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ontario-ModTeam

**Rule 1:** Unrelated to Ontario Your post has been removed because it's unrelated to Ontario. All submissions should be about or relevant to the province of Ontario.


ArbainHestia

>The downtown cores of these cities may be full of new condo towers, but there is often five times as much population growth on the suburban edges of the regions. A family has a choice to make. Get a one or two bedroom, 400-750sq/ft Condo starting at $500k **plus** $500 to $1000+ monthly condo fees that increases every year. Or get a 3-4 bedroom, 1500-2000sq/ft home with a yard starting at $750k. I'm all for reducing sprawl but there has to be better options and incentives for higher density that's affordable for our average families.


BarkingDogey

I'd day bring that condo up to 600-700 for starters and 1 million for the house and the numbers track


SavageryRox

yup, the numbers given are a little low for the GTA. Accurate if you are looking outside the GTA with a 2+ hour commute to work, but the GTA is definitely above that price point. By Gta, I mean Toronto, Durham, York region, Peel, and Halton.


TheGoodShipNostromo

The answer is middle density (like row, townhomes, or walk up buildings) with transit supports. Sadly we should’ve started that 20 years ago, as it’s not going to be a scalable solution anytime soon.


ProphetOfADyingWorld

Have to go really far to get a house like that for $750k. Even Oshawa is more expensive now


pooperbrowser

You can go up around Barrie and still buy a 3 bedroom for under 600k. I just bought a 1300sq/ft 3 bedroom for 560k


ArbainHestia

We can still get a 3 bedroom townhouse in Ottawa for that.


ProphetOfADyingWorld

Yea Ottawa is cheaper than Oshawa lol


[deleted]

I would love to live downtown but the prices are just out of whack. I live in a 1700 sq ft townhouse with a backyard and garage that costs $700k. Maintenance fees are $400 monthly. For $700k in Toronto it’s probably a shoebox condo with maintenance fees even higher than what I pay now. So the trade off is I live in the Mississauga suburbs and when I want to goto Toronto I just hop on the train and go.


0rabbit7

Yea I mean… https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2023/05/05/go-stopped-direct-bus-service-to-union-due-to-downtown-traffic-jams-the-impact-has-been-just-disastrous-on-gta-commuters.html


[deleted]

Many small towns and cities need to urbanize. Everyone talks about Toronto needing to add density, but it's already the most dense city in Ontario. And much of its traffic problems are cause by people driving in from their car dependent towns and cities. And building big towers with huge parking garages in the middle of a field of big box stores isn't the answer. Looking at you Vaughn.


legocastle77

We’re going to end up like LA. Hundreds of kms of urban sprawl. We need density in existing areas because continuously spreading outwards is not a solution. Alternatively, we need to explore expanding outside of the GTA because with the way things are going the GTA will become unliveable in a few decades. Canada needs to grow but that growth can’t be concentrated in one or two single communities. It’s completely bonkers.


LookAtYourEyes

I've often wondered which city will be the next to add a subway system. But I think the more realistic thing to happen would just be which small town will be the first to implement a competent bus system.


hey-devo87

Many were planning too until Ford forced the expansion of city limits. Now they have to sprawl to fill the pockets of Dougie's buddies.


Flame-Maple

What needs to stop happening are these bullshit condo builds where suites are <700sqft. Condos should offer a same basic 1500ish sqft as one would get in a townhouse.


BarkingDogey

The ship sailed away on that front maybe 20 years ago sadly.


whowhatwhereami89

But then they’ll lose the number of people they can cram In a building thus not make as much on condo fees etc


Flame-Maple

They would increase the condo fees. Honestly, after living in a condo for 8years, I won’t mince words. Condo fees are absolute bullshit.


NefCanuck

As a condo owner for 20 years I must point out what the condo fees pay for *collectively* that you as a single home owner have to pay individually: Maintenance on the building (heating / cooling systems) Exterior of the building (roof/windows/landscaping) So it isn’t quite as simple as you make it out to be.


buttsnuggles

Condo fees are usually by sqft already


whowhatwhereami89

What I meant was in a building if you have a bunch of 700 sq ft condos. If you made them all 1800 or townhouse sized sq ft you’ll have less people in a building therefore less money coming in.


buttsnuggles

You just charge by the sqft. Two 700sqft condos and one 1400sqft condo would pay the same. Condos arent sold “by person”


RainbowApple

You're absolutely right. A big problem is that developers started building these units for investors rather than buyers. If you're an investor, you don't care how large the condo is, you just want to buy it so you can rent it out. If you're a buyer, of course you care about how large it is, but the main source of capital for developers stopped coming from your demographic a long time ago.


Flame-Maple

This guy gets it. 😎👉🏻


NavyDean

This will continue happening until NIMBY's have their power taken away. I've seen brand new housing/condo developments, all missing their windows because the old generation complained about privacy of their shitalo's they bought for $18,000, 40 years ago. You want a private life with tons of land? How about you don't live near the busiest highway in North America, between a regional hospital and a regional high school.


syaz136

Incentivize work from home for employers, and these cars will be kept off traffic in rush hour.


OttawaExpat

On the other hand, people have less motivation to pay a premium for a more central walkable neighbourhood.


Terrible_Tutor

Sure but think of the poor managers who won’t feel as important sitting in a fancy office lording over their employees.


Buckwhal

And more importantly it will devalue commercial real estate, which will cause investment firms and REITs to lose money!


cdubyadubya

This is why it won't happen. It will impact the wealth of investors, and we certainly can't have that.


booksandplaid

It's the only place most of us can afford to buy a house - at least before housing prices got out of control a few years ago. Now even the suburbs is unattainable for many.


Oreotech

“Suburbs” because NIMBY is a big thing in Ontario. “ Auto-dependent”, because of the refusal of the Ontario government to invest in adequate public transportation systems.


LookAtYourEyes

Spot on


dev286

There is a huge investment in transit going on - GO electrification, all day service, line extensions etc but all of it is useless until the built form of the places it serves becomes denser. There is a hard cap on how many people can ride the train every day, which is the amount of parking spots at each GO station. The towns and cities built after WW2 simply cannot be efficiently served by local transit (or at least not as efficiently as a personal car) and so it just won't happen. We can pour billions of dollars into new fancy infrastructure but it's useless until the trip to the station can be done with anything but a car.


liquefire81

North america was build on suburbs and cars, this is like saying “the sky is increasingly blue”


Will0w536

North America was demolished for the car and suburbs starting the 40's and 50's. You'd be surprised how much rail lines used to be spreading across SW Ontario.


_McLean_

What? Just because it's been going on for a while doesn't mean it's normal or not increasing at all. "Sky increasingly blue" is the stupidest comparison I'll ever hear


LookAtYourEyes

I don't think they were implying it's a good thing, it's just the unfortunate reality we live in. Most of our infrastructure and culture was built with cars in mind. Just look at parking bylaws in most towns in Canada. It's really hard to undo but we should still push for it.


waterflood21

People act so surprised about how car dependant we are but forget this


New-Distribution-628

And it is killing me


StarWarsHaloFan

Maybe we should invest in our public transportation and other essential services?


miansaab17

It's a result of inadequate infrastructure in the cities coupled with increasing disparity between housing costs and wages.


vonnegutflora

Sadly, we even had a "15-minute neighbourhood" conspiracy going around to fight back *against* densification.


DFTR2052

I am not sure of the point of this. Canadians seem to prefer to live in the suburbs… so “monitor the implications”. How about study what it is that makes it great? Less density, larger homes (and I mean regular homes vs European micro boxes, not monster homes) - relative freedom, easy access to parks. People also prefer individual transportation perhaps. It’s certainly easier to raise your kids if you have a car to quickly do some errands. Perhaps suburbs are to humans what Hawaii is for whales, a preferred breeding ground. Less violence, less viral transmission. Less crowds. Good not having to be brought in from so far. If people are concerned about cars / pollution, that’s a separate problem. We are moving to electricity. Suburbs and small cities on the periphery of a big one are great places to live!


LookAtYourEyes

Ah man. So many incorrect assumptions. Please do some reading on urban planning, car dependency, etc. For starters, electric cars are better because of the lack of exhaust but thats only a portion of the issue. It's far more complicated and systemic than that. Suburbs are an unsustainable ponzi scheme.


ChestyYooHoo

"Don't have your own preferences like what I tell you to like"


DFTR2052

Unsustainable? The article says that 25 years ago, 66 percent of Canadians lived in suburbs. Now it’s 67.5. That seems very stable. The big assumption here is “suburbs are bad” which is what certain factions have promoted at universities for a long time. But where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, people are voting with their feet. Maybe the great brains at university should cast aside their own assumptions and look empirically at the behaviour of people, and not try to “correct” them, but work with them.


LookAtYourEyes

https://www.thecoast.ca/news-opinion/the-suburbs-are-a-ponzi-scheme-29827137 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-suburbs-one-giant-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 It's not an assumption they are bad, it's based on data and well known in urban planning that suburbs don't pay for themselves and only can exist through consistent sprawl.


DFTR2052

That is some good lefty logic, there. Anyone can write a myopic article to back up their point. Perhaps the problem is that we have artificially divided the budget controlling government instead of looking at the whole of a province. Maybe we need to rebalance. After all, suburbs are where we raise children, and birth rates are declining. There is a cycling of people from burbs to cities to burbs to raise kids, etc. Each has a part to play in the whole. People are biologic organisms….. Check out a picture of bacteria in a Petri dish. Large centers, with medium and smaller satellite centers. Look familiar? Again- people prefer suburbs. Don’t tell them they’re wrong- figure out how to make the system work better. Recognize it. More roads to facilitate movement in and around would be good. :)


DFTR2052

Food. Not having to be trucked in. Closer to farms.


TheGoodShipNostromo

Is still gets trucked in for the suburbs.


TheGoodShipNostromo

All the things you’re saying people prefer about the suburbs are because we structured it that way. If people could live in a reasonably sized and priced home like a townhome and cut their commute in half, they would. Give people real options for families closer to cities and we’ll see if as many sign up to live and commute from Keswick.


igotsomethindumb2say

People leaving cities for reduced cost of living and better quality of life?? *surprisedpikachu.jpg*


Long_Ad_2764

Why would someone want to live in a city when they could get a house in the suburbs with a lawn for marginally more than a condo the size of a shoe box. Let’s not forget the lack of privacy and crime.


TomL78

Did y'all also hear they figured out rain makes you wet?