By Pepper Parr
July 12th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
The vast majority of the people who took part in a recent poll on housing want what is no longer being built in Burlington.
Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman
Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman said: “The irony is that the stop the expansion, stop development sprawl, save the farms, folks would have caused the future density to have been even greater than the province regulations anticipated. Irrespective, massive density and sky high home prices are exactly related to people living longer, low child birth rates, leading to economic collapse without significant immigration increasing and therefore huge demand for new homes, homeless people, at a time when supply is low for whole number of reasons. Governments have not had an adequate future view in the past and now we are paying the price.”
“Future veiw” Is exactly what this council and mayor lack.
Supply is low? Well, I live around the corner from Councillor Sharman, and in my neighbourhood right now there are six unoccupied houses. Why is that? In the 49 years I have lived in Burlington I have never seen this. There are also countless houses in this city that sit empty. I daresay there are dozens and dozens of condos in this city that, despite what the developers tell us, are empty. A lot has to do with offshore investors holding properties they don’t occupy. Here’s evidence:
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6428660
Yes, we have a housing imbalance problem. Developers are building the wrong type of housing, but many of us have been telling them that for years, and they simply didn’t listen. We’ve also told governments, including our municipal leaders, that taxes are too high, saving rates are too low, and it is much too hard for young people to get into the housing market. We also told them that immigration rates were too high, and that bringing in too many people without providing the requisite supports and infrastructure puts inordinate strain on public and health care services. They only recently started to respond.
The problem in this country is that we have an electorate who are way ahead of our political elites in terms of what needs to be done, and when. We also have unresponsive political leadership who don’t have the courage to challenge developers or planning officials. If Councillor Sharman wants to be proactive perhaps one of the things he can ask our civic administration is conduct a door-to-door survey to determine exactly how many vacant housing/rental units exist in the city. Don’t rely on the garbage trotted out by the real estate industry as their data is hopelessly flawed. A corollary to that would be to find out who actually owns those properties.
If you want evidence-based decision-making maybe the best place to start is compiling objective, verifiable data. Then maybe, we can have a discussion around creative solutions.
I will follow from Stephen as he and I have some in common thinking in this issue, and his comment here suggested the roots of mine. I apologize for the length it turned into.
First, the primary reason for the story title here is, in concrete reality, that the City is being ordered by the edicts of Provincial Policy and laws, enforced by OLT, and carried out by the City.
Mr. Sharman has just been following orders, cherry picking useless information for his immediate purpose, and like all Council, and the Mayor, is using similar useless arguments, and data that are also policy based made-up projections about long term population, and therefore the need for more people, who will willingly buy at a price that we know today is not affordable, with no signs of any change in this, something they have already said right here they do not want.
All of these Council people are also not speaking about who pays for all this, and how much Burlington taxpayers will be burdened further in their property taxes or other costs.
I personally find this to be unscrupulous governance.
In addition, this is all based on further unspoken demand and financial assumptions that the development industry will even build all these so-called units, some of which they already have approvals for but have not applied for site plan and permits, at a price they can confidently say they can sell once they use the system put in place to build what they have approvals for, or are asking for in units, and as complete community builds in an integrated order.
Today, and for several years, I have seen see a number of approved applications that I was personally an OLT Participant, just sitting there as only weeds and dirt with no signs of shovels. Of note, at 35 Plains Rd E, approved 4 years ago, at 9 stories, 72 units, the owner is using these property rights to apply for a new application for 12 stories, 161 units. I don’t know of other similar situations, but haven’t looked into it.
I have to question the reasons for the new application. I knew that the property changed hands over time to date, and was told by sources that the developer need to pre-sell substantial units in order to secure financing. I also heard questions about economic value of the location. So there were not enough units pre-sold to satisfy lenders.
On the other hand, there has been a large inflation in land prices in the MTSA and a larger inflation since 6 years ago, and a similarly substantial inflation in the prospective speculative valuations of overall property rights and building values and the price of units.
It is pretty clear that just based on this inflation in values of property rights, just based on this single example as above, of 3 stories and 89 units, that this has turned this property into a high expectation value speculative play, and it looks to me that is exactly what is happening. I can just hear the lawyer/planners telling us that the initial approved “good planning” proposal is now not “good planning”, after only about 5 years.
And in addition, this has all been set up and led by the policy and power actions of the Provincial government. With the timeline designed for decades, this kind of thing can go on with increasing speculation and speculative investment plays of various kinds in the property rights. Policy has not achieved the objective of housing, but has only created a very large windfall economic capital gain in property value development rights.
Building ” affordable housing” and “complete communities” cannot really be built now by anyone – there seems to be no money in such, so the development industry has not been building them in the touted policy schedule to solve the problem – they said. The real money being created is in the property development rights being created by Provincial policy and OLT if needed.
In my opinion, based on evidence based reasoning, and following the money, with developers guaranteed to profit by the policy design and economic realities, as described, and this is promoted in my analysis, as a deceitful swindle-like scheme designed by power using deceitful information and data claiming an absolute need contrived by the provincial power.
Implementation of the policy, laws, and provincial plans and Statements, and the backup of the final enabling OLT, set up the paper implementation by the City Pipeline – just released in operation – by basic finance and land economics, and overall economic realities predictably made developers very rich in property rights.
In fact, like planning always has been in Burlington driven by provincial power policy and made up numbers contrived to meet what the province orders, it’s all based on assumptions. We can make up another strategy based on what people want, the “missing middle” which is still significant demand, closer to affordable, and not so offensive to the taxpayers who think they are being fleeced by forced population numbers, increased property taxes to pay more of the very large forced development costs.
If 69% of people want what the City is told they cannot build, what happens to the missing middle of Townhouses (7%), semis(5%), Low Rise (4%), Bungalow (3%) and Mid Rise (3%) – total 22% ? The High Rise and Condos are just 2 % and 3 high-rises% preferred in comparison.
At the present time, the developers should not be relied on as finding the economic times conducive to delivering the what they have applied for, or better put, what they are being assumed – 29,000 units – to deliver in the timeline they are slotted in, but don’t want to commit to deliver.
Right now, given the time that it takes, it will be very hard to have to construct a lot of simultaneous projects. Everything needed – on site, and all the infrastructure can be counted on as not possible on demand.
Too many of those surveyed (69%) say they don’t want them, or can’t afford them. Look at the state of the Condo market in the GTA according to the press media very recently. In Burlington, the Pipeline today indicates a lot of intention to talk about more than 20,000 units.
Developers employ many people, and have large payables no doubt. They are no dummies. So why would they build more of the product people have said they do not want/prefer across the Region – the 2% preference for High Rise and 3% for Condo?
So keeping the taxpayer in mind, and the budget coming up, I say don’t let yourself get too far of yourself in more and more spending on more and more spending on growth items on what you say will happen, but it’s on thin ice assumptions, and at great risk in the flawed data and thinking that you are giving it.
The article yesterday on the Think Tank chance to take the once in a generation chance to start fixing the mismatch that exists when , as right now, planning things built on policies that are based largely on aspirations, assumptions, and many players, that are all mismatched, unrealistic, and in some cases basically false.
So this deceptive design is not able to achieve objectives. It seems obvious that need a new approach. That story should be considered as a project to bring this thinking together as we do have a very long timeline ahead.
Sharman really drinks the Koolaid on “Economic Collapse” without massive immigration.Japan has resisted too much immigration for decades and focused on things like automation to replace many jobs requiring humans.
In the 1980’s I spent a lot of time there seeing things like factories that had Robots making Robots.That was 40 years ago!!!!