AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
It's a slogan, just like a buck a beer - that never became a thing, and neither will this from his doing (beyond maybe the 5 homes that he managed to clobber up for a photo-op).
AoD
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Premier Doug Ford's Ontario
- Thread starter animatronic
- Start date
It's a slogan, just like a buck a beer - that never became a thing, and neither will this from his doing (beyond maybe the 5 homes that he managed to clobber up for a photo-op).
AoD
Thinker
Active Member
On the healthcare front: heard from a credible source that Ford is planning to spend a lot of money hiring nurses and care staff…. Two years from now, around the time the election comes due.
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Northern Light
Superstar
Bumping this post, as its the most recent reference to Algoma and Brampton, so I'll stick this here for now.
RFP for an Algoma U campus master plan for the GTA.
I will let @ShonTron determine if this merits its own thread.
ShonTron
Moderator
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Thanks. I was in Brampton two weeks ago, and I saw an Algoma University event in Rosalea Park downtown, and thought, at least they have some student life going on.
kEiThZ
Superstar
I strongly recommend reading this to explain the whole situation:
Northern Light
Superstar
Usher's piece is good, as far as it goes.
But with very problematic omissions.
I have a good friend teaching at a GTA public college.
He indicates his student enrollment is ~50% of students.
Further, a very high percentage of those do not regularly attend classes and often don't show up til mid-term.
He notes this is because they are allowed to work full-time while here, and they desperately need the money, so only attend class when they feel they must.
An observation is then offered that this often results in a student arriving during office hours mid-term to ask how they can submit an assignment that was due the previous month, or write a test that took place last week, wherein they are shocked
to learn that's not acceptable and they've been given grades of zero.
This is the reality of what's happening on main campuses, never mind the PPP ones.
****
Usher defends the quality of the education, but omits any discussion of whether the students enrolled are actually attending and getting the education for which they have paid.
Also omitted is any discussion of whether the programs are offered would result in a beneficial contribution to the workforce if taken seriously.
He rightly notes the lack of funding of Colleges in Ontario (44% of the per capita funding of other provinces) but fails to note the money-grab that is the international student racket as currently conceived, would be no such thing
if the colleges in question has to house the students they admit, even at-cost.
I don't fault him for not discussing all of that in one post; as he was more focused on the private career-college/P3 aspect of things; but we need to go further back in the chain to discuss what's driving that.
David Trick made the right call under Wynne, the subsequent actions of Ford are not remotely excusable.
Northern Light
Superstar
On the heels of today's announcement that the Federal gov't would remove the HST from new rental construction; the Ford gov't is musing about doing the same provincially.
Taken together, this would be more significant in terms of stimulating new construction.
However, I would not expect it to result in lower rents in the near term, as at best, new supply will take 3-4 years to begin arriving in earnest and 4-6 years is a more likely timeframe.
I'm also inclined to think that the 'subsidy' here will at most, be enough to have construction step up to meet future demand growth; and even that is an ambitious thought; where it will take supply exceeding demand growth in order
to actually reduce rents.
Both levels of government will have to pay attention to the need for income growth as well as that is key to reducing the economic anxiety/stress in the land.
Taken together, this would be more significant in terms of stimulating new construction.
However, I would not expect it to result in lower rents in the near term, as at best, new supply will take 3-4 years to begin arriving in earnest and 4-6 years is a more likely timeframe.
I'm also inclined to think that the 'subsidy' here will at most, be enough to have construction step up to meet future demand growth; and even that is an ambitious thought; where it will take supply exceeding demand growth in order
to actually reduce rents.
Both levels of government will have to pay attention to the need for income growth as well as that is key to reducing the economic anxiety/stress in the land.
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wopchop
Building Toronto
Houses will get sold for whatever the market will bear, nothing less.
If the developer can sell for $x, they won't reduce the price simply because the cost of the land was cheaper.
Sunnyside
Active Member
Not unless it’s a condition of building there, which it seems might be the case- we know there will be conditions of some kind. Something to the effect of ‘units must be priced x% lower than market mean/median value’ akin to an affordable housing requirement.
Unrelated, but a bit of my perspective here because no one’s discussing how we can nudge this in a better direction. Ford’s interest is to dig himself out of this hole and somehow get the public on his side with his reckless decision(s); the public’s interpretation cannot become reality.
For the sake of argument let’s suppose this isn’t simply corruption, but a misguided means to deliver housing. There is a way to do this, even if it’s retroactive; present the supposed flaws with the greenbelt as-is, with the quantitative criteria showing x sites are more readily developable than others. There will necessarily be whitebelt lands that cannot be built on soon, so those must be added to the greenbelt. In short, it shifts from a land grab to a “more now, less later” growth management strategy. This might still be bad politics, but its far more palatable than the alternative.
I’m personally of the belief that if the greenbelt’s effects on land value are true, then the government should shut up, buy these viable lands (which should be cheap…) and develop it themselves to undercut the market in the public’s interest. Anything else is, as we have seen, far too muddy.
Thinker
Active Member
Pricing conditions mean nothing, I am still figure out how it is possible to build a 500 thousand home with the specs Ford gave, the price of lumber, land, labour and fittings and finishings. I am sceptical that any builder is going to build housing at a loss or break even.
Promising low cost housing is not going to get him out of any hole if he can't deliver. Remember the "buck a beer" debacle, lower fuel prices, reducing wait time for surgeries and ER's, yes he added beds, but there is no staffing.
IMO: Buying back the land -is- the only option and maybe then "folks" will forget the whole debacle. (Ford may lose some builder friends however)
wopchop
Building Toronto
Just remember that as of 2022, according to the provincial government affordable housing for renters is any rent capped at 80 per cent of average market rent, while affordable housing for homeowners is any cost of purchase less than 80 per cent of the average price.
Neither of these two conditions are necessarily "affordable ". Both presume that the current market rates are not astronomical.
So when they say that 10% of these lands will be "affordable", keep that it mind.
Northern Light
Superstar
100% agree.
As at June '23, 40% of Torontonians were spending greater than 30% of their income on rent, some 18% were spending greater than 50%
(30% being the typical guideline for 'affordable'.)
Here's a quick exercise, as at 2023, the median household income in the City of Toronto is $84,000
Typically (I couldn't find a 2023 breakdown) renter households are at roughly 1/2 the income of homeowner households.
That would put the median renting household at an income of $42,000 in Toronto
Divide that by 12 (months) and get $3,500 in monthly income; if 30% of that would affordable rent, you need rent at, or below $1,050 per month.
Meanwhile average rent in Toronto is north of $2,500 for new listings, and if you apply the 80% of market formula you would get a rent of over $2,000 per month, or double what the median renter household could afford.
Sunnyside
Active Member
I’m glad these things are getting highlighted, because they show what awaits our government if they want to actually push forward- but I am not trying to claim these things are easy or even the “best path”. They are pragmatic, mere mechanisms with which the actions taking place can be justified, even perhaps in the public interest. Does Ford have the ability to meet the specs he stated at a price like that? Unlikely; but he did take land out of the greenbelt, which was also no small feat. With some typical political flecility for what will actually be built and the affordabilityIt is not inconceivable that Ford could throw subsidies at these lands until they are at that price if it will make the election difference.
And, if there actually is a case that the greenbelt can be improved in its mandate, it serves to only become more rigorous after the fact if we take another look (publically, of course) at actual data. We should at least be open to the notion; even if we have been presented an unsubstantiated, evidence-less course of action, we cannot dismiss the possibility that there is substance and evidence, especially with how steadfast Ford has been. Ideally, that would come to light and we could democratically decide what to do now that the cat has been let out the box.
zang
Senior Member
Rescinding the deal and reversing any further resale deals is also an option; especially if all of this is found by courts to be in any way suspect. Developers will want a profit on any buyback; which just feeds the overall corruption inherent in this whole scandal.
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Northern Light
Superstar
The Ontario government has so many better tools at its disposal.
Aside from the typical, and obvious (build more deeply affordable housing, curtail demand, and raise wages (by reducing labour supply and raising minimum wage).......
They could:
1) Buy an existing REIT and simply convert it to mixed income public housing (lowering the rents of existing tenants or on vacant units as guidelines would have one do.
This might seem far fetched; but Capreit is only 8 billion in market cap. Ontario could recover a chunk of that selling off out of province assets. But it would instantly pick up 24,000 units in province.
For a net-out cost of say ~3B, that's only $125,000 per unit; way cheaper than you could ever build new.
If just 20% of those units represented people being removed from a 'high needs' category/housing waiting list, that's about 4,800 apartments/households and about 6,700 people no longer in acute poverty. That's great bang for the buck.
2) If the province wants to create cash through land value, such that they can reallocate that to pay for new public housing/coop housing, and/or buying REITs..... that too isn't hard, the province has already shown the way with the TOC along the Ontario Line, except that they're doing a crap job of securing affordable housing as part of that.
But just imagine the province, say, buying a bunch of low-density sites near Ossington Station on Line 2, at market value, but with expropriation, so it moves quick. They assemble say 2ha/5 acres, they MZO it to medium or hirise density and MCR.
Say that's 100 houses at 1.3M a pop or about 130M, with the simple MZO, that land just tripled in value, very conservatively, you flip it to a developer and take your choice:
a) Bank the 260M net profit and invest that in new build public housing
b) Sell to the developer at cost, in exchange for 260M of in-kind affordable housing, and 100% purpose-built rental.
That's roughly 1,000 units of affordable rental housing, depending on the rent level set.
Rinse, repeat 30 times across Toronto and you get 30,000 units of affordable housing for a cash--out lay of only 3.9B; you do that through the value-creation of the MZO and the instant-assembly of expropriation.
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