Town Hall on the Housing Affordability problem - many see it as a crisis - taking place on Saturday

By Pepper Parr

February 24th, 2023

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The sign of a healthy society can be seen when groups of people hold events to explain changes taking place in the way things are done and inform people on what action they can take.

The informing and engaging is usually done by the elected officials who are put in office to guide and direct.

When the elected fail to deliver – people in a healthy society come forward to do the job.

On Saturday there will be an event at the New Street branch of the Burlington Library on Affordable Housing.  Not much of that in Burlington but to be fair municipalities are limited in just what they can do.  The responsibility rests at the Regional level.

The event on Saturday is free – just walk in.

 

 

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7 comments to Town Hall on the Housing Affordability problem – many see it as a crisis – taking place on Saturday

  • David

    In my youth I watched a program called ‘Tomorrows World’ in one segment a group of behavioural scientists had constructed a fairly large walled maze of a city painted in white for lab rats, the segment was time lapsed and narrated by the host, rats were introduced to the city and food was adjusted to accommodate the population.
    Once the rats had spread themselves out amongst the mazes many rooms and had settled into some kind of shared community the scientists started to add more rats all the while increasing the food supply so as to discount hunger in their measurements in behaviour.
    As the population kept increasing within the boundary of the city the rats became increasingly agitated and violence became normal within the population.
    The segment ended with the violent and bloody death of one rat.

    You will own nothing and you will be happy.

  • Michael Hribljan

    With the City raising taxes by 7.52% they are clearly tone deft to the issues facing the average citizen and families in Burlington. As Phil mentioned its clear that MMW is following the lead of the “Costly Coalition” in Ottawa.

    I suspect most are not paying too close attention to this and when the new tax bills are mailed out, it will be interesting to see the reactions.

    Apparently Council does not seem to get the compounding impact of rising costs, its like death by a thousand cuts – local businesses will now raise their prices to off-set higher costs, slowly but surely which fuels the cycle of inflation. Nice Work.

    • David

      I live down town, with some of my neighbours living in fairly cheap rental properties, they don’t have parents to go home to, invariably they are older and have front line jobs paying just above minimum wage, some will admit they are less than $500 from insolvency, (life happens) Their options becoming ever increasingly smaller.
      Are these the people that the elites call ‘useless eaters’. is their next move to a tent city? Or is this the reason we now have MAID.

    • Philip Waggett

      And readers should remember that property taxes are a component of the housing index–increase taxes and directly impact the rate of inflation.

  • Charles Zach

    The disgraced former Ontario Premier and radical activist Kathleen Wynne singlehandedly created this housing affordability crisis by purposely hemming in the GTA with a ‘no development’ green wall that turned the affected landlocked areas into a island – like Manhattan. This was done on purpose to garner votes from GTA urbanites concerned about urban sprawl and grid-lock. The social re-engineering intent of the Green Belt was to force all development upwards into high density housing. In this regard the policy had the desired affect but as less land became available for development the price of land and housing skyrocketed putting housing out of reach for first time home buyers. This is another example of misguided central control state inference in the free market economy which always results in high prices and shortages. It’s time to open up the Green Belt wall and build out responsibly to connect with outlying cities such as London, Barrie and Ottawa. Otherwise our youth and seniors on fixed incomes will be forced to move to cheaper places to live and the GTA will become a gentrified gated community for the rich.

    Editor’s note: it’s an opinion – and let’s just leave it at that.

  • A crisis for far too long. The problem was recognized at Council at least a decade ago. Council are all Region decision makers. Sad that we still have no solution at this time. Hoping to see something positive come out of this Town Hall that begins to see a solution in place.

  • Phil Waggett

    Is there an affordability crisis in Burlington? MMW certainly doesn’t think so; if she did she wouldn’t have raised taxes by 7.52%. Just like her fellow Liberal counterpart in Ottawa, Justin is also raising taxes to help Canadians cope with the cost of living.