Financialized landlords disproportionately apply to evict in Black neighbourhoods, study finds : r/toronto - "Seems pretty clear cut, the article states the vast majority of the “Approximately 99 per cent of Starlight’s applications before the Landlord and Tenant Board relate solely to unpaid rent," Is the expectation that they should be given free housing? The Toronto Star is always trying to play the race card. Pay your rent and you won’t get evicted. Pretty simple."
The reason black people don't pay rent is racism. So they need to be given free housing
Huge disparities in housing approvals and development fees found across Canadian cities by Senate report - The Globe and Mail - "A Senate report highlighting large discrepancies in building timelines and development charges among Canadian municipalities is calling for federal funding to be contingent on cities proving that they can fast track housing projects and lower builder fees. The report studying housing affordability, by the standing Senate committee on banking, commerce and the economy, found major differences between the approval timelines for homebuilders in different cities. It said that a housing project can take more than two years to be approved in Toronto, because of a bloated regulatory process. Meanwhile, Calgary took only 10 months for the same approvals. In conversations with builders, the committee found it can take 11 years from the time a first proposal is made until a housing project is completed in Toronto. Toni Varone, deputy chair of the Senate committee that authored the report, released Tuesday, noted that some cities have up to 50 agencies weigh in on a housing proposal, while other cities have less than half that number and are able to approve projects faster. Some cities have ombudsmen that can co-ordinate with municipal offices to solve issues, while others don’t, causing projects to languish as a result. “There’s no reason why Calgary can go from first application to building permits in months and Toronto needs years, and there’s no impressionable difference in the outcome,” Mr. Varone said. The report found that development fees account for roughly $200,000 of the final price of a single-family home in Toronto, compared with just $10,000 in Moncton. Development charges are generally used to ensure that developers help pay for the infrastructure costs related to building a new neighbourhood or services, but the report found that those fees are ballooning because they are increasingly being used to fund broader city costs with little transparency... “The federal government has given a substantial amount of money to municipalities across Canada and there’s been no corresponding decrease in development charges, nor has any of that money been linked to the ability of cities to shorten their timeline to approve housing,” Mr. Varone said... Mr. Varone said development charges have gone unchecked for decades, and the report found those fees have increased by roughly 800 per cent in Toronto. In many cases, Mr. Varone said development fees were being used for city expenses such as parks and wastewater infrastructure, rather than their more traditional purpose of offsetting the cost of building new neighbourhoods... Sales-tax exemptions currently only cover homes up to $350,000 − a value that was set in 1991 and not indexed to inflation. Mr. Varone said that figure covered 95 per cent of new homes in 1991, and an increase to $1.5-million would allow a similar number of homes to benefit from the tax exemption today. In the 2025 federal budget, the government only expanded the GST/HST rebate on new homes for first-time buyers − a measure that critics said was too limited."
Weird. Left wingers tell us that cutting development fees won't reduce the price of housing, as developers will keep the prices the same
How ‘single exit stairway’ buildings could make cities better and safer - The Globe and Mail - "this project in an older Toronto neighbourhood will express radical ambition. Its design unmakes more than half a century of North American assumptions about fire safety, architecture and how to build cities. Designed by Toronto’s Office Ou, the six-unit building will only have a single staircase, not two as Canadian building codes usually require. That change – for which local building officials gave special approval – has consequences. It will produce unusually comfortable apartments, each with windows on two or more sides, and a shared stairway where neighbours can encounter one another. Such “single exit stairway” or “single egress” buildings are common outside North America. Now, several Canadian jurisdictions are re-examining their rules to allow such developments, including the City of Vancouver, which altered its building code last month. In Canada and the United States, most buildings taller than two storeys must have a second stairwell or exterior fire escapes. A typical apartment building features a long, space-consuming corridor that cuts through its middle, with apartments on each side and access to stairwells at either end. North Americans take this form for granted, but it is not the only way to build multiunit residential buildings... single-stairway designs have recently faced resistance from fire chiefs and building officials who view them as risky. Advocates, on the other hand, say this approach to construction can deliver structures that are safer than the Canadian norm – and provide comfortable family homes, even in small buildings that can slide into existing neighbourhoods. The owner/developers of the Toronto apartment project, former developer Marvin Green and planner Pamela Blais, say theirs is the first single-stairway project to be approved there in the postwar era. Ontario’s 84-year-old building code forbids this approach; they secured special permission by convincing municipal officials that the design is safer than the prescribed minimum standard... In the U.S., cities such as Seattle and New York now permit new single exit stairway buildings, as does the state of Hawaii. The design is spreading to other states and is being discussed by traditional opponents such as national fire-safety and firefighter organizations. By contrast, in Australia, Britain, Singapore and much of Europe, single exit stairway buildings are not only commonplace, they can rise up to 20 storeys (typically with elevators as well). In recent years, proponents have made the case that contemporary fire-safety technologies have rendered obsolete the corridor-plus-two-stairwell layouts that have defined North American multiunit buildings since the 1940s. New single exit stairway buildings incorporate modern safety systems, such as automatic sprinklers and enhanced fire-retardant building materials, that are not typically used in older and more traditional North American apartment buildings. According to new research from the Pew Charitable Trust, four- to six-storey single exit stairway buildings equipped with sprinklers have a “strong safety record” versus conventional apartment buildings and single-family homes. They also cost 6 per cent to 13 per cent less to construct, a significant savings. Proponents also argue that this reform creates other spinoff benefits – including larger and more livable apartment layouts. Such buildings can also add density to low-rise residential neighbourhoods that are economically out of reach for most families and have been losing population for decades... “You have family units in this kind of building and you know your neighbours,” Ms. Roecker said, casting the accelerating single exit stairway revolution in clear terms: “This is the missing link to the missing middle.”... Toronto building examiners initially balked at Office Ou’s solutions. “It’s all about negotiation with the city, which was very complicated and convoluted,” said Office Ou co-founder Uros Novakovic. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Mr. Green and Ms. Blais took to social media to complain about the roadblocks. Their posts came to the attention of one of Mayor Olivia Chow’s staff. “There had to be political involvement,” Ms. Blais said. “The mayor requested that the chief building official resolve the matter.” “This was the first single exit stair project with an alternative solution proposal that has come to our attention,” Ms. Chow’s spokesperson, Shirven Rezvany, explained. “Our goal was to help find a way to make it work and set an example that this kind of building is feasible.”... “If you go around the world,” Mr. Keays observed, “there’s hundreds of examples. We are far from the leading edge. We are on the trailing edge.”"
City hall delays add $16,000 cost to rural Ottawa home cost - "Red tape and delays at city hall have cost a rural Ottawa couple more than $15,000 in rising development charges on the dream home they plan to build on the family farm. James Garland and his wife, Sarah, want to build a new home for their growing family on a two-acre severance from James’ father’s 100-year old farm on Garlandside Road near Limoges. But, while they waited for what they thought would be a simple severance “for a square of a cornfield,” the city’s development charge went up and up, increasing by nearly 50 per cent in two years: to $48,000 from $32,000 originally. When Garland’s sister severed a similar piece of land from the farm 12 years ago, the process took five months and cost “a few thousand dollars,” he said... "Our expectation was it would take about a year to separate the lot and get the permits and start building, then we’d move into the house after about a year and a half.” Though Garland’s building permit had been approved, the city wanted new surveys and things such as a hydrogeology report to ensure the water table was high enough to support the house and possible future buildings. Garland had to have numerous test pits dug. He said he had spent $120,000 on legal fees and various studies before putting a shovel in the ground. A development charge is a fee the city charges to pay for the cost of infrastructure such as roads, transit, sewer and water lines needed for new growth. Ironically, the Garland home will be on well and septic service and doesn’t require city services... The city has confirmed that the amount of the development charge is correct, but that’s not what has angered Garland. He’s mad about the delays in approval during which time the development charge climbed. It’s a bit like watching the cost of your groceries rise even as you stand in line at the checkout. “It got into this big ridiculous thing. We started the process three years ago. By that time the (development) fees went up from $32,000 to $34,000 to $40,000 to now, when it’s up to $48,000,” he said."
Proof that capitalism has failed and that we need even more regulation
Of course, many people denied that permits took so long
Average asking rents in Canada fall for 16th straight month: report - "The report says lower rents and a softer market helped improve affordability, with the average rent-to-income ratio falling slightly below 30 per cent in January for the first time in six years... Asking rents for condo units fell 5.7 per cent annually to $2,093 on average, while rents for houses and townhouses fell 3.1 per cent to $2,078. Rents for purpose-built units declined one per cent year-over-year to $2,049."
Weird. Why does "greed" keep decreasing in tandem with immigration? After all, left wingers tell us that immigrants aren't the problem
Why are the owners of purpose-built rentals so "greedy"?!
Bret 🍁 on X - "Minister of Housing Gregor Robertson says that Canadians can't afford to buy a house because there is a war in the Middle East. How delusional can someone possibly be? Wow."
Sen̓áḵw Towers set to open 113 years after Squamish people forced from site : r/vancouver - "More rentals are a very good thing. If this development is successful I can't wait to see what happens to Jericho grounds"
"More AFFORDABLE rentals are a good thing but these are definitely not that."
"More rentals available of all types keeps prices down. If you want to rent an older cheaper apartment, do you want to be competing to get it with a rich dude who needs a place to live, or would you rather he have a new expensive place to get, leaving the cheap one available for you? Also, years down the line the new "luxury" buildings will become the cheap ones as even newer ones are built. Basically all housing is good and helps the situation."
"I agree. Besides, I'm not sure how anyone expects them to build new rental housing that is somehow more affordable than existing rental housing. They can make it tiny - people rightly hate that. They can subsidize it, and make it social housing in a sense. They can leave out the "LuXuRy" finishes and appliances, but that will hardly save any money. They cannot build something that's shoddy and outdated, the way a 1970s apartment building would be. New housing will always be more expensive than old housing. It still helps to build it."
Sen̓áḵw Towers set to open 113 years after Squamish people forced from site : r/vancouver - "I don't think people who say that are in favour of housing scarcity necessarily, unlike the people who talk about protecting the value of home owner's property, but you should recognise that opposing all market housing developments effectively supports housing scarcity. Even if that is not your intention. At the end of the day you are saying that you are so opposed to landowners making money that you are willing to have the housing crisis get worse, and willing to ignore the fact that one result of that will be landlords making money."
Toronto's biggest landlord warns over half its homes could fall into critical condition unless it gets more cash : r/canadahousing - "Oh no…won’t someone think of the landlords…"
"This is about Toronto public housing."
"People in the sub saw "landlord" in the title and ran straight home to fetch their pitchforks lmao"
Clearly, the government needs to get back into social housing so tenants will be able to live in cheap, high quality units, because profit is evil
Tenant $300k+ in arrears, exploited the easy to exploit system in Ontario, rent free for 3 years. : r/RealEstateCanada - "Solution according to Reddit: this is perfectly fine. Fuck the landlord. Investment comes with risk, up yours. Hard agree. Everyone should be homeowner. Everyone should own their own homes. There should be no landlord ever. Cant afford a place to own? Well too bad go sleep on the street or wait for public housing. This is the way."
Toronto OK’s plan to raze public housing site for towers (aka "Council approves teardown of vacant public housing site near High Park to make way for towers") - "Toronto city hall has approved a plan to demolish and rebuild the west-end housing complex of Swansea Mews — nearly four years after a concrete ceiling collapsed onto a tenant, and led to an evacuation of the entire community... The decision to proceed with the plan was made despite objection from some neighbours and former tenants of the townhouse community. The former tenants were displaced in 2022, after the ceiling collapse sent one tenant to hospital. In the weeks that followed, officials said they discovered the ceilings had been constructed in a way that risked collapses in other units, as well. Their former homes are still standing today behind fences and under the watch of security. From May 2022 to early December 2025, Toronto Community Housing Corp. told the Star it has spent more than $29 million on Swansea Mews since the ceiling collapse, including security at the idle buildings, the immediate emergency response, shoring to hold up ceilings in units, fences around the complex and lost rental income, not including costs on legal and development fees. More than 100 displaced households from Swansea Mews, who were relocated to other public housing communities across the city, retain a right to return — meaning they can claim a unit in one of the new buildings once finished. In a committee hearing last month, former Swansea Mews resident Penny Fisher — whose displacement was chronicled by the Star — implored councillors to reject the proposal in its current form, saying key infrastructure, from transit to spaces in local schools, was insufficient to support the increase in density... “I want to be very clear about what delay means from a tenant’s perspective. The families of Swansea Mews have already been displaced since 2022,” speaker Cynthia Black, who identified herself as a tenant organizer, told the committee. “It is easy to call for more process when you’re securely housed.” Fisher, the former Swansea Mews tenant, left committee with an appeal: whatever was built, it needed to be kept in good shape, she said. She recounted repair issues that plagued Swansea tenants for years before the crisis. While officials have said the ceiling collapse that ultimately caused the area’s evacuation was due to a construction fault, not neglected repairs, Fisher said many units had already been sitting empty due to disrepair issues."
Damn slumlords! This is why landlords should be banned and the government should build more housing!
Damn greedy developers and landlords keeping housing expensive!
Ford government moves to pause affordable housing rules for new Toronto buildings : r/toronto
Left wingers don't understand that inclusionary zoning is a bad idea. They think intentions are the same as outcomes
Not even Wayne Gretzky's hometown can escape the great correction - "At the very micro-level, the pandemic boom in real estate prices in areas outside the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) never quite added up. Love or hate the city, Toronto is a real estate unicorn since it’s where the jobs are and, due to a scarcity of land, where new, single-family homes are not being built even during the good times. Factor in the city’s cultural attractions — pro sports teams, low-, mid- and high-end cuisine, arts, world-class hospitals and universities, street life and so on — and Toronto, outside a pandemic, is an undeniably happening place to be. All the things that make the city desirable make housing there expensive and price surges not entirely logical, but at least explainable. Brantford, in comparison, has a giant Wayne Gretzky statue. “It is very hard to justify why, suddenly, housing in Brantford, for example, would become a rare and speculative asset,” Couture said. “The pandemic price increases in the suburbs and exurbs never made any sense.” In places where land is available for development, such as Brantford, housing prices should track building cost increases. Moreover, housing, in a perfect world, should be regarded as places where people live, not as potentially winning lottery tickets for Canadians looking to amass individual wealth... Say, his buddy, Joe Blow, came to him and said, “Beau, I need you to build me a 1,500-square-foot, three-bedroom condominium with some living space for the kids and bedrooms with enough room that you can open the closet doors without having to move the bed out of the way first.” The cost of this imagined place, without Wesgroup pocketing a nickel, would be $2 million. “What we are experiencing is a cost of delivery crisis, because what we’re building, no one can afford,” Jarvis said. A decade ago, new condos on Vancouver’s east side sold for $587 a square foot, give or take, and developers made healthy margins. Jarvis today can’t sell a new condo with the same specs for less than $1,150 a square foot since he estimates red tape now accounts for 40 per cent of the per-square-foot cost of a new build. “A significant portion of the cost is government fees, levies and taxes, development cost charges, community amenity contributions, GST, property transfer tax and additional school tax on land,” he said. “The taxation that has occurred in our industry, we often joke that it’s like a sin tax; we are taxed more than cigarettes and alcohol, and they tax cigarettes and alcohol to change behaviour.”"
Clearly, evil developers will not build what people need, so they either need to be forced to do so, or the government needs to step in and because there is no evil profit prices will be lower, i.e. taxpayer subsidised
Aussie to Canada : r/InCanada - "Housing prices are already coming down, and are likely to continue declining as the affordable housing program rolls out. The numbers projected for this summer alone should surpass what was seen through the entirety of Harper and Trudeau's terms combined... Though I guess that's self-evident as a massive privatization sell-off under Harper, followed by Trudeau's inaction on the portfolio, contributed to the horrid decline in affordability. Zoning and development constraints are a necessity to avoid the kind of disasters we've seen in deregulated areas, with the destruction of wetlands changing watersheds and leading to water table imbalances, flood zones, or mixed industrial and residential zones creating potential health risks. As for population concentration: that's a hard one to avoid. Since the transition from an agrarian to industrial society, that has always been a challenge. We've had variations of the same problems and complaints since the 19th century. There are possible solutions, but politicians are rarely forward-thinking enough to stay ahead of the problems... And these days those who attempt it are often the subject of conspiracy theories. For example: King Charles attempted something big with Poundbury -- and there's a lot of good lessons to be taken from the effort, along with a lot of good done for working class people. Yet you hear the conspiracy theorists talk about it, and it's some kind of WEF plot. This changes the signal to noise ratio in a terrible way, and the lessons we should be taking from that and applying to our own communities gets lost."
Left wingers really live in lala land and are unable to recognise the role that mass migration plays in juicing housing demand or how few new units overpriced and slow government housing contributes. Meanwhile, they keep wanting more regulation which will continue to boost housing costs, but will blame this on "capitalism" and demand even more government housing
Toronto's rental vacancy hits record high since COVID-19 pandemic
Proof that it's not immigration driving rents and landlords need to be less greedy, because anything above 0% vacancy shows that capitalism has failed
Ontario power of sales surge as homeowners run out of runway - "Alphonso’s data collection indicates that roughly one third of the power of sales are from major banks and lenders while the rest are from alternative and private lending, which have higher interest rates than the major banks and aren’t as heavily regulated. But even major banks and lenders are seeing a significant uptick in mortgages in arrears in Ontario — late payments by three or more months — which reached 0.30 per cent for those lenders in February, a number not seen since 2011. Mortgages in arrears reached a low of 0.06 per cent in 2022, according to the Canadian Bankers Association."
Housing would be 10% lower if Canada had kept pace with U.S.: CMHC | National Post - "Canada’s housing stock would be about 30 per cent larger and prices 10 per cent lower if this country’s building industry had been as responsive to demand as its American counterpart over the last couple of decades, says a new report from the federal housing agency. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) pointed the finger in the report released Thursday at excessive regulation largely at the municipal level and two other factors — geography and demographics — that are often difficult to influence. In the U.S., the report said, there are fewer restrictions on zoning and the use of land in many metro areas, whereas many Canadian municipalities have building restrictions that have hindered the supply of homes and contributed to dramatic price hikes. The CMHC report, based on research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), found that those barriers left the Canadian industry less responsive to increased demand during the 2006-24 period of study. Mathieu Laberge, the CMHC’s chief economist, wrote that there are two other key factors that have slowed the housing supply in Canada. First, many of this country’s major cities, notably Vancouver and Montreal, have mountains and waterways that are natural barriers to the construction of new houses. Second, Canada has fewer large cities than the U.S., leaving urban residents with fewer places they can move to find comparable jobs, thereby triggering new developments. Paul Smetanin, president of the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, said international analytical housing models can be misleading because they rest on assumptions, including that the various jurisdictions have comparable regulations and labour pools. Smetanin, who has been studying the Canadian housing sector for decades, said the Canadian housing market is in crisis largely because of bottlenecks that are hindering construction. The industry will build if the market conditions are favourable, he said... the biggest cost in the price of a new home (about 36 per cent), according to one recent study, is taxation, making the three levels of government the top beneficiary of the construction of a new home. About 70 per cent of those taxes are for development charges for sewer, water and electricity, land-transfer taxes, and HST. The other 30 per cent is for the indirect income and corporate taxes paid throughout the supply chain, but ultimately passed on to buyers... There’s no quick fix, however, to a housing shortage. Analysts say there’s often a lag of a dozen years or more from when a plot of land has been identified for a new home, subdivision or apartment building to when people are living there. It can take even longer when roads and key services — sewer, water, electricity — need to be added... Economists point out that an increase in housing construction carries significant benefits beyond the creation of new homes: downward pressure on housing prices, economic activity and jobs through construction and the adjacent purchases of furniture and other items that new homeowners typically make. New buildings also mean a windfall for government coffers at all three levels."
Clearly, we need even more regulation to protect people
