Quote:
Originally Posted by 93JC
It's the inner-city land these seniors live on that's valuable, not the houses. The houses are the same little modest houses they've lived in for decades.
You obviously haven't been to neighbourhoods like Lower Mount Royal, Sunnyside, Sunalta, Bankview and Altadore if you haven't noticed seniors getting squeezed out.
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Those are the majority of people in Calgary? And how can I "obviously not have been there"? Seeing a handful of examples in no way changes the reality when generalizing over a city of a million people.
How many times does the word "exception" have to be used? I AM NOT CLAIMING THAT EVERY SINGLE SENIOR CITIZEN LIVES IN A CHEAP HOUSE. Yeesh. Of COURSE some seniors are living in very expensive places compared to their income, and of course some get forced out due to cost increases. Which, of course, leads to them downsizing (hint: downsizing isn't just about physical space reduction).
Regardless, out of a city of a million+ people, how many of them are currently low income seniors living in Mount Royal and these other areas? Unless it's in the hundreds of thousands, it's not enough to change a general trend, or to use other words,
a correlation.
Lower Mount Royal, incidentally, is close to 90% apartment/condos (according to something I dug up on the City's website) - these are not exactly seniors being squeezed out of their ancestral mansions here. While again there are exceptions, most apartments and condos will have lower property values *per unit* than the equivalent SFH, in any given area. Because, as you point out, the land is what's valuable - and SFH has more land per unit than anything (again, with very few exceptions - otherwise what's the point of this entire discussion on paying your fair share of taxes...).