If Canadians Want Houses, Give Them Houses!

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Obviously I can't speak for all demographics of Canadians, but working in Downtown Toronto, I'd say among my fellow millennials, there is little or no desire to own a house. Even the married people in my office are vocally against SFH living and are vocally in favour of walkability over space.

In my office, out of 55 or 60 people, I am one of the only people who owns a car, and more telling, I'm one of the few who has a TTC monthly pass. Many of my colleagues do not even have drivers licenses. This is what I'm seeing in Toronto, but it is a very, very different viewpoint from my friends in other Ontario cities where car and house ownership are valued highly.

Personally im 24 and I priortize retirement investing over home ownership. I view home or condo ownership as a "do if you can" thing; a mortage should never be more than 25% of your budget in my opinion.
But since the work I do involves clients across Vaughan and Scarborough i pretty much have to get a car now. Im more optimistic about driverless cars (the car will turn into an on-the-go office space) than I am about transit expansion in the GTA.

On average im on the ttc and viva 3.5 hours a day.

[1overcosc]

^ I wouldn't bank on self driving cars being widely available--and fully functional to the point of being able to use your car as an office--for quite some time. The current wave of massive transit expansion in the GTA will likely be complete before that happens.

[lio45]

FYI, there have been self-driving Teslas on the roads for nearly a year now.

You could get one and use it as your office right now, as many people have been doing already -- even though for obvious liability reasons the manufacturer officially says you shouldn't.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by lio45

FYI, there have been self-driving Teslas on the roads for nearly a year now.

You could get one and use it as your office right now, as many people have been doing already -- even though for obvious liability reasons the manufacturer officially says you shouldn't.

Tesla Autopilot isn't really advanced enough to where it's a full on self driving car--it just automates a few basic things. If you're doing freeway driving, I suppose you could completely ignore the road (although still dangerous to do so), but in the city or on a suburban arterial.. absolutely not.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Architype

"And in many respects it's bad for democracy, in terms of actually encouraging us to get out and see people who are different from ourselves, which is something we should be encouraging in a multicultural society like Canada."

Continued here

Off-topic, but it's remarkable that a person paid to think and teach would say something so sloppily idiotic as this.

Then again, maybe not. Still, from every angle that you look at it this is so literally not true, so completely baseless and contrary to empirical data and history, that it can only be a sort of wish fulfillment fantasy grounded in ways of thinking that are already starting to feel stale. Unexamined pieties like this would have produced emphatic head nods in ideological fellow travellers and bored shrugs in others back in the 1990s. But it seems that their sell-by date has long past.

Most of the current "right wing revolt" happening all over the first world is disturbing and even dangerous, and the aftermath following Trump's coming flame out will not be pretty, but you have to admit that some (repeat: some, not all) of the challenges to lefty academic orthodoxy have served to reveal how buck naked certain emperors are.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by osmo

^ This is what most of the modern developed world lives in for typical family areas an this is far from overwhelming density but this style of housing and neighbourhoods is completely foreign to Canada aside from pre-car East Canada and much of old urban Quebec. A areas of Toronto and Vancouver might look like this but very few. This picture likely presents a density that dwarfs much of urban Canada yet is still quiet enough to raise kids in. You still would have a small yard/garden with a nice park not even 5mins away from the home.

I don't see how the trend improves until a crisis hits like Vancouver. Cities are missing the mark in not introducing more practical ways to build modest communities.

Great post. This form of development is conspicuously absent from most of our cities... there is so little between highrise apartment towers and SFHs on 40 foot lots.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Off-topic, but it's remarkable that a person paid to think and teach would say something so sloppily idiotic as this.

Then again, maybe not. Still, from every angle that you look at it this is so literally not true, so completely baseless and contrary to empirical data and history, that it can only be a sort of wish fulfillment fantasy grounded in ways of thinking that are already starting to feel stale. Unexamined pieties like this would have produced emphatic head nods in idelogical fellow travellers and bored shrugs in others back in the 1990s. But it seems that their sell-by date has long past.

Most of the current "right wing revolt" happening all over the first world is disturbing and even dangerous, and the aftermath following Trump's coming flame out will not be pretty, but you have to admit that some (repeat: some, not all) of the challenges to lefty academic orthodoxy have served to reveal how buck naked certain emperors are.

A bit hyperbolic perhaps, but I wouldn't be too dismissive. For evidence, just visit a US city, preferably one in the southwest. You'll see plenty of gated low density SFH developments completely cut off from the city around them. It's not hard to imagine someone in those types of car-centric communities doing everything in their car and being totally cut off from their surroundings and people who aren't in their socioeconomic class.

At least cities, when done correctly, force us to mix and be aware of one another... I know my fellow middle class white Winnipeggers like to gripe about social issues related to indigenous people and refugees they see downtown. But at least the physical mixing of people forces the issues to be confronted... it would be all too easy to sweep it under the rug if Winnipeggers all lived and worked in the far reaches of suburbia and never came face to face with people of a different colour than they are. I don't want that kind of a stratified city where the wealthy do their best to ignore the marginalized.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Andy6

I don't understand why government doesn't try to discourage the growth of Toronto (or Vancouver etc.) by encouraging jobs to go elsewhere. Instead of adding population to cities that could use it and which have plentiful residential areas and affordable houses, everyone keeps squeezing into Toronto, creating a need for ridiculously expensive infrastructure upgrades and driving up the cost of houses to the point that you need to be a two-professional-income family to afford one.

It's not really true that Toronto is attracting loads and loads of people relative to other Canadian cities. Toronto's annual growth rate is only a bit above the Canadian average, and has been slowly declining for years.

As well, the city and the metropolitan area have negative interprovincial and intraprovincial migration. In other words: more people leave Toronto for smaller Ontario cities than move to Toronto from smaller Ontario cities, and more people leave Toronto for other provinces than vice-versa. It's only international immigration and births that are driving Toronto's growth. So people aren't "squeezing into" Toronto at a rate especially greater than other parts of Canada.

Regarding the main question of the thread: Whenever I hear the “give the people what they want” argument in regards to housing, I’m left to wonder why these preferences develop. There are few places on Earth where single-family living is the dominant housing typology, including North America until fairly recently. If Canadians are unable to even imagine another way of living, that strikes me as…well, a lack of imagination.

I remember visiting the Dutch countryside last year and being struck by the agricultural villages, extraordinarily compact and picturesque little places which were most composed of rowhouses and small apartment buildings, and which seemed ridiculously pleasant places to live. I doubt the residents are clamouring for big SFHs.

I enjoy my current set-up—a small rowhouse in a walkable urban neighbourhood. It’s not perfect, but it minimizes what I dislike about home ownership (property maintenance, especially of the landscaping variety) but provides some outdoor space beyond some crappy balcony, plus a more classically “homey” layout.

Anyway, I agree with those who say that it would simply be a terrible use of land in our already sprawling cities to accelerate single-family-home growth. There are lots of single-family homes already on the resale market, and we have to build other housing types. But: we have to build them better so more people see them as a viable lifestyle. The classic shoebox condo for the 25-35 set, or the investor set, isn’t the kind of “housing” we need, really. The typical Canadian condo certainly doesn't stack up, in terms of space or design, to the middle-class apartment houses of Paris and New York.

And where we do still build single-family homes, we can make those communities better by planning more linear and logical street layouts and encouraging walkability, but that’s planning 101. Single-family homes and windey cul-de-sacs don’t have to go hand-in-hand.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by dleung

Oh whatnext lol...

...still seeking that $300k SFH in the West Side... if not for the red china money launderers!!

Not that this issue was part of my post, but since you brought it up: If it is acknowledged that a shortage of SFH is driving prices out of reach of Canadians, why would any rational government not block all sales to foreign residents? If it was a water shortage we were talking about the ban would be slapped on so fast it would make your head spin.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by esquire

A bit hyperbolic perhaps, but I wouldn't be too dismissive. For evidence, just visit a US city, preferably one in the southwest. You'll see plenty of gated low density SFH developments completely cut off from the city around them. It's not hard to imagine someone in those types of car-centric communities doing everything in their car and being totally cut off from their surroundings and people who aren't in their socioeconomic class.

At least cities, when done correctly, force us to mix and be aware of one another... I know my fellow middle class white Winnipeggers like to gripe about social issues related to indigenous people and refugees they see downtown. But at least the physical mixing of people forces the issues to be confronted... it would be all too easy to sweep it under the rug if Winnipeggers all lived and worked in the far reaches of suburbia and never came face to face with people of a different colour than they are. I don't want that kind of a stratified city where the wealthy do their best to ignore the marginalized.

I'm not promoting one thing or the other. I personally think higher densities are better for lots of reasons. But the idea that greater population densities and ethnic differences in cities are "better for democracy" is so patently, obviously untrue that only the most blinkered ideologue would say such a thing.

There is zero evidence that population densities or ethnic diversity have any positive effect whatsoever on the health of a democracy. This is just wishful thinking. For every anecdotal story of different social classes and cultures living in close proximity producing "better democracy," or more tolerant people, there is an equal and opposite story of how it does precisely the opposite.

What the professor said is just a polite piety with no connection to reality. There is actually a lot more obvious anecdotal evidence to suggest that the negative effects on social cohesion and democracy increase as stratification/differences in social class and ethnic cultures increase.

The people moving into downtown Winnipeg are probably more likely to be self-selecting liberal types who are more sympathetic to First Nations issues. For example, I know that the "People's Republic" of Wolseley is supposed to be the granola-crunching lefty capital of Winnipeg, but when I lived there the neighbours around me consisted of just as many or more of the "old stock" who freely said nasty or impatient things about natives as there were Birkenstock-shod enlightened people ready to listen to the concerns of Winnipeg's underclass.

[esquire]

^ For what it's worth I'm neutral on the ethnic diversity thing, I certainly don't mind it but I'm not convinced that it's a goal worth pursuing in and of itself.

But density and built forms that encourage people to mix and cross paths? I'm all for it. The people in downtown Winnipeg I'm referring to are not so much residents (who resemble the example you gave) but workers... downtown Winnipeg is still the largest employment hub by far here, there are no large-scale suburban office parks by the freeway like you see in Southern Ontario. That means you have a pretty varied group of people crossing paths downtown. Plenty of suburban middle management types cross paths with hardscrabble folks on a daily basis. One group can't ignore the other. I think there is value in that, as opposed to the stratified, compartmentalized approach you typically see in a lot of American cities.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I'm not promoting one thing or the other. I personally think higher densities are better for lots of reasons. But the idea that greater population densities and ethnic differences in cities are "better for democracy" is so patently, obviously untrue that only the most blinkered ideologue would say such a thing.

There is zero evidence that population densities or ethnic diversity have any positive effect whatsoever on the health of a democracy. This is just wishful thinking. For every anecdotal story of different social classes and cultures living in close proximity producing "better democracy," or more tolerant people, there is an equal and opposite story of how it does precisely the opposite.

What the professor said is just a polite piety with no connection to reality. There is actually a lot more obvious anecdotal evidence to suggest that the negative effects on social cohesion and democracy increase as stratification/differences in social class and ethnic cultures increase.

The people moving into downtown Winnipeg are probably more likely to be self-selecting liberal types who are more sympathetic to First Nations issues. For example, I know that the "People's Republic" of Wolseley is supposed to be the granola-crunching lefty capital of Winnipeg, but when I lived there the neighbours around me consisted of just as many or more of the "old stock" who freely said nasty or impatient things about natives as there were Birkenstock-shod enlightened people ready to listen to the concerns of Winnipeg's underclass.

I agree with you.

Without being too harsh, the comments made by that professor are sophomoric and superficial.

They reflect a latter 20th century US-based view of urban demographics, when there was a great isolationist trend by the mostly white middle and upper classes. It wasn't just residential and educational segregation. There was to a large degree recreational, employment and social segregation.

However, even in the US itself, this view of things is increasingly and outdated one.

In many of the larger US cities like New York, SF, etc., the central parts of the cities are increasingly white and upper class, and the inner and even outer suburbs are more and more diverse.

Toronto for example is kind of like this as well, and the inner city (the "old" City of Toronto, without Scarborough, North York, etc.) in terms of residents can seem quite a bit whiter than outer, more suburban-style areas in both the 416 and even Mississauga, Brampton, Markham, etc.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

In many of the larger US cities like New York, SF, etc., the central parts of the cities are increasingly white and upper class, and the inner and even outer suburbs are more and more diverse.

But in many ways, NY and SF are the great exceptions to the typical reality of US cities where you have a largely poorer and non-white inner city population, and a more prosperous, whiter population in the suburbs and exurbs.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Obviously I can't speak for all demographics of Canadians, but working in Downtown Toronto, I'd say among my fellow millennials, there is little or no desire to own a house. Even the married people in my office are vocally against SFH living and are vocally in favour of walkability over space.

In my office, out of 55 or 60 people, I am one of the only people who owns a car, and more telling, I'm one of the few who has a TTC monthly pass. Many of my colleagues do not even have drivers licenses. This is what I'm seeing in Toronto, but it is a very, very different viewpoint from my friends in other Ontario cities where car and house ownership are valued highly.

It would be interesting to know how many have kids. usually after the second kid arrives the illusions about living in a condo downtown vanish pretty quickly. As the study showed Millennials may enjoy condo living more than the other demographics, they still ultimately aspire to a house.

...Some millennials are saying goodbye to the big city and moving to other parts of the province. They are finding new jobs or negotiating to work from home. Toronto has lost the highest number of young people since 1999-2000 and Vancouver has lost the most since the Great Recession, according to Statscan’s latest intraprovincial migration data.

The flip side: More people in their 20s and 30s are heading to the suburbs and farther afield. Statscan data show millennials moving to areas outside Toronto and Vancouver, such as Oshawa and Barrie in Ontario and Kelowna in British Columbia....
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe...ticle30273404/

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

But in many ways, NY and SF are the great exceptions to the typical reality of US cities where you have a largely poorer and non-white inner city population, and a more prosperous, whiter population in the suburbs and exurbs.

I think that change is happening in more cities than we realize. Atlanta and Washington DC off the top of my mind are like this too.

[geotag277]

Originally Posted by whatnext

It would be interesting to know how many have kids. usually after the second kid arrives the illusions about living in a condo downtown vanish pretty quickly. As the study showed Millennials may enjoy condo living more than the other demographics, they still ultimately aspire to a house.

...Some millennials are saying goodbye to the big city and moving to other parts of the province. They are finding new jobs or negotiating to work from home. Toronto has lost the highest number of young people since 1999-2000 and Vancouver has lost the most since the Great Recession, according to Statscan’s latest intraprovincial migration data.

The flip side: More people in their 20s and 30s are heading to the suburbs and farther afield. Statscan data show millennials moving to areas outside Toronto and Vancouver, such as Oshawa and Barrie in Ontario and Kelowna in British Columbia....
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe...ticle30273404/

Also interesting to point out that in 1975, the average size of a home in Canada was 1050 square feet. In 2016, that seems to be an unacceptably small condo to raise a family and the average sized home has swelled to 2000 square feet - all while our cities continue to grow.

In 1975, Vancouver was smaller than Ottawa is today. Toronto was smaller than Vancouver is today.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I think that change is happening in more cities than we realize. Atlanta and Washington DC off the top of my mind are like this too.

Yeah, I'm sure it's getting to be common in some of the larger cities, Washington, Chicago, Boston, Seattle come to mind and I'm sure there are a few others. But the dominant trend outside of NY/SF is still very much poor folks in the centre, wealthier folks on the outer edges.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by whatnext

It would be interesting to know how many have kids. usually after the second kid arrives the illusions about living in a condo downtown vanish pretty quickly. As the study showed Millennials may enjoy condo living more than the other demographics, they still ultimately aspire to a house.

Heh. I have two kids and I'd totally live in a downtown condo assuming I could find a 3 bedroom condo I could afford. But even if I could find one, I would never be able to persuade my wife to do it. The number of my friends and acquaintances with kids who live in a condo is precisely zero.

I think geotag hit the nail on the head... the condo market doesn't match expectations when it comes to family housing. Around here, it seems that condos generally top out at around 2 bedrooms, 1,200 sf unless you find some uber-extravagant penthouse suite type thing that costs over a million bucks. I guess that goes to osmo's earlier point about the missing middle of the housing market... perhaps a highrise condo isn't ideal for a family, so where are the Euro-style urban walkup townhouses?

[geotag277]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I'm not promoting one thing or the other. I personally think higher densities are better for lots of reasons. But the idea that greater population densities and ethnic differences in cities are "better for democracy" is so patently, obviously untrue that only the most blinkered ideologue would say such a thing.

There is zero evidence that population densities or ethnic diversity have any positive effect whatsoever on the health of a democracy. This is just wishful thinking. For every anecdotal story of different social classes and cultures living in close proximity producing "better democracy," or more tolerant people, there is an equal and opposite story of how it does precisely the opposite.

What the professor said is just a polite piety with no connection to reality. There is actually a lot more obvious anecdotal evidence to suggest that the negative effects on social cohesion and democracy increase as stratification/differences in social class and ethnic cultures increase.

The people moving into downtown Winnipeg are probably more likely to be self-selecting liberal types who are more sympathetic to First Nations issues. For example, I know that the "People's Republic" of Wolseley is supposed to be the granola-crunching lefty capital of Winnipeg, but when I lived there the neighbours around me consisted of just as many or more of the "old stock" who freely said nasty or impatient things about natives as there were Birkenstock-shod enlightened people ready to listen to the concerns of Winnipeg's underclass.

You seem to be conflating quite a few concepts here.

For example, increasing density with condos is not the same as increasing economic inequality. Same with multiculturalism and economic inequality. Correlation does not equal causation, and these things are not the same and do not necessarily go hand in hand.

Saying that diversity, social cohesion, and "social class" (outside of economic inequality I'm not exactly sure what you are meaning with this turn of phrase) actually detract from the quality of democracy is just as bullshit as the professor claiming that these things improve democracy - unless you actually have facts and studies and some sort of evidence to support your claims.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by whatnext

It would be interesting to know how many have kids. usually after the second kid arrives the illusions about living in a condo downtown vanish pretty quickly. As the study showed Millennials may enjoy condo living more than the other demographics, they still ultimately aspire to a house.

...Some millennials are saying goodbye to the big city and moving to other parts of the province. They are finding new jobs or negotiating to work from home. Toronto has lost the highest number of young people since 1999-2000 and Vancouver has lost the most since the Great Recession, according to Statscan’s latest intraprovincial migration data.

The flip side: More people in their 20s and 30s are heading to the suburbs and farther afield. Statscan data show millennials moving to areas outside Toronto and Vancouver, such as Oshawa and Barrie in Ontario and Kelowna in British Columbia....
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe...ticle30273404/

None of these colleagues have children; a number of them have openly said they do not want kids.

I'll be very interested to see the 2016 census results. It's obviously anecdotal evidence I'm seeing, but my coworkers who grew up in the 905 have either moved downtown or are planning to move there in the near future. I don't even know how these people are saving money, throwing away 35-40% of their take-home pay on rent just to live closer to work. I only spend 30% and I have zero savings.