An issue to remedy the housing question is to remove the existing legislature around density and protecting existing farmland around our urban centers. Housing is about availability of land for development. The moment the 'Greenbelt' was created around the GTA is defined the availability of land for housing - inside the belt vs outside the belt. I know that the GTA is not all of Canada but I'm pretty certain all provinces have similar legislation. Open up existing farmland to housing development carte blanche and housing prices for new homes will drop accordingly. A parcel of 100 acres of farmland in the GTA, inside the Greenbelt, that could be developed for housing, would currently sell for around 7-10$ million. Farms outside the Greenbelt currently cannot be sold for housing development -
Learn - Greenbelt Foundation - EDIT -
Maps - Greenbelt Foundation - The 'Greenbelt' clearly defines the land that can be developed vs the land that cannot be developed in the GTA. Less land available means scarcity and scarcity means higher prices, simple economics.
In the US urban sprawl is the 'norm' (look at Atlanta, Raleigh, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Chicago). Suburbs spring up further and further from the city boundaries because of the availability of cheap land for development. People live with well water and septic systems for decades, well after the semi-rural suburb has been swallowed up into the newly created urban areas.
Inside alot of the older parts of the existing cities found within the GTA, there is no land left to build on - its either tear down existing houses to build newer and much bigger houses on or utilizing 'brown fields' within the city and building very dense houses on. So, young people wanting to live in those cities (Burlington, Oakville out where I am) have to either compromise and live in a condo, in newly created 'brownfield' condos, buy a small older home that requires alot of TLC (hopefully outbidding a developer looking to tear the house down and build bigger) or look elsewhere. In cities such as these its very much 'location, location, location' and there is NOTHING a government can do to change what the market will pay for 'location'.
Milton is a perfect example of a city in the 'Greenbelt' in the GTA that was identified as a 'growth center'. When we were looking to buy our first house in 2003 (moving from midtown Toronto - St Clair and Bathurst area) we looked in the Campbellville area, located just west of the then town of Milton. Our real estate agent showed us 2-3 places within Campbellville and then drove us about 15 min east to the areas on the east side of Milton where farm after farm was being destroyed and massive new subdivision were being created and said 'this is the future of this area, are you sure you what to live around this since its done?". We choose to buy north of Georgetown on the Niagara Escarpment in a protected area from new suburb development.
In 2001 Milton was a town of about 30k and had barely changed in size for decades because the entire town was on 'well water', meaning the town obtained its potable water from wells that supplied the entire town, thus limiting its growth to only that which the wells could support. Around 2002-3, the far eastern end of the town tapped into newly created water mains from the west end of Mississauga and BOOM - massive scale growth occurred. By 2011 Milton had a population of 84k people and rampant growth continued. By 2021 Milton was sitting at over 130k people. The 'town' had added 100k in 20yrs.
I think that I've mentioned before that my wife is a Speech Pathologist. She used to work in Adult Rehab (think stroke patients or traumatic brain injuries) but she's now worked in the Halton school board for the last 15yrs. She has colleagues who work in the Milton schools, (all part of Halton Region, which covers Burlington, Oakville, Milton and Georgetown/Acton), who service public schools that have 30!!! kindergartens in a SINGLE school because of the growth. How do you build for that type of growth? What type of infrastructure do you put in place for the short term, medium term and long term? What I mean by that is, a school, all schools, typically has a school population that 'ebbs and grows' based on the population that lives immediately around its borders. So, taking the example of a single school having 30 kindergartens located within it, as the population around the school ages, the number of children feeding into the kindergarten programme will begin to dramatically fall off. In 5yrs it might be down to 18 kindergarten classes and in 10yrs it could be down to 3 kindergarten classes. So, how much money is needed to be constantly changing the internal layout of that school - a classroom layout for 4yr old's is much different than a class for 12yr old's. Is there a need to remove (scrap?) playground equipment that was geared towards 4-7yrs old when the school had 30 kindergartens vs having 3 kindergartens? Where do the 27 kindergarten teachers all go? Can they be re-assigned to older grades? What about the ECE's (Early Childhood Educators) assigned to assist the kindergarten teachers in each of classrooms, where do they all go? Pulling on this thread even more, what do you do 30-40yrs down the road when the population has matured, there is substantially fewer children in the area around these schools and the 'utilization' rate of the school has fallen below 60%? Do you do what alot of these school boards do and sell off the land to developers and have the school becomes a new mini subdivision?
If the younger generation wants to live in a single detached home, then they will have to be wiling to allow for greater urban sprawl, less farmland and less protected green spaces available around their cities.
