This is why we have a housing shortage

[rukawa]

Its amazing to me the central planning that goes on in municipalities:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taller-towers-more-density-less-sunlight-what-the-province-s-housing-changes-mean-for-toronto-1.5164966

 

"The Wild West for the development sector has returned to Toronto. That is the fundamental takeaway here," said Coun. Joe Cressy, who represents a downtown ward and whose staff spent much of Thursday poring over the changes.

 

The wild wild west is basically his word for standard capitalism:

 

Cressy also said the province is scrapping a variety of other stipulations mandated by the city's long-term plans: minimum distances between buildings, the need for family-sized units, and a cap on tower heights to reduce shadows on parks...."[Premier] Doug Ford has gone too far. He removed requirements for sunlight, skyviews, and even windows in bedrooms," said midtown Coun. Josh Matlow. "This plan doesn't support residents, let alone a houseplant.

 

Sounds great doesn't it. Skylights, windows, skyviews...wonderful. Except that these wonderful requirements have produced houses that now cost upwards of $1m. So nobody can afford any of this. If you want all this space you have to reduce immigration into the country. You can't have requirements for tonnes of spaces, low height for buildings and bring in tonnes of people into the city without producing a massive increase in prices.

 

This is what I despise. A person can simultaneously support high levels of immigration, affordable housing and also all kinds of requirements on developers and not realize how it will obviously effect house prices. We have a shortage of housing in Canada precisely because municipalities have hamstrung developers in the name of all sorts of nice things: landmark preservation, more greenspace, more affordable housing etc. Developers are rich greedy capitalists making evil profits so of course we must extract a pound of flesh from them. God forbid they make money...that would be a giveaway. Its no wonder we've got this problem.