A look at other cities’ housing dilemmas
The Greater Toronto Area is in danger of becoming the next London, England, or Palo Alto, Calif. — places that are highly desirable but unaffordable for most people.
This is a growing region and people want to live here, but the lack of housing, especially low-rise homes, keeps pushing prices higher. The demand is greatly outstripping the supply.
The home-building and land-development industry wants to design and build homes and communities that meet the housing needs of the GTA. That is our business; that is what we do.
But challenges grow in number and scale. Complicated and restrictive government policies, already lengthy yet still-worsening approval processes, a shortage of shovel-ready and approved land on which to build, escalating land prices and the growing issue of NIMBY- ism are impeding our ability to build homes and communities.
Unfortunately, many of these challenges are shared by London and Palo Alto.
To help our members keep abreast of builders’ best practices and innovation in other parts of the world, BILD organizes an annual tour to other cities, where we learn about that city’s housing market, meet with local developers and builders and visit sites.
This year, we went to London, one of the world’s most dynamic and historic cities. We saw a lot of industry innovation and amazing urban development projects under construction. But we also witnessed London’s prevalent housing-affordability issue, with prices that many people can’t afford.
While we were there, the media was reporting that the average price of housing in the U.K. was £2,200 per square foot ($3,564 Canadian), which works out to $2.14 million for a 600-square-foot home.
We visited King’s Cross, one of the largest and most exciting redevelopments in London. This site has been transformed into a complete community with a broad range of housing types. Although the project includes a component of subsidized rental housing, the market housing is not affordable to many Londoners. For example, one-bedroom suites start at £730,000 ($1.17 million).
We toured Battersea Power Station, an innovative redevelopment where a group of Malaysian investors are turning the site into a luxury highrise and community development.
The British government has recently doubled its housing budget to help increase the supply of affordable housing. It has also launched a major homebuilding stimulus package and plans to boost house construction by using surplus public lands.
Palo Alto is another great city suffering from lack of housing supply and eroding affordability. Located in the centre of Silicon Valley, it offers a lot of employment opportunity but the cost of housing is so astronomical, job openings can’t be filled and professionals are choosing to move away.
The city needs to make its housing supply a priority and restructure zoning policies so that people who want to work there can also afford housing.
The city must make housing supply a priority and revamp zoning policies to ensure that people can afford housing
We don’t want to be a London or a Palo Alto. In the GTA, we need to work together to address the growing challenge of inadequate housing supply so that we can better meet the region’s housing needs and offer consumers choice. Bryan Tuckey is president and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) and is a land-use planner who has worked for municipal, regional and provincial governments. Find him on Twitter @bildgta, facebook.com/bildgta and bildblogs.ca.