The City of Toronto's new Chief Planner is..... Jason Thorne

[innsertnamehere]

I get what you are saying but chief planners also have the most direct control on reducing bottlenecks to supply and he obviously wasn't inclined or able to do that in Hamilton so I have no reason to believe he will be able to do it here (assuming he is even interested in that). What this means is that his past performance is not exceptional and I was hoping for an extraordinary candidate.

I don't think this is the case in Hamilton as you portray. Hamilton as-of-right zoned all of it's downtown with an excellent DC incentive program put in place under Thorne - it's been a huge incentive and cost-lowerer for developers. It's a big reason Hamilton has seen such a massive surge in applications in the downtown. Hamilton's planning regime as a whole is very permissive for applications, minus it's draconian 30-storey limit. If you are 30 storeys or under, the City is generally happy to work with you and get your project built with relatively little in the way of municipal fees -which within the provincial planning system every municipality operates under, is pretty good.

A development under the current regime in downtown Hamilton enjoys:
1. no parking requirements
2. as-of-right permissions for 30-storeys with a 14-storey podium
3. DCs of just $21,000 for a 1-bed unit
4. Conditional site plan approval which can be issued in 4-6 months
5. No green standards like in Toronto

Overall it's a pretty positive space to work in as a developer. Hamilton has moved towards higher costs lately though - CBC charges were introduced in 2022, DC credits are phasing out downtown, and Green Standards for construction are being brought in - but Thorne is gone now.

Hamilton's no-urban-boundary expansion policy is very harmful to affordability, but that was not the policy recommended to Council by planning (i.e. Thorne) itself.

@Northern Light does a good job showing how much Hamilton has actually done well regarding development in many ways.

 

[Een]

This is an entirely unreasonable position that is not based in evidence.

Toronto has approved tens of thousands of units that aren't being built, because market conditions don't support it.

There has been more development in Hamilton, and at greater height than at any time in the last several generations, much as is the case with Toronto.

Market developers are not in the business of losing money, they will not build 'affordable' housing with out public subsidy to do so.

They will not intentionally glut the market so as to reduce prices and potential return on investment.

Altering the structure of pricing requires demand suppression (flat to declining population), and public-build housing, which will rent at or below cost; as well as measures to raise incomes, such as higher minimum wage, more generous parental leave (contracts labour supply as well), and higher social assistance rates.

Exactly zero of the above are under the purview of any City Planner in Ontario.



This means no such thing.

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View attachment 618397

That's Jason's tenure right there:

Source: https://investinhamilton.ca/tools-data/all-data/

Nearly doubling residential permits in only 5 years.

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Actual Housing Starts in the same time period up over 40%:

View attachment 618398

thanks for pointing this out, I had been looking for something to be excited about and this is all good news so consider me more optimistic than than a few hours ago. I will disagree with you on the Partick Condon-esque stuff and the notion that Toronto has approved anywhere enough units and how broken the process by which they approve those units is, but that's for another time.

 

[Northern Light]

thanks for pointing this out, I had been looking for something to be excited about and this is all good news so consider me more optimistic than than a few hours ago. I will disagree with you on the Partick Condon-esque stuff and the notion that Toronto has approved anywhere enough units and how broken the process by which they approve those units is, but that's for another time.

I will happily accept the association to Patrick Condon, and add that recent academic publications support his thesis.

(for those who don't know, Patrick doesn't argue against zoning reform or more housing, but posits that the neither, unto themselves is likely to impact affordability of same.)

We can take up the discussion further in the Zoning Reform Thread or elsewhere.........but I will drop a study from last year for consideration:

Land-Use Reforms and Housing Costs

To examine these issues, we generate the first cross-city panel dataset of land-use reforms that increase or decrease allowed housing density and estimate their association with changes in housing supply and rents.

www.urban.org

 

[Een]

I will happily accept the association to Patrick Condon, and add that recent academic publications support his thesis.

(for those who don't know, Patrick doesn't argue against zoning reform or more housing, but posits that the neither, unto themselves is likely to impact affordability of same.)

We can take up the discussion further in the Zoning Reform Thread or elsewhere.........but I will drop a study from last year for consideration:

Land-Use Reforms and Housing Costs

To examine these issues, we generate the first cross-city panel dataset of land-use reforms that increase or decrease allowed housing density and estimate their association with changes in housing supply and rents.

www.urban.org

Oh Boy, yeah let's save that for somewhere else. But in case anyone is following this and is interested in something closer to the truth, here is a link that outlines Condon's claims and how dumb they are: https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/pos...s/index.html#population-growth-of-55-thousand

 

[Northern Light]

Oh Boy, yeah let's save that for somewhere else. But in case anyone is following this and is interested in something closer to the truth, here is a link that outlines Condon's claims and how dumb they are: https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/pos...s/index.html#population-growth-of-55-thousand

The piece you cite has a host of errors and holes in it.

But for clarity, I don't disagree that we need more housing to meet current demand, let alone projected demand.

I simply argue that we could and should reduce demand, because its the easiest, cheapest, fastest way to control for affordability in the market.

While raising income is the second fastest.

Building housing has a long lag time, and, for a host of reasons, that are nuanced and complex, the market simply will not build enough to increase affordability for the foreseeable future.

That's not an argument against zoning reform, which I have been a direct proponent and facilitator of.........here in Toronto......... from mitigating the issue of 'angular plane' to permitting multi-plexes as-of-right, to abolishing parking minimums
my finger prints are all over zoning reform in Toronto.

I'm just saying, while all those are great, they won't materially lower housing prices or improve affordability, while we continue to goose demand and suppress wages.

 

[guavadelic]

Regarding the point about raising incomes, I recently saw this intriguing graphic regarding home affordability across U.S. and Canadian cities measured by Price-to-Income ratio. Was pretty surprised how low Toronto household incomes were relative to all the American cities. Would never have guessed our incomes were lower than Detroit.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Canadian incomes over the last decade especially have fallen far behind our southern neighbours. They have almost always been lower though, other than for a small blip in the early 2010's when the US was in a deep recession and the Canadian economy was booming.

 

[Northern Light]

Canadian incomes over the last decade especially have fallen far behind our southern neighbours. They have almost always been lower though, other than for a small blip in the early 2010's when the US was in a deep recession and the Canadian economy was booming.

The above is true; but I would add to that, that historically Canadian home prices were much more in line w/our neighbours to the south, when looking at comparable urban areas. So the price to income ratios were quite close.

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When I look at the above, I really want to hone in on Seattle which has a very comparable real estate market to Toronto's, and has household incomes upwards of 50% higher.

This is not a function of more generous social assistance; but that two simple things, a tighter labour market, and a vastly higher minimum wage ~$20 USD per hour which is just over $26 CAD per hour.

I'm not suggesting we make that leap in one move........but even a $4 per hour bump to $21.20CAD would take a lot of pressure off people from the low to lower-middle income levels; while tightening the labour market would bolster middle and upper-middle income wage as well.

That isn't just curtailing TFWs and the like, though that does play a role for sure......its also something like Parental Leave......which here is at 55% income replacement, while in Seattle its 65% to 90%, which sees higher uptake rates.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Seattle wages are crazy because it's a relatively small metro home to some of the two largest and most profitable companies on the planet. Microsoft and Amazon drive insane profits and corresponding salaries for it's employees, and that money trickles into the rest of the economy as well, enabling things like $20/hr minimum wages and cushy maternity leave benefits. When you have lots of money to throw around benefits like those are made easy.

There is a reason that SF is the only city to beat Seattle on median incomes - it's the one US city to have an even larger tech presence.

Making minimum wage $44,000 a year instead of $36,000 a year isn't going to matter. If you want higher wages you need better actual quality employment prospects and companies which produce value. Toronto was moving big into the Tech world pre-COVID which seemed to be a good path to support this type of wage growth - especially if we could have encouraged and driven more of a VC culture here to get actual startups to build and stay in Toronto - but that seems to have faded in the last 5 years a bit.

The Canadian great-immigration of the last 5 years has also been a massive suppressor of wages and drag on productivity incentives which is starting to fade now, hopefully. Both Canada and the US faced a massive labour crunch 3 years ago - The US had some of the lowest immigration rates in it's history which lead to immense pressure on the labour market in terms of wages. Even in states with $7.25 minimum wages it's not uncommon to see fast food places paying more than in Canada because of market demand for labour.

Canada did the opposite and pumped in more immigrants than it even needed.. which puts the opposite kind of pressure on wages.

 

[Northern Light]

Seattle wages are crazy because it's a relatively small metro home to some of the two largest and most profitable companies on the planet. Microsoft and Amazon drive insane profits and corresponding salaries for it's employees, and that money trickles into the rest of the economy as well.

For sure that's a huge part of it. But its one part of it.

Seattle/Washington do have the statutory, governmental measures I noted.

Toronto is a huge tech and financial centre.......there's no reason we can see comparable levels of pay.

But we have to tighten the labour pool. Amazon and MS have a much harder time bringing in non-U.S. labour than do our banks.....

Making minimum wage $44,000 a year instead of $36,000 a year isn't going to matter. If you want higher wages you need better actual quality employment prospects and companies which produce value.

The higher minimum wage isn't simply about what it does for the earner.........its all the additional economic stimulus that provides.

That extra 8k per year noted above would be pretty much 100% put back into the local economy. Some of it as restaurant meals, some as cosmetics or hair cuts or a car from a local dealer.

That in turn drives hiring, which drives a labour shortage, which pushes wages up.

That then creates room to get closer to the Seattle number......and suddenly the low income earner is earning 16k extra per year. The middle income earner an extra 32k without missing a beat.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I'm not disputing minimum wage as a policy tool to effect social equity - but it's not how you make significant gains in median wages.

 

[Northern Light]

I'm not disputing minimum wage as a policy tool to effect social equity - but it's not how you make significant gains in median wages.

Perhaps...........but look at this correlation:

Source: https://washington.reaproject.org/a...erage_earnings_per_job/tools/94890000/530000/

You see see above the sharpest increase in earnings is post 2015.

Now, let's compare this to the Seattle Minimum Wage:

Source: https://econbrowser.com/archives/2023/09/minimum-wage-apocalypse-on-elliott-bay

Just sayin.

 

[Northern Light]

@AlexBozikovic has a new column up on Jason Thorne.

Toronto’s new chief planner Jason Thorne has a chance to radically rethink the city

Toronto needs a leader to think big, changing the decades-old pattern of growth that packs some new residents into parts of downtown and scatters others onto car-choked roads

www.theglobeandmail.com

Its overwhelmingly positive about Jason, which I'm happy to see. On this, Alex and I agree.

From the piece:

"As Hamilton’s former general manager of planning and economic development, he led major downtown zoning reforms, opening up new development while also actively protecting heritage. He spoke lucidly and often about architecture, landscape and the importance of public space. He is not a bureaucrat. He’s a leader."

Alex then goes on to opine that a key priority should be a new Official Plan, addressing all sorts of items with which Alex's takes issues (and broadly, we agree on the issues). However, I'm less sold that the process of a new OP is top priority.

Lots of things that need change don't require a new OP to be changed. I have some concern than a new OP is a large process which necessarily involves no end of infighting among assorted departments and interests, and yet, at the moment it will have passed, will change very little. OPs aren't just aspirational; but that is their chief benefit, insofar as many of the issues around public realm, zoning, heritage aren't bound by the OP, and can be altered on their own. OP Zoning requires formal amendments, which the City does somewhat routinely........but many other items covered in an OP are goals that aren't binding on any department or any given project. I'm not opposed to a new Official Plan, the old one is long since past its best before date; i just think there may be other priorities for Jason's time in his first year on the job with an eye to more immediate and concrete results.

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Regrettably Alex's column also laments the angular plane.............my problem being......the policy has been abolished/radically altered.........in ways I helped to craft...........and that problem, as I see it, is in the past.

I'm not sure why he's on about that...

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For me, I'd like to see Jason take on several items.

1) Comprehensive updated, City-Wide Zoning

2) Effective Retail Spaces

3) Find 3 projects that can deliver pedestrian exclusive or pedestrian priority spaces and see them fully delivered, overcoming the entrenched obstacles thrown up both internally (within the City) and externally (BIAs etc.)

4) I'd like to see him tackle this weird fetish developers/planners have for over-hangs, they are generally terrible and often nothing more than giant pigeon-roost.

There are many more items than that............. but that's for another day.

 

[Midtown Hank]

@AlexBozikovic, in his efforts to highlight issues is prone to exaggerations bordering on dogma. Where are the Mayan pyramids of which he speaks? He seems to have a beef with the low rise historical neighbourhoods in that they are not mowing them down to make way for utopian high rises likened by his comrades. Thank goodness Mr. Thorne seems to have a respect for historically significant neighbourhoods/buildings.

 

[DSC]

4) I'd like to see him tackle this weird fetish developers/planners have for over-hangs, they are generally terrible and often nothing more than giant pigeon-roost.

Yes!!! The ones at Social (Church/Dundas) are perhaps the worst and stupidist!

In some cases, developers manage to convince Planning or the OMB that an overhang is 'art' and thus their contribution to art. An example, from a decade ago, is London Lofts on The Esplanade. In this case it does not even provide any shelter!

Then one has the 'arcades' that are blocked by fencing and /or cafes like this on Lower Jarvis - Community Housing building.