Generation YIMBY needs room to grow
With skyrocketing home prices, more millennials are now saying ‘yes-in-my-backyard’ to growth
At 29, Michelle German is part of a generation increasingly frustrated by the rising cost of housing that shuts young professionals, less affluent residents and newcomers out of the city’s well-serviced, transit-connected neighbourhoods.
German shares a house downtown with three roommates. She’s a senior manager with Evergreen, a non-profit environmental sustainability agency, and she describes herself as a good saver. But she can’t imagine ferreting away the cash to buy a home — at least not in the foreseeable future.
She told the Toronto Region Board of Trade on Tuesday that it’s time for her cohort to speak out, to turn frustration and anger into action.
“In terms of . . . advocacy, we’re not pulling our weight,” she later said to the Toronto Star. But that is changing, say planners and social policy experts.
They say that Toronto’s YIMBY ranks are already rising. YIMBYs are young urbanites responding to the city’s affordability challenges with a “yes-in-mybackyard” response to denser development. They are demanding family-sized condos, the conversion of single-family houses to duplexes and triplexes and secondary suites in neighbourhoods where their equity-rich parents’ generation are rattling around in near-empty homes.
“Absolutely there is a growing anger and frustration,” said University of British Columbia Professor Paul Kershaw, whose research on generational inequality inspired an awareness campaign called, Generation Squeeze, aimed at putting millennial issues on the political radar.
Generation Squeeze will be speaking out more in Ontario as the provincial election approaches next June, he said. It is challenging the pervasive idea that high home prices are a good news story when, increasingly, the rising cost of housing is crushing younger generations, who are also facing declining incomes.
Hard work doesn’t pay off the way it used to for young adults, said Kershaw. Forty years ago, a first-time Ontario homebuyer would take five years on average to save the 20 per cent down-payment for a home; today it takes 15 years.
“Embarrassment is a big issue where people are looking at where their parents were when they were young adults and they’re feeling like I am not as far ahead,” he said.
Children of immigrants are keenly aware their parents sacrificed so they could have more in Canada. “When you meet people in community centres, cafes and pubs, in quiet moments people will share this concern: ‘How am I failing?’ This is a huge thing to be hearing in a country like Canada,” he said.
It’s not a single generation’s problem and it requires intergenerational solutions, Kershaw said. Younger adults are adapting their expectations — living in smaller spaces, commuting farther to their jobs. In exchange for letting baby boomers continue to build the equity that secures their retirement, millennials need policies that enhance other parts of their lives such as child care.
German says renting longer could
“We want to be more of an activist movement than a Ted Talks for housing issues.” CHRIS SPOKE FOUNDER, TORONTO HOUSING MATTERS
in itself be limiting millennials from participating publicly in the solutions.
“The (rental) culture you live in is somewhat temporary. You might not change the light fixtures in your apartment, you might not paint the walls and you might not join the residency association,” said German.
“Homeowners feel ownership over their space or their neighbourhood. They feel compelled to speak out, to protect what’s theirs,” she said. Her Annex neighbourhood is among Toronto’s most desirable. At one time, many of the homes were divided into apartments. But most have been converted back to singlefamily, said German.
Members of the Annex Residents Association are mostly older but they consider themselves YIMBYs, said the group’s chair David Harrison. He acknowledges that some developers would disagree.
“We say, ‘YIMBY’ but if you don’t agree with us then we’re NIMBY,” he said.
“We’re not against development, we just don’t want crazy development — buildings that are too big, too dense.”
Harrison has his own term for condos. He calls them “human storage units.” He cites the already overcrowded subway among the key reasons for limiting density along Bloor St.
The residents association recently fought a proposal for a 42-storey building on Bloor St. near Madison Ave.
“The final answer is it’s going to 29 stories. There will be two- and threebedroom units. We want to find a way to accommodate young families,” said Harrison, who says he’s sympathetic to the housing plight of the next generation, having recently helped his daughters buy homes.
He would like younger members in the association but participation is a challenge for neighbourhood associations across the city.
The Annex population has ranged from 12,000 to 16,000 since the Second World War, he said. But the association mailing list has only 400 names.
“Young people tend to have other responsibilities. Young parents, they give what they can,” he said.
Not far from the Annex, Chris Spoke, 31, rents “an old shoebox” above a store with his girlfriend near College St. and Dovercourt Rd. for about $1,500 a month.
He has his sights set on home ownership but doesn’t see how it will happen.
“Even if you look at condo prices, if you want to have a couple of kids the amount of square footage you need in the city is out of my budget,” he said.
Spoke, who works in the tech sector, is the founder of Toronto Housing Matters. So far it’s a name, website and monthly speaker series aimed at fostering a “growing, dynamic and affordable Toronto.”
“For Toronto to remain affordable, particularly to younger people, firsttime homebuyers, new Canadians and renters we need . . . to increase the supply of housing and keep prices reasonable,” Spoke said.
Spoke hopes the speaker series is a stepping stone to a more active organization that penetrates city hall with a “pro-development, pro-housing supply agenda.”
“We want to be more of an activist movement than a Ted Talks for housing issues,” he said. “You can’t have it both ways.” “If we’re going to be a country that’s open to immigration and open to refugees and also open to new generations, these people need to live somewhere and often that means your neighbourhood is going to have to intensify.”