Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999
If there is a housing crisis about lower income families not being able to afford homes that don't look like commie blocks, then the immediate focus should on building homes that look like this rather wasting time on the slow and expensive process of densification in areas where land is worth several million dollars or more per acre.
There was a Maclean's article from about a year ago about a family of five that relocated from Vancouver to Calgary and even with a modest budget for Calgary, were able to find a pretty decent townhouse for less than $300K two years ago in a newer NE community. Affordable for a two-income family, still doable with a decent single income and some sacrifices.
Even if that TH's current market value is more like $400K, it's still not going be possible for anything new in the inner city to come close to that value.
https://macleans.ca/economy/realesta...-of-vancouver/
But that means doing something that supposed advocates hate even more than people not being able to afford housing, which is sprawl and new development. |
It doesn’t matter where the new home goes. If you had a 1 million dollar home in the inner city it frees up the least desireable SFH for a lower income person. This is because the people moving into the 1mm house have a house and the person who buys that house has a house and the person who buys that house has a house. Building more supply regardless of location will help the person.
Sprawl is only required to lower prices if that becomes the only way the build a lower cost option. But even the modern burb is relatively dense compared to say 1950 to about 2000.
Sprawl long term increases costs for everyone so you need to ensure it’s being built intelligently.