Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Tag: legislation

  • Bill 23 is more homes built faster

    The government of Ontario is trying to encourage the construction of a lot of new housing over the next 10 years. More specifically, the plan is for 1.5 million new homes from now until 2033. To have a chance at hitting this target, the province has rightly recognized that some things will need to change around here and so they’ve been busy coming up with legislative changes such as Bill 23 (the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022).

    The Bill is really long, so I personally appreciate it when the act name itself does a good job of summarizing what it’s all about: more homes, built faster. But if you’d like to read the entire thing, you can do that over here. I also attended a breakfast this morning — put on by Goodmans — that provided a great summary of the key points. I took all of my notes on Twitter through a live stream, so if you’d like something more digestible, click here.

    At a very high level, I would say that there are some obviously good changes in the Bill and some other things that will need refinement, such as the proposed changes around third-party appeals. The devil is in the details. And that was actually one of the key takeaways from the breakfast: This government is not afraid of being bold, moving quickly, and then working iteratively with stakeholders. It’s a less typical approach for government, but done is better than perfect, right?

  • Airbnb empire comes to an end in NYC

    At the beginning of this year, the City of New York filed this lawsuit in an attempt to shut down an Airbnb business that has supposedly generated around $20 million in revenue since 2012. It is currently illegal to rent out an apartment in most buildings in the city for less than 30 days unless the owner/permanent tenant is present. And that’s not how this business was being operated.

    Here are the locations of the rentals named in the lawsuit (map from the New York Times):

    The defendants include a real estate brokerage, the three partners behind the business (more on them here), as well as others. NYC has been trying to pass legislation that would force Airbnb to disclose more information to the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement. Information such as the full name(s) and address(es) of every host and whether the short-term rental is an entire dwelling or a room. That presumably would have helped here.

    For more on the lawsuit and the backstory, click here.

    You may also find it interesting to go back to the five-point plan that Airbnb put forward back in 2016. It was intended to serve as a framework for new short-term rental legislation. The points make a lot of sense.

  • Introducing Tech:NYC

    Following the lead of San Francisco, a new non-profit, member-supported organization for New York tech companies has just launched. It’s called Tech:NYC. Here are their goals, taken from this blog post:

    Tech:NYC’s primary goals are to support the growth of the technology sector in New York City, to increase civic engagement by leaders of the New York tech community, and advocate for policies that will attract tech talent, jobs, and opportunity to NYC.

    Tech:NYC will advocate for policies that: 1) underscore a regulatory environment that supports the growth of technology companies and technology talent in NYC; 2) promote inclusivity; and 3) ensure access for all New Yorkers to connectivity, technology tools, and training.

    What makes something like this important is that many public policy issues are now rooted in the tech sector. Think about all the debate regarding ride-sharing, home-sharing, drone regulation, contract employees, and so on.

    But what is also clear is that many cities are struggling to deal with these issues. As I’ve argued before, just saying no to innovation that doesn’t fit neatly into our currently regulatory boxes is often shortsighted. 

    So how do we put in place policies that deliver the right results and that are balanced? How do we grow the tech base while at the same time managing the disruptive fallout? That’s what this group hopes to do.

    And it strikes me that every big city could likely benefit from an organization like this.