It’s five years since the statue of John A. Macdonald was felled and decapitated but no decision has yet been made on the future of the monument. La Presse was not even allowed to see the statue in its city storage space.
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Kate
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Kate
Contrarian opinion piece in La Presse posits that constructing luxury condo towers would help relieve the housing crisis. He even gets an economist to suggest that there’s a “trickle‑down effect” where putting more units in at the top of the market means more affordable units become available closer to the bottom. I feel a fundamental disconnect is being made here.
Adding later, a piece from QMI where an economist says the trickle‑down effect has never been shown to work in housing, with explanations why not.
jeather
I swear I have heard that, in general, that is true for luxury RENTALS, where people who can afford high end apartments move into them (which is not to say it is sufficient to relieve the housing crisis), but condos is a different question.
Nicholas
This is what two studies commissioned by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal crown corp, found, as did studies from Finland, the US, Germany and elsewhere.
I think it’s pretty widely agreed that the inverse is true: if you don’t build new housing, higher income people will move into housing that was previously occupied by lower income people (gentrification), crowding out those with lower incomes. You can slow this with rent control, but it absolutely happens in ownership (happened to my childhood home), and will happen with rent controlled housing via renovictions and families and people not knowing the law, or converting rentals to ownership. Studies also find that the incomes of people in housing decrease with housing age, as people prefer newer housing (I like the charm of old housing, but people absolutely do prefer newer housing, because of new amenities and fewer repairs). Put that together, it absolutely makes sense that not building housing for high incomes causes them to go to housing previously for lower incomes, and so building that housing will relieve pressure at the lower, older end of the market. (Same logic that building new luxury cars causes people who own current ones to sell them second-hand, and that availability pushes prices down in a similar way to building lower priced cars.) And that’s why study after study has found this to be the case in city after city, not just slowing the increase in rents, but, in cities where enough new housing is built, actually decreasing rents.
Anecdotally, I know some professionals (doctors, etc.) who moved into housing in Ville Emard because they couldn’t find housing elsewhere in central neighbourhoods, and also someone who lived on the top floor of a triplex in the Plateau who just moved into a fancy condo near the Bell Centre, and so her triplex unit is now available for someone else. If we didn’t build all those units in Griffintown, they’d all be bidding up housing in the rest of the city/region.
Blork
From a logical perspective this makes perfect sense and isn’t anything new. If you want the existing housing stock to suddenly have vacancies, you build new places that will entice people to exit their existing place. (Typically, this is a move upwards; our old friend “upward mobility.”)
Further, it is (logically) more efficient and affordable to open up vacancies in existing housing stock (by building higher priced units, thereby creating the vacuum from upward mobility) than to build new “affordable” stock because building is expensive.
Unfortunately, logic is not the only factor involved. There are numerous articles out there about this, and I wish I had bookmarked the few I read that were particularly relevant to this conversation, but I don’t have time to track them down now.
But here is one that I think addresses some of it:
Kate
Is it not true that Toronto is sitting on a lot of empty luxury condos nobody can afford?
Ephraim
Meanwhile, the NIMBY people keep on preventing units from being built altogether. And the city doesn’t impose minimum number of units on certain parcels.
Robert H
I’ve read that there’s an oversupply in certain part’s of Toronto’s residential real estate market, but allegedly because owners are refusing to lower their prices. The demand is there, and they could stimulate it by yielding on money and buyers would respond. But for the time being, proprietors are refusing to budge. I feel like all that’s happening in another dimension as I have no hope of ever buying. Still, I like to see new housing being built, even if it’s housing I’ll never be able to afford. I say let a zillion pricey condominium towers bloom in Centre-ville and let those thriving professionals currently liviing in my favourite quartiers, but longing for that new-condo smell, flock to them. So then, maybe-perhaps-I-hope-I-pray, other folks can fill those vacant units leaving something reasonable but pleasant for me to rent in the next adjacent outer ring.
Ian
Montreal is sitting on a lot of luxury condos people can’t afford. Word is that the Tours des Canadiens have entire floors that are sitting empty or used almost entirely as illegal AirBnBs.
This reminds me of that map of abandoned buildings – the thing is, even in my neighbourhood just offhand I know of acouple dozen that weren’t on that map… and certainly not places that are owned but simply uninhabited. Many wealthy folks simply don’t care. Go for a little walk in Upper Westmount or Upper Outremont some day. It’s even easier to tell which places aren’t inhabited in winter, of course. It’s a real eye opener – literally hundreds of luxury properties.
If the trickle down effect is real, it’s not working nearly well enough.
jeather
I just think that the people who rent and could afford/would like a nicer rental are not the same group as those who would buy into a luxury condo, so the increase in construction of condos is not affecting the sphere of renters. (There will be some people, I guess, who buy these condos, then rent.)
Kevin
Kate
Toronto is sitting on tens of thousands of unsold condos, and condos on the market that nobody is willing to buy at the asking price. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/condo-sales-plummet-in-toronto-and-vancouver-but-more-resilient-elsewhereIt’s not in that article, but many of those condos are tiny. There are loads of studios at under 500 square feet, and the median size for a new build condo is 616 square feet.
Ian
Sounds like a problem squatter’s rights could solve.
Squatting and urbanism in Amsterdam“The history of squatting in Amsterdam is intimately linked to the urban struggles that have influenced the city’s urban planning and social life. The squatters, « kraakers “, formed a movement that asserted itself from the 1960s. Today, with the experience gained, the municipality is making civil initiative a tool for urban development”
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“In 1981, with the « Vacancy Act », the squat acquired a legal status. A vacant building can be legally squatted, if it has been vacant for at least one year and if the owner cannot demonstrate a plan of use within a few months. Between 1980 and 1985, the number of squatters, about 20,0004, illustrates the extent of the movement, which is becoming more structured and vocal. Thus, since these years, the kraakspreekuren, in each district, advise the candidates to the occupation and encourage cohesion.Finally, the squat phenomenon and especially the 1981 law, led to the still widespread anti-krak : to avoid the occupation of their property, some owners offer a small rent in exchange for protection. Intermediary associations manage the tenant/landlord relationship. Thus, many families or students have made this their housing strategy.”
vasi
Mike Moffat’s podcast claimed that the problem in Toronto is that a lot of recent “luxury condo” construction was only appropriate for Airbnbs. Tiny studios with just a mini-fridge, for over $500K. Suddenly, Airbnbs are highly restricted in Toronto, many of the pre-construction buyiers are refusing to actually pay, and the condos are stuck in limbo.
Thankfully it’s stopping now since the Airbnb bylaw passed, but I’m not sure what should be done now. I don’t want to reward the developers for building dumb condos, but it’s also not great if half the developers in Toronto go bankrupt.
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Kate
François Pelletier, who stabbed Romane Bonnier to death in the McGill ghetto in 2021, was convicted of murder in the first degree Tuesday at the Palais de justice. With this decision, the jury showed that they chose not to buy the theory that Pelletier was not criminally responsible because of mental disorder.
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Kate
What’s open and closed for Canada Day.
Orr
Is this a good place to say how fortunate we are to live in one of the best places in the world, this place called Canada?
I think about this a lot.Chris
Hear, hear!
azrhey
I usually say that Canada is a deeply flawed country, but at least its flaws are easier to live with, that most other places on this planet….
walkerp
Happy Canada Day, all!
I’m grateful.Bert
Bonne fête du Canada!
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Kate
Émilie Thuillier, in charge of buildings for the city, says she has no idea how the teenagers got into the old Chinese hospital last weekend, although a few TikToks have been posted from inside the building this year.
I’ve walked around that building and have to give those kids props for ingenuity, because it really does look solidly boarded up and fenced off, no obvious ingresses visible from the street, but evidently people have been getting in somehow.
The city is vowing to heighten security to its empty buildings and has also cut the electricity to the hospital building. The two kids who were electrocuted are still in critical condition.
Wednesday, 24Hres says it’s still possible to get in.
Tim S.
Is there a city in the world that has successfully teen-proofed itself? Maybe Singapore?
DeWolf
Definitely not Singapore:
Nicholas
You know one way not to have tons of empty, unsurveilled buildings that could be broken into? Make them not empty. I know that means it’d be hard to have a 15-year planning process all the time, but I think filling buildings with people and businesses could work.
Chris
26 years vacant! Scandalous. Selling it to a rapacious developer would be a lesser evil.
Ian
This also sounds like a problem squatter’s rights could solve.
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Kate
More than 1900 households in Quebec have reached Moving Day and need to move out, but with nowhere to go.
Ian
In a city with thousands of empty dwellings, people are left without places to live. If only there was an obvious solution.
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Kate
A homeless camp on Notre-Dame East has been given a ten‑day extension but eventual eviction is inevitable.
Ian
It seems rather telling that the city thinks homeless camps are so dangerous that they need to be dismantled and destroyed, with literally nowhere for its inhabitants to go, but owns hundreds of thousands of square feet of property that stands empty.
They might not be up to code for rentals, but how about temporary homelss shelters?
Maybe take some of the grotesquely inflated police budget and set it aside for shelter administration and support?I know turnning vacant buildings into temporary shelter isn’t something that would be normally considered, but we are literally in a housing crisis, mostly by allowing property development and teh landlord-rigged housing system to run its course. We don’t have to insist on hospital grade aprtments with full security and 24 hour staffing. There is a middle ground to aim for, and urgent impetus to start with the absolute basics – a roof and walls. There are hobo jungles in our cities, even a vacant, unrenovated building is an improvement. Allowing community involvment and allowing the residents themselves to fix things up could be astarting point. It’s worth at least trying.
As the beatnik parents of Ned Flanders said, “We tried nothing and qwe’re all out of ideas”.
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