Last week, we spoke about one of Toronto's failures when it comes to new "missing middle" housing, namely our inability to look forward to the Toronto of tomorrow, as opposed to only thinking about the Toronto of today. But let's not forget that there are greater biases at play here influencing these outcomes.

Beneath our concerns about not enough parking (how dare you wage a war on the car?) and congruency with neighbourhood character is a deeply rooted aversion toward higher-density apartment living; one that is arguably most prevalent in the English-speaking world.

Consider Toronto's response to the handsome Spadina Gardens apartment building at the start of the 20th century. We were certain that only people of questionable moral fibre would ever want to live in a four-storey apartment block!

Since then, we've become far more open-minded, but survey people in the Anglosphere about whether they'd like to live in an elegant Parisian block, and you'll often discover a stark preference for detached housing. In contrast, survey people on the European continent, or in Asia, and you'll often see different preferences.

Combine these preferences with the common law system prevalent throughout English-speaking countries — where individuals can more easily object to and block projects if, you know, the "vibe" is off — and the broad result is very different housing outcomes. There's data to suggest that civil law countries tend to build more housing.

Cover photo by Clarisse Croset on Unsplash

London has an ambitious housing target of 88,000 new homes per year — yes, per year — over the next decade. This is part of a broader national goal to create upwards of 1.5 million homes in the UK. It's an admirable goal, but the city appears destined to fail. According to a recent FT article by John Burn-Murdoch (their chief data reporter), London saw just 5,891 housing starts last year, which is 94% below its annual target and which represents a 75% year-over-year decline. When compared to many other global cities, London now ranks at or near the bottom when it comes to new homes per 1,000 residents:

Burn-Murdoch cites a multitude of factors responsible for this suboptimal performance: onerous new safety standards following the horrific 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, more stringent environmental regulations (compared to other European countries), the disappearance of international buyers in the residential buy-to-let market, and increased demand for non-residential uses. What is obvious is that building safety is paramount and nothing like what happened with the Grenfell Tower should ever happen again. But with ~281,000 new homes approved but financially unviable, there does appear to be a desire to balance safety with supply.

His third point is an interesting one in that parallels have played out in Toronto's new condominium market. The pejorative narrative of "foreigners taking homes away from locals" is commonplace in cities all around the world, which is why Canada ultimately moved to temporarily ban foreign buyers. But what we start to see here is the impact on overall housing supply. Indeed, a 2017 study from LSE (cited in the above FT article) found that international capital and residential pre-sales are essential ingredients in de-risking high-density projects and promoting greater housing supply.

Tying this all together, what has happened is the creation of an interdependency: we have made new housing developments so complicated and onerous to construct that the only financially feasible way to build them is to amortize all of the required time and money across bigger projects. Then, given the scale and cost of these projects, they have become dependent on investors and international capital to provide financing. Raise interest rates, remove the capital source, and then all of a sudden you have far less housing than 88,000 new homes per year.

It is for reasons like these that I get frustrated when critics simply blame developers or investors for shortcomings in a housing market. Finding villains is a lot easier than doing the difficult work of unpacking what's really going on and coming up with solutions.

Cover photo by Gonzalo Sanchez on Unsplash

Chart from the Financial Times

In yesterday's post, we spoke about the strengthening of Toronto's urban grid and how the city has evolved and is evolving beyond a monocentric, downtown-oriented city. But in arguing this, I was careful to say that the policies and our efforts remain a work in progress. And that's because, when the rubber hits the road, it's not easy transforming car-oriented suburbs into something that resembles urbanity.

Here, for example, is a six-storey infill apartment project proposed for Pharmacy Avenue, south of St. Clair Avenue East, in Scarborough. Pharmacy is a designated "major street," so in theory, a project of this scale could advance straight to a building permit. But for whatever reason, the developer needed some planning variances and went to the Committee of Adjustment to ask for permission.

The Committee recently said no:

“I understand it’s an arterial [and] I understand we want intensification along arterials,” one of the members said at the hearing, “but honestly, to shoehorn an apartment building into a lot like this doesn’t make any sense to me.” Tristone has appealed.

Which is frustrating:

Blair Scorgie, Mr. Malhotra’s planning consultant, points to apparent contradictions in the city’s land use and zoning policies. While council voted in favour of such intensification on its major streets, including those in the suburbs, proposals that optimize what’s allowed run up against other provisions in the official plan that aim to regulate “neighbourhood character” as well as a host of highly site-specific zoning rules that predate the city’s 1998 amalgamation.

“The fact that it appeared like `mini-mid-rise’ surrounded by bungalows has absolutely nothing to do with the policy and the regulatory framework,” he says. “That has everything to do with neighbourhood character and the prioritization of the existing context over the planned future context that’s envisioned by the city.”

Blair hits the nail on the head with these comments. Six storeys shouldn't matter. A lack of parking also shouldn't matter. The reason the proposal was refused is because the lens of review was that of yesterday's Toronto, rather than that of the Toronto of tomorrow. If the goal is more housing, and a medium-density grid that can support a comprehensive transit network, then these are exactly the kind of projects we should be building all across the city.

And they should not necessitate any planning variances.

Cover photo by Joaquin Alcaraz on Unsplash

Project rendering from Noam Hazan Design Studio