Toronto 931 Yonge | 106m | 33s | CreateTO | Zeidler

[HousingNowTO]

Most of the "Affordable Ownership" programs now - are CLOSED-LOOP where the Not-for-Profit has a mortgage / constraint on Title that only allows you to SELL to someone on the Non-Profit's approved buyers list.

Gain is therefore restricted - as the units never really sell into the MLS "open" Market.

I was wondering about that too. When the owner needs to move, do they sell at market rates and gain all the upside? At that point, the unit would no longer be affordable.

 

[evandyk]

Which of the three potentially affected parks are you discussing? Budd Sugarman (Yonge, east side), Ramsden Park (Yonge, West side), Severn Creek (Alymer/Rosedale Valley).

Ramsden is certainly busy; the other two, less so, though both could be activated to greater degrees.

I was thinking of Budd Sugarman. Ramsden is definitely well used, and is one of the toddler's favourite playgrounds/parks. Budd Sugarman is just a little patch of grass that nobody ever enters.

 

[svguy]

Which of the three potentially affected parks are you discussing? Budd Sugarman (Yonge, east side), Ramsden Park (Yonge, West side), Severn Creek (Alymer/Rosedale Valley).

Ramsden is certainly busy; the other two, less so, though both could be activated to greater degrees.

*****

That said, if I look at the City opportunities here, my priority would not be 931, not that we ought not to do something with it, but I see it as the lesser potential site.

The far greater potential lies in building over Rosedale Station, including the bus loop and the tracks.

Its a larger footprint, and largely located north and east of the parkland, neatly avoiding most of the shadowing issue.

* For the record, I'm old enough to remember the TTC actually trying to get such a development done years ago, at 9s mind you, and the blowback from the Rosedale set killed it.

But that was also a very long time ago, in a very different Toronto.

Why aren’t the looking at extending the new building at 931 Yonge over the tracks at the rear of the site?

 

[Northern Light]

Why aren’t the looking at extending the new building at 931 Yonge over the tracks at the rear of the site?

Let me start by saying I do not KNOW the answer, that said, if I were to speculate, I would offer the following:

1) Baxter Street is at the rear of the site and is a legal road over which there is no right to built without a special agreement with the City . Yes, I know, the City is essentially the proponent here, but it's a more involved process
if you're going to ask to consider land that isn't actually part of the legal site you were given to look at.

To cross Baxter at grade, you would have to 'buy', then legally close the street; to build over it, you would have to acquire 'strata rights' and likely do so at the third floor level to allow for larger vehicles passing underneath.

2) The statement is made here that the floor plate was kept small (under 650m2), or about 17% smaller than normal to avoid shadowing the adjacent parks. Widening the floor plate to the east would definitely increase shadow both on the park to the east and to the north.

3) The time cost of involving the TTC is formulating the proposal would likely be significant; and delay everything by several months at least.

 

[HousingNowTO]

2) The statement is made here that the floor plate was kept small (under 650m2), or about 17% smaller than normal to avoid shadowing the adjacent parks. Widening the floor plate to the east would definitely increase shadow both on the park to the east and to the north.

I hadn't caught that detail... YET... grrrrrrr.

 

[Ward14-Danforth]

All for inclusion and affordable housing but this is one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in Canada. Could CreateTO not sell this site for a fortune and use the money to secure 3-4x more affordable housing units in a less expensive areas or top up the number of affordable units in their other Housing Now sites?

CreateTO should also push for much higher heights and larger floor plates. The Budd Sugarman park to the north is hardly a park, it's a parkette with no active use. All residents use Ramsden park a block north

 

[Northern Light]

All for inclusion and affordable housing but this is one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in Canada. Could CreateTO not sell this site for a fortune and use the money to secure 3-4x more affordable housing units in a less expensive areas or top up the number of affordable units in their other Housing Now sites?

Two thoughts to offer here.

1) There is social virtue in mixed-income communities for all. There is affordable grocery not that far away, particularly by transit. I grant that can be a tough sell, but at the same time, I think we want to avoid concentrating poverty in a smaller numbers of areas as this silo's if off from the upper-middle-income and high income set who can then ignore any problems in 'those' places.

2) I don't think there is a windfall here, for a couple of reasons. The policies which incent/restrict building to a shorter height and smaller floor plate would apply if the site were private. So it's not a huge amount of buildable ft2.
The combination of being next to Yonge, next to the subway tracks, and frankly, adjacent to and across the road from mediocre architecture (apologies to the residents); doesn't suggest a premium price here.

Also you have to find an alternate site for a similar or lesser price, on which vastly more can be built; or a substantially lesser price for a similar sized build to justify that move. Sure there are better sites out there (and nothing preventing the City from buying them); but the City is pretty reticent to expropriate and tends to over-pay if it does. Certainly, any net gain is not a given.

CreateTO should also push for much higher heights and larger floor plates. The Budd Sugarman park to the north is hardly a park, it's a parkette with no active use. All residents use Ramsden park a block north

The thing is, precedent. We always come back to this; under the system as we have it set up, and in light of the way the OLT tends to rule; if you allow the shadowing of this park, why not all the others?

I agree, that's a lousy way to go about our business; that we ought to be able to qualitatively differentiate between different qualities and sizes of parks; and between developments that achieve a social-good (affordable housing) or offer brilliant architecture, vs something more pedestrian or meritorious.

However, that's just not the way our system is set up.

 

[Bayer]

Also, I don't think people who can afford "affordable" housing can be considered poor. The new city definition seems to suggest average rents are affordable, which is questionable at best. Not much seems to be done for people who are actually poor.

 

[HousingNowTO]

Also, I don't think people who can afford "affordable" housing can be considered poor. The new city definition seems to suggest average rents are affordable, which is questionable at best. Not much seems to be done for people who are actually poor.

Our volunteers use this image as our current (2022) definition of "Government Supported Affordable Rental Housing" - not sure how you define 'people who are actually poor' (eg. OSDP rents, etc) - but as the Housing Crisis in Toronto gets worse, then more people at higher household incomes need some kind of Government Support to obtain housing... rents for a 3-4 person household with up to $96,000 /year in annual income will need some degree of Government Support of their unit.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1595806573863096320

 

[Northern Light]

Also, I don't think people who can afford "affordable" housing can be considered poor. The new city definition seems to suggest average rents are affordable, which is questionable at best. Not much seems to be done for people who are actually poor.

I think it's extremely important when discussing affordability to note that the solutions will vary based on where you are in the income/potential income spectrum.

For someone in the middle quintile of income, I would argue that gov't subsidies for housing don't make rational sense. You either drive down the cost of housing to 'affordable' for that group; or you drive up wages to meet that rent/mortgage norm.

I would argue for a bit of both; but as government has shown little willingness to curtail demand, the focus probably needs to be on the wage side.

Seattle (a market comparable to Toronto) has minimum wage that in CAD works out to about $22 per hour. That obviously gooses lower incomes, but also those that would normally float at up to 50% premiums to the minimum wage.
That's a viable solution for that group, for the most part.

But you then have to address the two lowest income quintiles. When looking at the practical potential for building affordable/deeply affordable housing, the solution cannot be, and will not be, entirely new units.

So at the upper level of this group, it's about subsidies/reduced income tax (tax credits) etc. that good take-home income by $200-500 per month so someone who is likely already housed, has a bit more money in their pocket after covering said costs.

At the lower level of income in this group, you require purpose-built RGI housing in one form or another, because the subsidy number that works becomes greater than the cost of providing a public-sector or charity-owned unit.
This can be partially mitigated by more generous social assistance, but there is no appetite to provide $3,000 per month in OW or ODSP, which would be profoundly expensive.
So you need to blend. Get OW/ODSP to something more reasonable (start at an increase of 50% for ODSP and 100% for OW phased in a over a couple of years).
But in the latter case, you still end up at under $1,500 per month, which really isn't going to house anyone in the private market, assuming you also want them to be able to eat.

It's a complex, layered problem for which many different actions are required.

But at the end of the day, governments at all levels haven't even put in 1/2 hearted efforts on any of the above, which is why the problem is getting ever worse.

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

Affordable housing for me would be anything under for those who can't afford proper shelter. Whether it would be those of higher household incomes that barely breaking even to the homeless and all points in between....

This can be partially mitigated by more generous social assistance, but there is no appetite to provide $3,000 per month in OW or ODSP, which would be profoundly expensive.

But if you think goverments should be ran like a business (highly inadvisable, as they are not a business) then think of the tax return on this...where the bottom end of the economy gets a massive boost, it should eventually pay for itself, if not more so. So there's no real excuse for not doing this, IMO...outside of no will to do it because of politics. That is, placating folks with money who feel everyone else can levitate themselves by their own boot straps...which has really never worked.

 

[Northern Light]

Affordable housing for me would be anything under for those who can't afford proper shelter. Whether it would be those of higher household incomes that barely breaking even to the homeless and all points in between....


But if you think goverments should be ran like a business (highly inadvisable, as they are not a business) then think of the tax return on this...where the bottom end of the economy gets a massive boost, it should eventually pay for itself, if not more so. So there's no real excuse for not doing this, IMO...outside of no will to do it because of politics. That is, placating folks with money who feel everyone else can levitate themselves by their own boot straps...which has really never worked.

We don't disagree. I'm quite progressive on this point.

However, voters have not chosen this option; and neither have politicians.

Which means we need to find another way.

 

[ADRM]

Just catching up. Way too short; this is borderline Merton-esque.

The shadows would be on a couple of nothingburger green spaces (I don't buy the slippery slope argument -- both Staff and laypeople can obviously find ways to differentiate the calibre of various parks), they've already shrunk the floorplate to mitigate the effects, and net news would travel very quickly across, and Ramsden is a massive and wonderful green space literally across the street.

Bad outcome, same old shlock from the horrible CreateTO-Planning Department nexus.

 

[Northern Light]

The shadows would be on a couple of nothingburger green spaces (I don't buy the slippery slope argument -- both Staff and laypeople can obviously find ways to differentiate the calibre of various parks),

No argument at all that staff and lay people can differentiate; however, the Planning department fears the OLT may not.

There is some reason for that based on past precedents.

All very addressable with some tweaking of how the OLT adjudicates, along with encouraging a certain autonomy for planners within the department and making sure they know how to justify the trade-offs they support, in a report, or before the OLT. (note, some are excellent at this, but the skill is not universal, and the fact City Planning discourages that type of thinking means practice is hard to come by)

they've already shrunk the floorplate to mitigate the effects, and net news would travel very quickly across, and Ramsden is a massive and wonderful green space literally across the street.

I'd be happy to trade away Budd Sugarman in its current form for other parkland in the area (a larger Ramsden, for instance); but Parks is not about to stick its neck out for that idea.

Bad outcome, same old shlock from the horrible CreateTO-Planning Department nexus.

Don't disagree here either, but will also stick by what I said, this site isn't a great importunity in its current form, particularly given the policy constraints.

Rosedale Station is the much better opportunity.

931 really needs to involve assembly of everything south to the 'Fellowship Towers' site.

It's all low-rise (3s or less), and when you take it out of play, you pick up a not insignificant chunk of land (potentially) in Baxter Street, which services those blocks.

That public ROW (Baxter) covers about ~12,000ft2 of land area; or about 1100m2 and change.

That's an entire additional building right there!

Let's have a look at the highest and best use here:

The amount of potential density here is great. Imagine if the City put out a call to the development community w/o doing its own planning; and simply said, we the City bring 931 and the entire Baxter Street ROW to the table;
you bring the buildings, developer who delivers the most affordable housing, with an overall attractive proposal (points-scored, overseen by Waterfront Toronto on contract) get the land gratis.

Sure, I'm being a tad fanciful, a bit ambitious and admittedly delaying anything on the 931 site for a couple of years at least. (if the development community could not assemble the lands, the City could expropriate).

Overall though, I think that works out much better.

Throw in a swap out of Budd Sugarman on a 2 for one basis in area, as an expansion of Ramsden Park and one other area green space and it's a homerun, so to speak.

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

We don't disagree. I'm quite progressive on this point.

However, voters have not chosen this option; and neither have politicians.

Which means we need to find another way.

I'm not sure that's something that needs to be put to a vote. Nor is voting in a first past the post system a reliable metric to go on by any stretch on that...

That said, other ways will be pointless and futile unless the government can get behind it. And that won't happen by your confession...so here we are. /sigh

Edit/Clarification: Yes, I am taking the unusual step here re-answering the rebuttal with hopefully a better reply...than one that's not well thought out and off-the-cuff. I'll save that to when I am behind a megaphone at an anti-poverty protest. >.<

While I disagree with voters/politician point here...as I think that's a bit of a cop out, IMO. I do agree that trying to sell the idea of more livable incomes is very much an uphill battle. Particularly with the powers that be with their media interests and business friends backing their narrative. So I am painfully aware of this.

I always like to to think however...by sweetening the deal to include any person living below an agreed upon poverty line will increase it popularity with the public. As I am also confident once it's implemented, they'll likely never look back on it. A similar effect noted in Scandinavian countries...

...bringing this back home though, let's start with this project. That is, planting seeds of progression one building at a time.