery vehicles. My best guess - they will end up building parkade at Molson’s land later on.
There’s no guarantee that any units will remain rentals and especially “below market rentals”. Nothing could prevent this development from transforming to 100% investment condos at any time - the city has no control. It would likely benefit developers and investors like Westbank, but indigenous people and the city will be left to deal with all the problems.
I would rather use this land for waste to energy facility similar to CopenHill. It could cut emissions because all our garbage trucks are now driving to Delta. Produced energy could be used for district heating and EV charging.
@@antonburdin9756 Lots of density and a quick turnaround on the project are probably my top two. While it's possible to get that sort of density elsewhere it can take a real long time to work through the planning process with the city and I really REALLY want Senakw to highlight how drawing out the planning process hurts affordability. They don't have to scrap every bylaw ( though some probably should be ) but they absolutely have to staff up the city departments responsible for approving whether or not a development is in compliance with one bylaw or another.
we need to continue to use existing malls as transit hubs and build high-rises around them, retailers will never be against more customers
A city near me used a mall as a transit hub, but it didn't work, as few want to go to the mall. More recently the university has become a bit of a hub, more successfully from what I know.
I think that the mall needs to be redeveloped into mostly housing, but it doesn't work as a transit hub before then.
natick massachusetts did that!!
This has worked very well in Pickering and Vaughan
Density stacking will never resolve affordability problem - it inflates land value, making all housings less affordable. If you have land tax it is even worse - towers doesn’t pay much on a per capita bases.
@@antonburdin9756 Demand makes land value increase, not density. Density increases supply.
Why would towers not paying as much per capita make affordablilty worse? It means that low density uses are pushed to redevelop, since they pay more tax per capita, and thereby add supply.
American, Canadian and Indian should make it so that the zoning codes and managed at the national level and not the local government to prevent NIMBY movements just like how Japanese government did.
We don't value power centralization.
@@shauncameron8390 you did when you let the government do eminent domain with ethnic enclaves to build freeways that tore through downtowns. Such hypocrisy.
Or just get rid of most of the codes all together.
@@Argonhubert slimming it down to 13 zones like the Japanese, while still allowing small scale mixed use, might do the trick.
While this would in fact take away any power from NIMBYs (but also from reasonable complaints), it wouldn't fix the other issue: The separation of residential and small-scale-business has to go and at least some level of walkability needs to become a protected right. Maybe even a plain ban on developing new areas at the city borders instead of increasing density.
This is why I actively recommend Montreal for young adults. It is the city to be in, dispute the taxes that the Quebec Government
is public transit in quebec (more specifically montreal/quebec city) better than ontario? does the province of quebec have their own version of Go trains? I'm considering moving to either quebec or out the country to france when i finish high school. simply for better public transportation and walkable neighbourhoods.
@@gothamtransitauthority7990 Cant speak about Quebec City, but I have been living in Montreal for 2 years. It is efficient with its exo train service (pretty than the GO train), Metro system and buses not near Île-Ouest.
GO Train itself isnt ideal ik buts better than VIA Rail
@@gothamtransitauthority7990 Public transit is good in Montreal. It drops off everywhere else sadly, though some places are really trying to get better service.
Go to Asia where there is opportunity and good government.
It’s always funny when people living the ultra-bland suburban neighbourhoods cry about the “character” being affected
NIMBYS: People who refuse to allow anyone to build a better community, while also refusing to go anywhere that requires them to get out of their cars. Nimbys gave us Stroads.
I feel like not all stakeholders have equal voice in this debate.
New and protential residents are underrepresented while existing residennts are overrepresented.
It might be interesting to compare the concern for property values caused by changes to the neighbourhood among home owners in countries where people move a lot (e.g. US) to home owners in countries where people buy a house once and rarely move after that (apart from medical reasons at old age perhaps).
I think many of the NIMBYs in the USA are people who do not move a lot. Anecdotally, most I’ve seen at local meetings are people who introduce themselves by staging how long they’ve lived in the neighborhood, which is typically measured in decades rather than years.
The town I live in has had success getting affordable housing built, through churches and Habitat for Humanity, multiple projects completed in the last few years. I think that having it driven through churches and charities frames the question right. But pleasant buildings also help. A large apartment complex built near me a few years back is quite pleasant looking, well tended, borders a multiuse pathway, and friends who've lived there rate it highly. The affordable projects that have been built around town recently all look good, and have all been well tended.
The exact opposite happened near me, below market apartments were built downtown and the property management company isn't really maintaining the property or some illicit activities by tenants in the parking area. Also habitat built a home in a neighborhood that is about 700 square feet 2/3? bedroom, totally out of character to the homes nearby (it's essentially a mobile home mixed in with stick builts ). Then the tenants completely trashed the property and the yard creating an ongoing eyesore.
Boomers: "The younger gens are lazy! Why can't they move out of their parents' homes, or stop living with roommates?"
Also boomers: "NOT IN MY BACKYARD! DON'T BUILD MORE HOUSING IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD! RHEEE!"
Why do some people keep bringing up age where all ages have all different views. You end up ostracizing people who agree with you. Age is something we can't control so why browbeat people for it? The group you're talking about is Nimby (not in my backyard). It's in the title of their video.
@a it's because the older gens are the ones with the most power, money, and influence. They are also the ones who constantly reject re-zoning laws that would allow for more new multi-family housing units to be built in lieu of new. single family housing being built.
@@ms_cartographer We should have let Covid wipe out everyone over the age of 45. No more housing crisis!
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c curious question, do you know about Redlining and Racial Covenant Deeds?
Because its the greatest
gen, boomers and gen xers that created the problem in the first place and the ones who are causing the problem to persist?
The constant vague remarks about 'saving the character of the neighbourhood/community' without specifics really just feels like a not so subtle way of saying 'we don't want the poors to live nearby.' I live directly across the street from public housing and I've never had a problem in ten years. Also, I sincerely doubt all of the homeowners at 90 Dale are looking to sell anytime soon so their hand-wringing about property values is just them making up things to be worried about
I think that the german model - when we still used to build social housing which we unwisely decided to stop a few decades ago - is the best one. Learning from historic problems caused by concentrating primarily "poor" people into a building/city area, the german model in its final years instead build mixed units aimed at different demographics:
The idea was that to avoid "ghettoisation" you have to make sure that not only "poor" people go there but that also middle class and yes, even upper middle class people dwell there. This avoids the poor reputation of certain non mixed areas and as such also benefits poorer residents who suffer far less from not getting a job because of their adress.
It also stabilizes the socio demographics of the area, avoiding most of the effects that make existing neighbours repellent on the idea of social housing.
Having middle class citizens living there also makes it much more difficult to cut away at the services offered by the city there. It is easy to neglect citizens who often dont vote or even arent allowed to vote in local elections... but as any consilor will attest you, pissing off the middle class is generally shied away from... because those people if sufficiently angry can and will make your life very very miserable and in fact are often quite capable of ending your political career.
That is a big problem in Pittsburgh. So many empty lots. There is no affordable housing along the light rail corridor. Especially the blue line.
This is just painful to watch, a bunch of idiot neighbours using whatever nonsense to block housing, yet potential future residents get no voice. Ontario's planning system, even post Bill 23, are still very broken.
The size of the golf course across the highway pisses me off. Golf is suck a waste of space. Imagine how many units could be built there, but instead its being used so some rich people can hit a little ball with a metal stick
Half the price of a Toronto home is due to regulation, the other half is genuine value from being close to important stuff and the convenience of living in the city.
Great video as usual. Speaking of affordable housing; I have good news to share. The Lutheran Development Group (a non-profit property developer focusing on affordability) recently got a nearly 2 million dollar grant from the state to help their rehab efforts! I was very surprised yet encouraged Missouri finally did something to help address the issue here in the Lou! :]
Thank you for this well-researched video. This is an undeniable crisis and you highlight very the many subtle and insidious ways NIMBY-ism is exacerbating this crisis.
What I find to be more frustrating than the obvious hypocrisy and selfishness that fuels this way of thinking, is just how unaware I believe these individuals truly are. Either that, or they are so incapable of having empathy for the needs of fellow human beings. I am certain at least half of these opponents have children of their own and yet are advocating in exact contradiction to their children's needs.
Thank you! Unfortunately I think motivated reasoning is very powerful. When people don't want their neighbourhood to change, it's really easy to convince themselves of things like "well, building more housing won't actually help the housing crisis", and so on.
8:13 not to mention the high quantity of units would likely decrease the market rate as well, leading to less need for the affordable units. I'm still in the decommodify housing camp, but until then, we need to do stuff like this.
If memory serves, a similar thing happened in Montreal a few years back. Though from what I recall, mid-constructions, the contractor decided to not build the community center and HLMs because they wouldn't be profitable enough. A fight with the city ensued for which I am not aware of the result.
Now I wonder if we also have NIMBYs like that here in Austria....affordable public housing is so common here and spread out around the city that I think it is more accepted here. I understand that no one wants tall buildings when you live in a single family home. But public housing here is where a lot of middle class families live, so I think we are more used to living around others from different economic backgrounds. Even though I grew in public housing I never considered that this might something that is looked down on elsewhere. Not saying it is perfect here (owning a home still is very expensive) but when I look at other countries it seems like we do something right when it comes to rentals.
Please keep up the great work!
What the NIMBYs really want is exclusivity. The trick is drawing them out enough to get them to forget to euphemize and to say the quiet part out loud.
You need to remove all the ability of people to dictate what others can do with a property. Get rid of all the rules that allow a lawsuit that lets people stop construction for selfish reasons.
when you live in a place where a sprawling set of small munis refuse to allow greater density (by adjusting zoning along with some of the other means mentioned in this video), you get stifled growth eventually primarily dramatic wage inflation because of high cost of housing with such constrained supply. only so many people (or for so long) will be able afford such inflation because eventually it will encourage them to sell and move out (probably far far away where cost of living is lower).
This is the most fired up I've heard you guys be in a while! 🔥🔥🔥
I love that "Loss of green space" was in their reasoning to stop this. Likely a fallacious excuse by the same kind of people who want endless suburbs and parking lots.
I think preservation of greenspace is important. When you increase density, reducing greenspace is a surefire way to make sure other people fight new density as hard as possible.
I'm sure these people would be just as happy to ban immegrantion to Toronto or ban all new building so their property continues to go up in value.
They already have their massive yards.
I live about 20 minutes from this site, and there is absolutely nothing unique or characteristic about this neighbourhood. Maybe, boring suburban wasteland with vast tracts of undeveloped land surrounded by nothingness. Which if you think about it is characteristic of Scarborough, better not change that with homes and people and new business. This is maddening! There is so much potential in Scarborough and it just lays undeveloped compared to Toronto despite how much land and roads and infrastructure that are there just ready for people to build there lives on in Canada's biggest city!
Kind of depressing to watch through to the end. Vox recently did a similar piece about the high cost of building affordable housing in California. Thanks for doing this. 😮
This is why housing should not be treated as a commodity.
@@WillmobilePlus
It is treated like a commodity though.
@@WillmobilePlus Uh, it does "grow" from the ground. It's just not called "growth", it's called construction.
''If we can't build high-rise residential here, where can we build them?''
According to NIMBYs, nowhere. Which is the root of the problem.
NIMBYs are not human beings deserving of rights.
Woah you guys linked an article from Tom Mrakas, mayor of my hometown! He's honestly one of the better mayors in Ontario and really has done a lot of good for Aurora!
Vacant land, beside train tracks, beside a 17 story tower, 200m from a BRT line, 500m from a very high capacity train line platform.
That whole neighbourhood should be zoned to allow for medium/high density development. Enjoy your huge jump in land value as developers will buy it from you.
Hi. Your video got me thinking about how homeowners are way too much net worth tied up in their homes, and are not at all invested in the wider community. I think that causes misaligned incentives. I feel like we ought to find a way to get people to be more invested (financially) in their community, not just their house.
I wrote a blog post about it, and I left the link here in a comment, but I think UA-cam might delete it automatically because it's an external link. Oh well. If you are interested in the post I can share it.
Just build more housing, affordable or not. If you couple that with restrictions on foreign buyers and short-term rentals (AirBnB), you’ll have wealthier buyers moving out of apts to take luxury units. And you’ll have more housing for everyone in the end. We get to caught up in making it income restricted & it slows the pace of housing growth dramatically.
2:15 That's the worst example here: It's often said that appartements are only good if you don't have kids (though this also is associated with other undetached houses) even though this isn't an inherit feature but the fact that this building had them planned but got shut them down really is a self-fulfilling prophecy or even sabotage depending on the motive.
Most kids growing up in a "Commie Block" neighborhood would disagree. There is nothing better as a kid to have your friends close by, a place to kick a ball and some bushes and trees to have a base in.
Well, it used to be the best.
Honestly there should be a limit to the amount NIMBY's are allowed to complain. Give them 6 months, and that's it. No more. Also end the existence of the yellow zone regulations in Toronto, which removes at least half the power of the NIMBYs ("the character of the neighbourhood")
@MW Mobile look my frustration comes from the fact that housing in the city of Toronto is treated like a luxury rather than a necessity. The examples you just mentioned can be approved, though imo, they should only be approved so long as there's housing on top of them
You are right that discussion and difference are important to democratic institutions
But all parties must enter in good faith
Most of the time the attitude on display here is
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE GO AWAY
There's a reason I say yes there needs to be time to voice concerns
But when there is a housing shortage to the point of causing increasing homelessness and probably tipping the scales in terms of violence on the ttc, the calculus of those discussions shift
As a Malaysian who lives in Kuala Lumpur, with 6 condo blocks totalling 7000+ units being built in my vicinity which will have access to 2 current LRT stations and 2 future MRT stations , this is absolutely infuriating and frustrating. Not everything is great in the first world.
I'm not really into jumping toward high density or high rise buildings just to pack an area either, I would prefer more medium sized, mixed and improved city layouts in general, but it seems the opposition just doesn't like the idea of more and/or poor people in the area at all. Too concerned about their inconveniences like losing "views" (a highway and a row of trees blocking a golf course), having neighbors (socialization woes), or having competition (can't have them lowering property values).
Lived there in '89 when they built 90 Dale Avenue ..... on my old BMX trail. Finding sympathy for those guys a bit hard to come by.
Also, the "proposed" short path to the GO station has sort-of existed since at least the 1970s.
There's already a path back there? I didn't walk back behind the lot because it was raining
@@OhTheUrbanity It can get pretty muddy. Been a year to two since I've looked. Metrolinx briefly blocked it under the bridge in the 2010s, then moved the fencing to just cover the tracks and leave the path open.
Tuca and Bertie did a great convo that called out NIMBYs who rejected affordable housing being built.
Current tax and land use policies benefit only investors. Artificial land scarcity and density stacking will only inflate land value - making all housing less affordable.This is why projects like this could not resolve affordability problem, the only viable alternative is to up-zone all RS zones (~80% of territory), and it is worth doing if we want to resolve affordability crisis.The only form of housing which could be abundant is market housing. To make market housing affordable we need to make significantly more land available for development. It should not be concentrated - rather dispersed all over the city in a form of missing middle. It could destroy some land value - good for affordability but could be problematic for economy. “Pace of zoning change” policy aligned with population changes could prevent land from further appreciation (some kind of Goldilocks rule).
As a european I find this NIMBY thing hilarious, outrageous and insane all at the same time.
If all the people who opposed developments were required to pay the full price of the infrastructure their neighborhood requires AND were forced to help pay a part of the fees that they cause to developers (with the fees being reimbursed if the justification had merit), a lot of NIMBYs would be begging to have more people around them to pay the bill.
Hard to admit, but humans are remarkable at shooting themselves in the foot to avoid a 1 in a million chance to be struck by lightning...
I find it strange that America your land property is yours and it's valued very highly to the individual and their rights for it.
Why is it people think that they own their neighbor's property and think that they can control that too?
Not in my backyard
Young people do not generally vote, so politicians have no interest in fixing the NIMBY problem.
Start protests in NIMBY areas. When they realize opposing affordable housing will make their area a lot less peaceful, they'll bounce real quick.
I mean, a protest is 1-2 days (if not hours) at best, construction are probably for 2 years. Not the best plan IMO
I think this could work, but also worry that it could backfire. They could use the protests as a talking point, saying "look what kinds of people want to move into the proposed development! These people are making our lives hell now, imagine what it will be like when they live here!"
I don't know though. The benefits of the protests probably outweigh the potential costs
People who can't afford housing should just start living in their cars and tents on the street in this neighbourhood. The residents can either accept the development or accept people living in cars and tents on their street. Either way, people have to live somewhere.
@@sangokudbz79 I think you've missed the point. The protests would be to stop residents from blocking the construction in the first place. You wouldn't be protesting while the construction is happening.
@@Ryan-093 There is this thing called police that will absolutely side with the rich land owner over the impoverished transient
What kills me about this particular lot is the adjacent golf course - a complete waste.
One thing to remember is golf courses are often in flood plains, which is why Florida is so full of them. So it may not be possible or smart to develop there.
That said, I agree it's a waste, at minimum those should be parks and I'm sure some level of development is achievable.
New laws to limit the ability of NIMBYs to pull this crap need to implemented.
@@WillmobilePlus If we vote to elect politicians that enact policies that limit the ability of a small group of selfish NIMBYs to prevent necessary housing that benefits the entire city, that's still democracy.
@@WillmobilePlus Some NIMBYism is fine. I certainly don’t fault people who protest or protested the construction of new freeways or widening of existing ones through urban neighborhoods. That’s not what this is about though. It’s about affordable housing and these NIMBYs are just being selfish.
@@WillmobilePlus The problem is the people are denying other people access to a basic need. Imagine if we let business owners vote on how many new business licenses could be given out per year and for what - we'd have nothing but monopolies. If people are treating houses like investments, then they need to be limited in their ability to prevent others from entering the market.
@@WillmobilePlus If the monstrosity is the only option for that community, then yes, they should have no right to prevent it from being built. I mean, sure they have the right to complain, but their complaints should not have legal weight. It's like public schooling or water treatment - if it's needed for the good of community, you shouldn't get to prevent it from being built just because it's ugly or might hurt your own property values. Because property values are dependent on artificially low supply, all new housing is a threat to homeowners, and therefore they should not have free reign to prevent new supply or else all of society will suffer for their benefit.
Perhaps a compromise would be for the city to say "we're going to build X amount of new housing whether you like it or not. However, you can decide from these preapproved areas where it should be built, and choose from these preapproved designs." So people can have some say in the building project, but not actually tank the project.
It boils down to corruption: property owners treat their properties as investments, and are taking advantage of current laws to harm others. There are no easy or nice solutions: if they won't play nice and let other people join in, then you have to treat them like colluding price-fixing businessmen and stop them by force.
Renters might not count as entering the market, but if people are forced to overpay for rentals when supply is limited, they can never build up the money to buy. Thus, limiting the supply of rentals is a method for keeping people out of the market.
@@Zedprice
NIMBY's are not exactly a small group.
great, well-researched video
I feel that people are painting this resistance out as a bit of Downton Abbey type snobbery. We often forget that many people living in these areas are working families that are mortgaged to within an inch of their lives. They are worried for their future, not their social standing.
I live in a very mixed area of Toronto (that was always mixed) which is mostly great but it is also undeniable that affordable housing will bring with it a small number of people that will cause a lot of problems and drag entire neighbourhoods down. The affordable aspect is obviously irrelevant. It is the drug addict that breaks into your garage and pulls the fire alarm at 3am (twice a month ...) before ODing behind the grade school that is a problem and you usually get one or two of those along. If you can fix that I think most resistance will go away.
Zoning rules stopping density construction should be taken away from municipalities. The fact you own a piece of land shouldn’t give you monopoly of what can be done in land next to you that you don’t own. If you don’t want a land to be used for a condo tower then go buy it.
Low-density housing is the most highly subsidized housing in the country. The infrastructure costs are huge, and even if some initial infrastructure comes from the developer the long-term maintenance is killing municipal budgets. The NIMBYs are the second biggest welfare recipients around, below the corporate welfare bums.
People in Scarborough: "We always get the short end of the stick, no one ever wants to develop in Scarborough."
Also People in Scarborough: "We don't want new development."
If we're going to do more housing in urban areas, we need to avoid the type of problems like Cabrini Green in Chicago and the poorly built and designed apartment tower blocks in London (e.g., the Grenfell Tower fire).
I'm using infuriating content like this to motivate me to call my political representatives and push them to support yimby bills
That's good!
People: HOMELESSNESS BAD!
ALSO people: *NOT IN MY BACKYARD!!!!* (*Affordable)
I swear the same people who complain about new housing construction in their area are the same people that buy up local houses to turn into short term rentals so they can make "passive income" to pay for their big single family home.
I think when a lot of people hear 'affordable housing' they think 'slum'. There is some precedence for this, there are several postwar housing schemes I know of which, while intended to give people better housing, ended up becoming somewhat dystopian. The tendency for developers to seemingly try to make these things as hideous as possible doesn't help matters. This particular proposal is no exception, the design could be far more attractive. If you want to get approval, build something that people will want to look at, give it a bit of class. Also give it lots of insulation, there is nothing affordable about a cheap house that is cold and damp and costs a fortune to heat.
Of course, if you used the cheapest building and maintenence and stuff everyone in there that has no work, you end up with a slum.
And of course, you could also make a nice mix of cheap 1-rooms, expensive luxury lofts and flats for families in one bigger house.
yes. there's also other nice things that could be done, like not putting all the amenities together in one room. 'O block' buildings often apparently stank of piss because there was one bathroom in each building and people would instead just opt to empty their bladders in the hallways. so, don't make it a shit experience just because it's subsidized housing, and also, and this sounds counter-intuitive, but add some market-rate housing into the affordable developments. mixing social classes prevents crime from multiplying.
While issues of design and construction are legitimate concerns, I always find it completely ironic when people living in neighborhoods filled with cooking-cutter tract homes such as these expect gold-plated designs next to them. The rest of the neighborhood is highly deficient in terms of both architecture and urban design. I get that it is a bit subjective and we SHOULD demand greater design standards in ALL types of housing, but the bar is generally set so much lower for single-family housing subdivisions than new multi-family projects.
This may seem counter intuitive but adding less affordable housing might increase supply overall. By having a lower percentage in each development there would be more cross subsidy, better mixing of different social classes (lower risk of ghettoisation), and it may be easier to get more projects approved and built. More supply=lower cost, if lots of homes get built (instead of being stuck in the planning process), they become more affordable. It would be interesting to compare this development to ones which have been approved and see what the differences are.
I guess these Nimbys will have their kids living with them because their kids can't afford housing?
This all makes me so angry.
It happens in my area near Washington D.C. all the time.
We in San Francisco are having a housing crisis, and it's for this exact same reason. It's infuriating.
Still have Twitter? Vote for us in an extremely important YIMBY Twitter bracket: twitter.com/YIMBYLAND/status/1641093045432221698 (or don't, it's not actually that important)
Who's this Nimby Patrol?
What other nation besides usa and can do local homeowners get veto power on projects
Nah, not unless Musk steps down..
They have you up against nimby patrol, that's brutal and not fair.
@@baronjutter 100%
Normally I wouldn't be very upset by this revision. There is still a high density of rental units. However, the proximity to the train station changes that. Anything within a 15 minute walk to a GO station should receive expedited review and should be protected from neighborhood objections. If you live in a low density neighborhood near a GO station, you need to move.
So if I live in a low density neighbourhood and don't want to move I should fight tooth and nail to prevent a GO station from being built within a 15 minute walk of my home.
@@studentofsmith Lolz to your user name, here are some Adam Smith Quotes for you.
“Ground rents are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Ground rents are, therefore, perhaps a species of revenue which best bear to have a particular tax imposed upon them.”
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
“A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground.”
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 Adam Smith also saw production in agricultural terms and concluded that doctors were not productive because they didn't produce anything. But you're not addressing my point which is the opposition to GO stations that will be generated once people realize densification will follow.
@@studentofsmith Its a fair point, although he was right about landlords. I think thats really fine as a result.
For one, you can do what Ford did with rent restriction, and say this policy is only true for existing stations.
Secondly, for the most part, stations already (or are currently being expanded to) form a pretty wide ranging network. Expanding into more rural areas past Bowmanville or Hamilton etc doesn't really have a base to push back.
Third, it's much easier for Metrolinks as a government agency to cram a project through than dozens of individual developers fighting their own projects.
Plus doctors are in fact useless.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 "Plus doctors are in fact useless." You've been making good, logical points; why would you discredit yourself by saying something like this?
Shelter is a human need and should be community owned, maintained and operated without for profit corporation ownership permitted. Democratic use of land is the only fair way and NIMBYs concerned should be listened to then promptly ignored if it prevents development of the community. The desire to maintain the character of a neighbourhood is not a reason to stop community development and NIMBYs have no real clue what will be beneficial to their property value.
The neighbours could easily describe their veto power over projects as "democratic".
Thank you for contextualizing the comparisons for the sake of form factor.
Likely out of scope, but what of the atomizing nature of high rise units (12+ storeys) from a community perspective?
Great video. NIMBYISM at its best.Bottom line is every homeowner is supportive of public housing unless its in their neighborhood or when its time to sell their house. People are extremely selfish and in the end no one acts in the interest of others or the greater good.
And why should they? The best interests of others is not their responsibility.
Which doesn't really exist due to the tragedy of the commons.
@@shauncameron8390 Because, the ridiculous housing prices in Toronto and Vancouver has been caused by the government who restricted buidling of housing affordable and non affordable. This has skyrocketed the house prices and consequently the rents too. Its not fair for anyone if a house cost 1.5M and they are making a median salary in Canada of 44K. This means 95% of the population will never be able to buy a house, why the greedy property owners are charging extortion rents. This a house of cards that is going to colllapse once the immigration of 300-500K of immigrants is cut off!!! Only the immigrants arriving with suitcases of money are buying $1.5M + houses and condos. God forbid you were born in this country and make a crappy median salary, and have to pay canadian level taxes that do NOT have to paid in other countries
@@mateofernando5066
66% of ordinary Canadians are home-owners. So's who's this 95%? The rents are no more extortionate than the property taxes, mortgages and interest, etc. the property-owners pay to greedy government and banks.
NIMBY's are such a cancer in cities. the rising cost in cities and criminalization of homelessness is making them completely unlivable wastelands. i have completely given up on my hope of ever owning a home or any hope of stability.
If the proposed new building looked like Chateau Frontenac there would be a lot less opposition.
People don't like ugly buildings. Design pretty ones and a lot of the nimby complaints go away.
As far back as 2002 it was clear from public consultations that neighbours opposed medium- or high-density residential as well as affordable housing. They preferred it to stay undeveloped or at most be more low-density housing.
@@OhTheUrbanity Have you heard of a place called Poundbury in the UK?
It is a housing project built by Prince Charles, it has more social housing than a normal development, the social housing is high quality and indistinguishable from the homes built to be sold.
Over the last 20 years the rich are willing to pay an average 30% per sqft more to live in Poundbury, next to poor people than in any of the nearby developments.
Because it's a beautiful place.
So of course every modern architect absolutely hates it.
Architects would rather die than build beauty, the rest of us would rather kill the architects than allow any more of their dystopian creations get built.
@@disposabull "Architects would rather die than build beauty, the rest of us would rather kill the architects than allow any more of their dystopian creations get built." It don't think it's fair to blame architects; a lot of them are artists at heart and deeply crave the opportunity to create something beautiful. But they're limited by what developers are willing to pay for, and usually that's cheap, bland, cookie cutter crap. Good designs cost money; Prince Charles clearly didn't hire the cheapest architect or only pay for the bare minimum of exterior ornamentation.
In fact, I bet if the "low income" housing plans looked better than the local norm, people would oppose it because they would hate the idea of poor people living in nicer housing than them.
@@pendlera2959 The public supported the Prince, the architects eviscerated him.
An architect shouldn't be "an artist" that seeks to challenge people.
An architect isn't a builder, isn't a structural engineer. An architect is supposed to create beauty. It's literally the only reason the job exists.
But instead, architects build dystopian hellscapes that traumatise people and create dysfunction.
@@disposabull I'll admit, I don't know the specifics of the Poundbury project. (Though I intend to look up more about it - thanks for bringing it up! Very interesting.) But I'm an artist and I've interacted with a lot of other artists, many of whom want to become architects. Most of us want to make the world a more beautiful or at least more visually interesting place.
"An architect shouldn't be "an artist" that seeks to challenge people." The whole "art should challenge people" is a stereotype that only applies to a tiny amount of artists. Those kinds of artists are more like visual philosophers and it's not fair to act like all artists think that way. I agree that an architect should try to create beauty, and I think most want to. But consider how much backlash people get just for painting their house a bright color. Is it really so hard to imagine that kind of intolerance of deviation from the norm routinely coming from low-cost housing developers?
i grew up in toronto 27yrs wish i could afford to live there still, moved to the east coast two years ago dont regret it
The issue is the term itself. "Affordable" implies cheap, meant for low-income people. Often it implies that the residents are living, in part, on other people's backs through government give-ways. It spawns a host of issues, real or imagined, in the minds of people living nearby. These people probably won't openly say, "We don't want poor people living near us" (NIMBY exemplified), so they come up with a host of other reasons for their opposition, some of which are valid. For example, such housing tends to be built as cheaply as possible and is very often inadequately maintained, so it starts looking rundown very quickly. Many residents of such housing have life challenges that shift their focus away from caring for their dwelling, further contributing to the run-down appearance.
Much of our existing housing becomes more "affordable" IF people are realistic in their expectations. A typical single-family home becomes "affordable" if it's shared by several working single people or even two families. Young married couples can choose to remain childless until they can afford a home large enough to house children. Elderly people should consider sharing housing with other elderly people. Or, like in many Eastern cultures, people should consider multi-generational arrangements. I know these concepts won't be popular, but truth is rarely well-received these days.
The proposed development that is the focus of this video is an apartment complex; upkeep and maintenance would be handled by the building management, not individuals with "life challenges." The proposal, from the beginning, included affordable housing units as a minority of all units, most of which would be market-rate or higher and presumably in the same buildings, so the affordable housing in this case wouldn't be any more "cheaply built" than ordinary apartment housing. NIMBY opposition, by increasing the non-construction costs of any housing development, ironically pressures developers to build more cheaply in order to keep the project financially feasible. These other reasons do not apply here, and I would imagine, don't apply in a lot of other cases, although I will allow that they might be behind the stereotype-fueled opposition to developments that include affordable housing.
There are so many points I find frustrating about this situation, but one of the most galling is the fact that the NIMBY opposition managed to eliminate the four-bedroom units for families. Splitting rent with more and more roommates and housing entire families in one bedroom is a short-term "solution" that proposes we accept a relentless contraction of our private living spaces so that, e.g., the NIMBY neighbors (the owners of the multi-story condo tower next door 4:59 ) don't have a multi-story apartment tower "changing the character of their community."
@@skoosharama Every case of proposed "affordable" housing is different, but they all carry the _poor people moving in_ connotation, and that is the primary though usually unspoken objection. Even when such housing is centrally maintained, it will not get proper attention when its residents are not fully paying for said maintenance.
Shared arrangements are a historical solution with long-term viability. Not long-term for a given individual or family necessarily, but for people as they enter and work their way through a demographic/economic cadre. The "modern" challenge to what has always worked is the now pervasive "I should be able to have exactly what I want right now and someone else should pay for it" mentality.
@@rangersmith4652 Instead of demanding that poor people accept that they need to share tighter and lower quality housing, why not demand that businesses and landlords share the wealth they've been hoarding through low wages and high rent?
Let's do some math: the average grocery stocker stocks about 60 cases per hour. Each case has about 12 items in it. That's 720 items per hour. The US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, or just over one penny per item stocked. If you wanted to pay each stocker $50 an hour, you'd have to raise the price of each product by a whopping 6 cents. The reason people can't afford to live on their own is because they're being underpaid and because landlords and homeowners are using politics to keep rents and house prices higher than they would otherwise be. It's not "I should be able to have exactly what I want right now and someone else should pay for it"; it's "I'm contributing a lot more value to society than I'm getting out of it, and that needs to change."
@@pendlera2959 I'm opposed to government mandates regarding wages, period. If workers think they're underpaid, that they are "contributing a lot more value to society than [they are] getting out of it, and that needs to change," they should talk to their bosses about a wage increase and explain why they're worth it. Or they can attain skills that will get them a better-paying job. There are lots of ways to do that.
Let's do some more math. If you raise the price of every grocery item by $.06, and the average family buys 100 grocery items per week, that's $6.00 per week or roughly $25 per month added to every grocery bill. And it's not just groceries. All prices go up in kind.
But it doesn't end with the shelf stocker. If you pay a grocery stocker $50/hr, his or her supervisor certainly deserves more than that. Tack that wage increase onto the grocery price. And the manager should be earning more than the supervisor. Tack that wage increase onto the grocery price. And the cashiers will get the increase as well. Tack that wage increase onto the grocery price. Now, with just three additional people who must be paid more (let's simplify it by assuming that same .06 per item covers each increase), the aforementioned family's monthly grocery has increased by $100. And again, since mandating that grocery workers get $50/hr will mean all other minimum wage workers get it as well, all other prices will also rise proportionally.
Forcing an increase in the lowest wage forces increases in all wages, adding to the "wealth" of everyone, inflating the supply of money even more than government is already doing, and driving inflation higher. Or business owners can't pay the higher mandatory minimum and remain viable, so they lay people off to keep their total payroll in check, or they raise their prices to maintain their profit margin, or they close up shop altogether. In all of these scenarios, people lose jobs, prices increase, and the few people who get paid more have no more buying power than they had before because the increased supply of money has inflated the price of everything.
Stocking grocery shelves isn't meant to be a career; it's meant to be a first job or supplemental job. It's the same for almost all no/low-skill jobs. But let's say the value of a shelf stocker is deemed the same as, say, a platoon sergeant or a registered nurse. It's arguably an easier job that requires no schooling or special training and carries much lower potential liability, so why would _anyone_ choose the military or nursing when grocery shelf stocking pays the same?
@@rangersmith4652 Are you opposed to government regulations and bureaucratic processes getting in the way of housing developers building enough housing to meet market demand? Because that is what this video is all about. Single-unit zoning is heavy-handed government regulation. NIMBYs are exploiting the approval and appeals process set up by government bureaucrats and politicians to tie the hands of housing builders and property owners. They even use the rhetoric of class warfare (when it suits them), invoking the spectre of the big for-profit developer heartlessly seeking profits by steamrolling over the ordinary people of the neighborhood. The families who don't get new homes due to their opposition go unmentioned in this telling of the tale, of course.
People want guarantee of luxury in the new building, because those who already have flats would like to move to a newer, more luxurious one and rent their old flat for insane amount of money.
Like you two, I also left Toronto for Montreal. It was the best decision I could have made. Toronto is a city that fears innovative ideas and anything that doesn’t support the 1%.
Unfortunately, given the city has had its housing crisis and high rating on the unaffordability index for quite some years now, I can’t see there being a change.
At the end of the day, the policies that politicians make are the direct result of the tolerance of the jurisdiction’s people. People in Toronto don’t stand up against this problem and in fact, their approval of ridiculous urban planning projects is indicative of their unwillingness for it to change.
Good riddens, Toronto!
Yes, the people are indeed the problem. That's evidence by what they vote for.
Of course there’s a golf course across the street. Somehow NIMBYs find that to be a better use of land than a high rise. UGH
i wish we would normalize social housing that's not bound by profitability and allow governments to build it easier.
in some places (like vienna and singapore) it is normal for pretty much anyone who wants to be able to live in public housing (like everyone but the richest 20%, not just a neglected place to put poor people) which improves personal finances (and by extension the economy and mental health and staves off widespread homelessness and addiction) and also helps keep shelter from becoming a commodity and trading asset who's value needs to grow indefinitely to satisfy investment. they can actually be really nice neighbourhoods with nice places to live and thrive, unlike what some people would have you believe about social housing.
other non-market housing like co-ops can also be very good especially when they have their initial costs and property taxes subsidized and with low interest rates
YES I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE DON'T REALIZE THE PRIVATE MARKET WILL NEVER SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. THEY CAN BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION BUT THEY WILL NOT BE THE ONLY SOLUTION. GOVERNMENT HOUSING WILL NEED TO BE DONE!!!!
Gahd dammit!!!
B - I - N - G - O ‼️
9:12 its so disheartening to learn of this kind of thing but just goes to show that these kind of people only care about their own self interest
Gee, isn't that awful.
Hosing is an issue, but it can't be a "crisis" when most Canadians ( including people in Toronto) own their own home.
It’s funny how the say “unique character of neighbourhoods” yet almost every suburban neighbourhood looks exactly the same. Detached houses with roads and driveways and nothing else around can’t have any character
NIMBYs are not human beings deserving of rights.
"a highway that was never built"...music to my ears
I know that's right
The crazy thing is, we would need to have "affordable housing" if enough homes could be built. It would just be "housing".
id argue something akin to a lawn tax, i dont think government backed affordable housing would help because it would just use scarce and increase the prices due to messing with supply and demand. The solution would be to tax unused spaces and legalize all kinds of new housing projects as well as BANNING protest of new private development of any size, if someone wants to build a dozen shacks on their lawn let them do it
Hmmm I kinda like that. make it a very high tax on underutilized land. I dont think we schould ban protesting city leaders can simply ignor it. The problem is the NIMBYs will then sue the developer ussualy on some old enviromental law that really has nothing to do with it but costs alot and delays the build enough. Getting rid of alot of these enviromental laws or atleast making them updated and more specific and/or not allowing NIMBYs to have standing to sue. I think this is more of a problem in american but think its still a big issue in Canada.
@@Ryanrobi legally consider such cases frivolous and grounds for prison for life for that that organize them. im also not entirely against just jailing anyone who protests more development
Another factor not mentioned in the video is the demand side of the equation. The Federal government of Canada doesn't match immigration to housing supply. Hundreds of even thousands of homes cannot keep up with the Million people that Canada welcomed in 2023.
People shouldn't have a say in how land that they have no ownership stake in is developed, managed or maintained. It inevitably results in NIMBY policies that create a land cartel between city and owners that causes persistent shortages in housing. Every city engaging in NIMBY policy deserves bankruptcy.