Admiral Beez
Superstar
Listened to John Tory on CBC this morning where he identified (from his semi-Con perspective) the issues:
1) Lack of affordable housing
2) Mentally ill, including those refusing shelter
3) Refugees increasingly taking shelter spots
So, how do we fix this in the immediate term (now to end 2018), interim (2019 and 2020) and long term (2021 onwards)?
IMO, forcing developers to include affordable housing won't fix it, because the horse has left the stable on most real estate projects, and "affordable" is a moving target, vs. RGI. Mentally ill people do not need affordable housing, they need free or nearly-free housing.
I'd say we need government to return to building and owning the housing. But do we want more 1950-eras Regent Park low income mega projects? Mixed income like the new Regent Park is nice, but how does this move the line on addressing homelessness when all the developer did was replace existing RGI units while adding thousands of market value units?
If the government is back in the housing biz, where should the money come from? Well, refugees should be a Federal issue. What about relocating those who are unemployable to other cities in the province, ideally returning those from outside the city to their towns or family areas? No, I don't mean exiling the poor, but this is a massive, empty province with tons of space.
1) Lack of affordable housing
2) Mentally ill, including those refusing shelter
3) Refugees increasingly taking shelter spots
So, how do we fix this in the immediate term (now to end 2018), interim (2019 and 2020) and long term (2021 onwards)?
IMO, forcing developers to include affordable housing won't fix it, because the horse has left the stable on most real estate projects, and "affordable" is a moving target, vs. RGI. Mentally ill people do not need affordable housing, they need free or nearly-free housing.
I'd say we need government to return to building and owning the housing. But do we want more 1950-eras Regent Park low income mega projects? Mixed income like the new Regent Park is nice, but how does this move the line on addressing homelessness when all the developer did was replace existing RGI units while adding thousands of market value units?
If the government is back in the housing biz, where should the money come from? Well, refugees should be a Federal issue. What about relocating those who are unemployable to other cities in the province, ideally returning those from outside the city to their towns or family areas? No, I don't mean exiling the poor, but this is a massive, empty province with tons of space.