I checked Mike Moffatt's October testimony to the finance committee. He flagged that taxes and development charges alone can top $300,000 on a new home in the GTA. That's exactly why young families get squeezed out of space for kids. The illusion of choice hits hard when housing policy prices out the middle class. Ottawa's Build Canada Homes Act needs to target those municipal barriers now.
Is the declining birth rate a shift in preference or a response to a broken economy?
Good discussion as always from my colleagues from the Missing Middle Initiative.
Here's some more info on this topic: what are the main reasons why young adults themselves say that they wouldn’t like to have children? Our research continues to point to the importance of taking as wide a view as possible in the ongoing public discussion currently unfolding about declining fertility rates.
I'm not exactly sure who to blame here, the private sector, or governments making (or not making) policies.
Most of the residential development in the past decades has focused on the high-rise condominium. Whether the developer's marketing mavens were right or wrong, their conclusions certainly were skewed and convenient for their clients. The one-bedroom condo became the de-facto starter home, and of course they sold well. Give a kid an inexpensive candy and they're all over it. What helped keep it even more buoyant was the steady stream of speculators. For the developers, the business model was taking the money and running, then replicate it: a pure bonanza of money-making.
At no point in time did any developer see past this equation. Not surprising though. Their role isn't to be magnanimous. But neither did any municipal or provincial bodies either.
Three (or more) bedroom condos are almost unheard of within this period, and those that are, are usually ground-based townhouses which come at a much higher cost. Developers don't like building them because they're not as profitable based on their proformas and formulas. But ignorant politicians and city planners, who still have their (oftentimes white) suburban-based minds wrapped around the thought that families can't possibly live in towers (unless of course they're poor immigrants in rental accommodations) would occasionally strong-arm a developer into eking out a few units on a new site. The sad reality is, it's been pure tokenism.
It occurred to nobody on the policy side that relatively inexpensive family-sized condo units in mid-to-high-rise buildings could realistically service a significant portion of the population going forward. IMHO, it's the legacy thinking of the privileged set; that there is only one 'proper' solution for a family and that is the single-family house. It's a cultural bias that's been institutionalized.
It comes back to one thing. Neoliberal ideology. Our governments have been under constant pressure for several decades now to be more fiscally responsible. An ideology that "governments should be run more like businesses" has seeped into the body politic, whose unintended consequences have been a far too cozy relationship between the two and the subsequent abdication of duty on the part of those with authority to insist on vision and forethought, not enabling short-term profit-making and personal grand-standing for photo-ops.
I checked Mike Moffatt's October testimony to the finance committee. He flagged that taxes and development charges alone can top $300,000 on a new home in the GTA. That's exactly why young families get squeezed out of space for kids. The illusion of choice hits hard when housing policy prices out the middle class. Ottawa's Build Canada Homes Act needs to target those municipal barriers now.
Is the declining birth rate a shift in preference or a response to a broken economy?
Good discussion as always from my colleagues from the Missing Middle Initiative.
Here's some more info on this topic: what are the main reasons why young adults themselves say that they wouldn’t like to have children? Our research continues to point to the importance of taking as wide a view as possible in the ongoing public discussion currently unfolding about declining fertility rates.
https://cdnsurveystuff.substack.com/p/reasons-for-not-having-children?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Excellent conversation. Here's my thoughts.
I'm not exactly sure who to blame here, the private sector, or governments making (or not making) policies.
Most of the residential development in the past decades has focused on the high-rise condominium. Whether the developer's marketing mavens were right or wrong, their conclusions certainly were skewed and convenient for their clients. The one-bedroom condo became the de-facto starter home, and of course they sold well. Give a kid an inexpensive candy and they're all over it. What helped keep it even more buoyant was the steady stream of speculators. For the developers, the business model was taking the money and running, then replicate it: a pure bonanza of money-making.
At no point in time did any developer see past this equation. Not surprising though. Their role isn't to be magnanimous. But neither did any municipal or provincial bodies either.
Three (or more) bedroom condos are almost unheard of within this period, and those that are, are usually ground-based townhouses which come at a much higher cost. Developers don't like building them because they're not as profitable based on their proformas and formulas. But ignorant politicians and city planners, who still have their (oftentimes white) suburban-based minds wrapped around the thought that families can't possibly live in towers (unless of course they're poor immigrants in rental accommodations) would occasionally strong-arm a developer into eking out a few units on a new site. The sad reality is, it's been pure tokenism.
It occurred to nobody on the policy side that relatively inexpensive family-sized condo units in mid-to-high-rise buildings could realistically service a significant portion of the population going forward. IMHO, it's the legacy thinking of the privileged set; that there is only one 'proper' solution for a family and that is the single-family house. It's a cultural bias that's been institutionalized.
It comes back to one thing. Neoliberal ideology. Our governments have been under constant pressure for several decades now to be more fiscally responsible. An ideology that "governments should be run more like businesses" has seeped into the body politic, whose unintended consequences have been a far too cozy relationship between the two and the subsequent abdication of duty on the part of those with authority to insist on vision and forethought, not enabling short-term profit-making and personal grand-standing for photo-ops.