you keep on ignoring all my questions and simply state that this is normal. If you're going to dismiss all my questions of why not here, or there so casually because you believe the city has the right to do anything it wants then I guess wer'e going to agree to disagree.
Again I am not against affordable housing (for years I lived directly beside one) but there was a green p spot just east of here and there is a green p spot just west of here and another green p directly at Dufferin and Eglinton, so I don't know how this one plot of land has become the only place that we can build and everybody damn it better be on board with it.
This is not the only place we can build.
It is also not the only place we are building, or will build.
However, there is a pressing need, and what we have built and even are planning to build is wholly inadequate to the problem.
It's not as if we need another 500 units or 5000 units of housing.
If one addressed only those who are literally homeless (shelter users and those in encampments/on-the-street) it's somewhere in the range of 12-13,000 people; who will require in the range of 10,000 units of housing.
But this is not 10,000 units total, because we are financing those units by building market units alongside them. In general, we're needing at least 5x the of affordable units to get that number built, it might arguably be as high as 10x.
That's 50,000 - 100,000 units.
That's all while ignoring those who are either under-housed (those who are living 2 families to a 1bdrm apartment, or those who are sleeping on someone's couch, or those staying in abusive relationships, as well as those whose income is severely strained by paying the rent such that they can't afford food (use a food bank) or a hair cut or internet etc.
That's another 80,000+ people who require another 35,000 units of housing, which means building another 165,000-330,000 units.
Think about how staggering that number is.........
This is not about let's build this one building here or these 3 or those 5.
If you assumed only 250 units per building (not a small building) ; that's 1,520 new buildings.
The idea of 'wasting' this site by choosing either to build less housing and less affordable housing on it, or driving up the cost of that housing through a cantilever is choice between the frying pan and the fire. Neither good, nor acceptable.
These homes will be assembled for a private development anyway at some point, they are within an MTSA area, and owners will sell, both because it's lucrative to do so, and because the alternative is a giant tower beside their backyard leaving them in perpetual shadow.
Simply put, this is about achieving the highest and best use of a strategic piece of public land, for a pressing public purpose.
