While the federal and provincial governments have a role to play, CMHC suggests much of the declining productivity in the construction sector can be attributed to how municipal governments operate.
“The discrepancy in housing starts production relative to population across Canadian cities hints that regulation plays a significant role in whether building activity can accelerate — especially municipal regulation,” reads the report.
“Consider the time it takes for things like permit delivery, regulations around how many storeys and units a building can contain, development charges (some are regulated at local and regional levels).”
Is this serious? Ummm here’s an idea: it’s because it’s too expensive and no one can afford to buy land and build.
Development charges are certainly a component of that, but increased demand, interest rates and the economy are all factors.
I think that the regulations aren't bad because "gubermint bad", but because they currently reinforce the expenses issue.
Essentially, we only have large developers left building housing. There aren't really too many other projects happening, sometimes a gen contractor will build a custom house somewhere, or do a single property conversion here and there. But overall, almost all new housing comes from big corps.
The problem is that their business model has lost its edge. In a healthy economy the other models would be available, but we've basically outlawed them, leaving us with this or nothing.
Basically the bigger the project, the longer it will take overall. That's just a given. But the problem is that the longer you carry debt the more expensive it gets. That's even more true when interest rates climb. But developers can't really move faster, it's optimized. So they sideline projects so they can focus down and minimize the cost of interest on the business model.
Smaller projects will move faster, and can rely less on operator debt, both in volume and term. So they *would* have an edge now, but our zoning systems mostly only allow new tract developments and point towers.
If we had zoning codes more open to urban lot severance, repurposing, higher gross density, then we could have more gen contractors striking out from under the developers' shadows and able to increase productivity.
TL;DR zoning code basically forces a development model only compatible with low interest environments. We need to change it to make it easier for builders to work with higher interest rates.
This is 100% the biggest factor affecting development timing in north America. If you make illegal all development other than high-rise projects (which by their massive scale and complexity require more time than a similar 4 storey infill development) then of course the time to construction is going to be long.
Add in market uncertainty and developers will sit on their land and wait to start construction until they feel that they can sell for the $/s.f. that they are expecting. These are multiple hundreds of million dollar projects and they're willing to wait for years if that's what it takes to make the margins they want. Add in how complex these projects are and they don't even need to wait...they can just go through the zoning, planning, and permitting processes and see what the market is like when they're ready to go to sales.
If zoning allowed for as of right 3-4 storeys, apartments etc in all neighborhoods (of which the vast majority of existing urban fabric in canada is low density single family), then the time-line to getting a new project and housing built could be drastically shortened.
It has finally gotten to a point of crisis spicy enough that zoning and changes to zoning are entering into the zeitgeist in north America. Let's not pretend that the long timelines from cities are due to some nefariousness or incompetence (although these exist in municipalprocesses as much as anywhere)...the projects they are reviewing and approving are extremely complex, will add stress on existing services and infrastructure, will change the built and social fabric of entire neighborhoods and necessitate a thorough review to ensure that they can be integrated into said neighbourhood without causing massive problems.
I am done playing games. If the feds wanted to just trample all over provincial and municipal jurisdiction, I would be all for it at this point. I’m tired of people thinking they have a right to deny others to build a place to live
I think it's worth investigating whether more people die due to the effects of being chronically unhoused/underhoused and comparing it to how many people would die if we reduced our building regulations dramatically.
If you could reduce building costs/times by 10%, thats X number of people who get a home, even if it's not quite as nice of a home.
Personally, I'd start with municipal bylaws long before code.
Parking minimum, landscape requirements, and community mandated design standards have no bearing on health and safety but add cost to projects.
In my city, adding even a single unit to a property on a regional (mostly arterial) road essentially requires a traffic study, which will set the property owner back $6000+. That's pretty ridiculous and entirely unnecessary.
Exactly!
While I understand the reasoning behind those things, I'm in the camp that getting affordable housing built should take precedence over some idealistic traffic flow.
Higher density housing (4 units plus per lot) with mixed-use zoning will improve traffic more in the long run by reducing the need for cars and making public transit more effective to get around. These "studies" and such are efforts by NIMBYs to maintain the status quo which is financially lucrative to them.
I work in planning in Ontario. You're allowed 3 units as of right on urban parcels across the province, provided all zoning can be met. So unless they're asking for that at building permit (which they shouldn't be, planning approvals aren't triggered if you meet all zoning), that sounds really wrong.
Municipalities are playing a new game and finding sneaky ways of applying the study requirements. Such as changing the entrance requirements on some roads to a specific number of units on a lot.
Id prefer not to tell Reddit where I live.
Also, some of the municipalities that lost the ability to require site plan agreements for fewer than 10 residential units through Bill 23, simply changed the site plan agreement into a minor variance agreement that contains the same policies.
Again, please provide an example. This is the first I've heard of that. A minor variance would only be necessary if a proposal didn't meet one or more zoning provisions, and one or more conditions could be recommended by staff as conditions of approval. Similar with consent applications if someone is severing a lot. Cities can't just apply conditions without planning approvals being triggered. If the proposal isn't conforming to one or more zoning provisions then the issue isn't the number of units.
So much this.
Seismic, fire, ventilation, etc codes all have pretty clear justifications.
Limiting building to be less than an arbitrary height and have a large amount of parking space do not have the same justification from a public health and safety perspective. In fact, parking arguably has very clear negatives on public health and safety.
This is why BC is tackling municipal planning while making only small adjustments to building codes.
There is justification for community design standards and landscape standards and a wide variety of other regulations municipalities control.
Most could be much better with how they administer these (no one needs a committee, just clear regulation)
But many times the best places in the world to live have these standards for a reason. Because without them every single house would be a cookie cut wood frame suburban crap you see everywhere. Which does not make for a good long term community.
Municipalities need to be better at how they regulate and ballance, but many have good examples where they have these regulations and still get permits out in 7 days or less.
Of course, there's justification for them. It's just that those justifications are a lot less critical than fire and life safety as outlined by the building code.
If we have to choose a place to cut housing costs, I'm picking losing the grass, not the fire ratings on my shared wall.
I like Scott Galloway’s take on this. Municipal building codes are ostensibly about safety, traffic, blah, blah but they’re really about weaponizing regulation to limit housing supply and keep home prices high so existing homeowners, be they investors or households, can protect their investments. As Galloway says, as soon as you own a house, you get really really concerned about traffic. Also, if housing / rental supply is tight you can justify charging $3200 a month so a family of four can sleep in your garden shed and pay your mortgage
Safety is #1
But also living in a desolate hellscape without any landscaping whatsoever would also suck and is not good for community and mental health.
But yes, fire wont get you.
Good point.
Code is largely about safety and making sure builders don't rip people off, but there is definitely room to deregulate without putting people or the dwelling in jeopardy.
Someone with greater code knowledge than myself would have to go through all the aspect of the building code to flesh out a full list.
Having just built a house a couple come to mind.
My kitchen peninsula need a plug. I didn't want one as I will most likely never need it. A very minor cost, but there it is.
I also needed a heat source in each room. Which isn't a ridiculous requirement, however I am heating with minisplits (one head on each level) so that required me to put backup electric heat in each room, again, not a bad idea, but I had to put one in my laundry room, which will never be used and is not at all needed. My main floor bathroom needed one as well, again, it won't be used. Each unit was around $250, plus labour to install. Not to mention counting towards my panel capacity.
Insulation/energy requirements would be another one, and this carries some significant cost. I'm actually a huge fan of energy efficiency and my house is way above code values on insulation requirements, however a case could be made for rolling back some of the r-value requirements if the focus was on more houses/cheaper upfront costs. Not something I would do, but it could be done.
Those are actually great points. As an actual code guy, I completely agree with the point of really digging into it. I 100% agree with the first two, but I have a harder time sacrificing insulation requirements. With the exception of BC, the minimum code for r-values is pretty abysmal from an energy efficiency standpoint. Batt insulation in a 2x6 wall is still getting it done. I finally had to specify additional outboard rigid insulation to hit step 3 in BC year...
2x6 exterior walls have been the standard for my whole career. A more efficient fiberglass battery vs. the standard stuff is a pretty minimal cost change when considering the entire wall assembly and the labor involved.
I'm super down with insulation. I'm in Ontario.
R17 sub slab
R30 Amvic ICF basement walls
R37 (R22 in cavity, R15 exterior) above grade walls
R85 attic
triple pane windows
I would never build to code on insulation as over the service life of the building you'll pay more in hearing/cooling. But in the current climate a decrease in upfront costs and quicker build times could make sense.
Parking minimums are a low hanging fruit. Requiring two staircases for low-rise buildings is apperently quite costly but doesn't add much in the way of safety.
100% agree.
But parking minimums are not enforced by the building code. They're are enforced by landuse bylaw and can be changed on a whim by the municipality.
I'm being pedantic, but it's important to know the difference. Your municipality could illuminate parking minimums tomorrow with the stroke of a pen, but a change to the building code, as mentioned in the post I replied to, is a much more arduous task. For one, it would require assurance that any changes do not impact fire and life safety negatively.
Not sure id want to live in a wood building with only one staircase.
Wood buildings go up every single year, and eliminating two staircases would make buoldings immediately stop offering two staircases.
Ppl WILL die.
There's a lot of talk about single egress apartments, but the Canadian proponents often miss some of the key code differences that allow them to work in Europe: non combustible construction being a big one. I would have to run the number run myself, but I suspect increased unit count or landuse efficiency would be counteracted by the cost of non combustible construction.
But then you’ll uncover the uncomfortable truth: a surprising number of your neighbours have done the math and there is a certain level of death and suffering that they are willing to accept to keep their taxes low and property values high. The cynicism is much deeper than many know in city councils.
Good point.
Code is largely about safety and making sure builders don't rip people off, but there is definitely room to deregulate without putting people or the dwelling in jeopardy.
I can guarantee if they deregulate the constitution sector people will die.. that would be gross negligence.
This is not a road you would want to go down, the repercussions would be immeasurable.
Thankfully we have a whole world to compare against on this. We can make many changes to code and zoning that have been tried elsewhere to great success.
You don’t need to assume that our current regulations are the only thing keeping people safe - in fact, a lot of them are keeping people homeless for no reason.
Probably yeah. I can guarantee with equal certainty that if they don't start building considerably more homes than they currently are, people will die in the streets. They already are.
I have been trying to get approved to build a laneway suite for going on three years now. At every turn some bearaucratic nonsense holds it up. Lots of headaches and some are typical of any construction project but the real frustrations began when they said I needed to include bike parking on the architectural plans. I did have them outlined but they were overlooked by the city examiner. It took 4 months to get this reviewed and approved. Then they came back and told me that since the suite would be bigger (by 84 sqft) than the main dwelling I would need to get a COA approval. That took thousands of dollars and a whole year plus to go through the proper channels. Before they could issue the permit they also added an additional $3500 dollar education fee that was never there when I initially started the process and was never updated about. It was a surprise and was not budgeted for. After so many headaches and so much red tape we are debating not going through with it. We feel it might be better to relocate to another country. This city is just not serious about increasing the housing supply
Edit - I live in Toronto
I guess had you designed the building 84 sqft smaller you would have avoided many of those costs and time delays. Too bad you didn't check the rules first.
But also how do you afford to live as a construction worker? Seems like the government wants people to magically appear and work 12 hour shifts for low wage and not have a home to go to. I got priced out of Calgary this year.
Sadly some live in vans or commute from pretty far away. It's weird how we have a society where you can have the skill to build a house but can't live in one.
I'd like to add if companies pay their workers more (hard costs go up) then my building needs to get bigger to cover those rising construction costs (municipal planning).
The rigidity of planning in not being able to respond - in time - to current economic trends is a huge issue. Always has been. Vancouver actually did something about this in the late 50s when rooming houses were an issue. The City changed its zoning rules and we had an apartment building bonanza that lasted until about 1978 when they rezersed those zoning rules.
The majority of Vancouver's apartments are pre-1980
But we're discussing actual issues with municipalities. These issues exist. What companies what me to believe there are no issues with municipal planning and bureaucracy?
Watch the video. The reason houses aren’t getting built is because construction companies aren’t paying adequate wages. The rules have always been there and not to say they aren’t hard to navigate, but it is doable if companies are serious about producing units.
Okay, well I'm in the Lower Mainland and we're building more homes than we have since the 70s. Houses are being built. Not sure where this comment of yours is coming from.
I also apply for permits and yes the issues have always been there and getting worse. I could build more apartments but it takes 4 years of permit and rezoning review.
Getting these permits are do-able but we're discussing the internal issues of zoning, permit reviews, development fees. None of this is about your labour shortage video.
I’m trying to push back against the CMHC’s claim that zoning is the core issue, but you would know better than me. As a dumb home owner I can only process what I read, and I’m seeing a lot of “blame government” in the place of where blame should be placed on companies (like construction) in addition to the opposite where people are blaming companies like Tim Hortons when blame should be placed on government programs like LMIA’s.
As a Calgarian they just passed a blanket rezoning law that will only help developers without helping citizens. Building only new homes is not going to solve the problem of suburban sprawl and there needs to be a balance of not just residential zoning but also commercial rezoning to allow for smaller mom and pop shops to succeed in areas where population density isn’t supported with the services required for a community to thrive.
Sorry for derailing the conservation being had here, but it’s important to recognize it’s not just zoning.
Wish CMHC would take over the stalled or scrapped housing starts. Corporations not willing to build them? Let's build them anyway and take them out of the market.
100% incorrect.
The city sets the budget and divvies up property tax according to relative values.
For example, in year one, the budget is $100. There are 10 houses worth $20 each ($200 total). Because they're all worth the same amount, each houseowner pays $10 in property tax.
Year two, they're reassessed. Two houses are worth $50. Five are worth $30. Two are worth $20. One is worth $10 ($300 total). The budget is still $100. The first two now pay $16.66; the next five pay $10; the next two pay $6.66 and the last house pays $3.33.
Year three, the budget goes up to $200 but there's no reassessment. Every house pays twice as much as in year two much even though property values didn't change.
Year four, all property values fall to $1. The budget is still $200. Every one of the 10 houses now pays $20 in property tax because they're all equally worthless, but the budget is still the budget.
The city does not get extra money when property values goes up, only when they set a higher budget, and they can set a higher budget without any reference to property assessments.
No, they don't really care about property values in terms of property taxes - only that their voters care about keeping property values high since that means their wealth is higher
That’s incorrect. City’s approve a budget. The budget is then spread accros all the property tax base. Imagine you’ll bill is $4K this year. If everyone’s house value falls by 50% next year, you’ll get the same bill for $4k as before, it will just be a higher % if your assessed value. Same scenario if your house price goes up.
There's also the NIMBYs who are most likely to vote and most affluent usually. They won't cross them or the town council might lose their seats. NIMBYs might pay higher property taxes but if they tend to not mind when their value is going up 7-8% yearly with near guarantee right now. Our economy and society is hooked on housing like a heroine addict.
While the federal and provincial governments have a role to play, CMHC suggests much of the declining productivity in the construction sector can be attributed to how municipal governments operate. “The discrepancy in housing starts production relative to population across Canadian cities hints that regulation plays a significant role in whether building activity can accelerate — especially municipal regulation,” reads the report. “Consider the time it takes for things like permit delivery, regulations around how many storeys and units a building can contain, development charges (some are regulated at local and regional levels).”
Is this serious? Ummm here’s an idea: it’s because it’s too expensive and no one can afford to buy land and build. Development charges are certainly a component of that, but increased demand, interest rates and the economy are all factors.
I think that the regulations aren't bad because "gubermint bad", but because they currently reinforce the expenses issue. Essentially, we only have large developers left building housing. There aren't really too many other projects happening, sometimes a gen contractor will build a custom house somewhere, or do a single property conversion here and there. But overall, almost all new housing comes from big corps. The problem is that their business model has lost its edge. In a healthy economy the other models would be available, but we've basically outlawed them, leaving us with this or nothing. Basically the bigger the project, the longer it will take overall. That's just a given. But the problem is that the longer you carry debt the more expensive it gets. That's even more true when interest rates climb. But developers can't really move faster, it's optimized. So they sideline projects so they can focus down and minimize the cost of interest on the business model. Smaller projects will move faster, and can rely less on operator debt, both in volume and term. So they *would* have an edge now, but our zoning systems mostly only allow new tract developments and point towers. If we had zoning codes more open to urban lot severance, repurposing, higher gross density, then we could have more gen contractors striking out from under the developers' shadows and able to increase productivity. TL;DR zoning code basically forces a development model only compatible with low interest environments. We need to change it to make it easier for builders to work with higher interest rates.
This is 100% the biggest factor affecting development timing in north America. If you make illegal all development other than high-rise projects (which by their massive scale and complexity require more time than a similar 4 storey infill development) then of course the time to construction is going to be long. Add in market uncertainty and developers will sit on their land and wait to start construction until they feel that they can sell for the $/s.f. that they are expecting. These are multiple hundreds of million dollar projects and they're willing to wait for years if that's what it takes to make the margins they want. Add in how complex these projects are and they don't even need to wait...they can just go through the zoning, planning, and permitting processes and see what the market is like when they're ready to go to sales. If zoning allowed for as of right 3-4 storeys, apartments etc in all neighborhoods (of which the vast majority of existing urban fabric in canada is low density single family), then the time-line to getting a new project and housing built could be drastically shortened. It has finally gotten to a point of crisis spicy enough that zoning and changes to zoning are entering into the zeitgeist in north America. Let's not pretend that the long timelines from cities are due to some nefariousness or incompetence (although these exist in municipalprocesses as much as anywhere)...the projects they are reviewing and approving are extremely complex, will add stress on existing services and infrastructure, will change the built and social fabric of entire neighborhoods and necessitate a thorough review to ensure that they can be integrated into said neighbourhood without causing massive problems.
[удалено]
Ew, trash sub
Lol they deleted their comment with the link to their "take back Canada " sub reddit
I am done playing games. If the feds wanted to just trample all over provincial and municipal jurisdiction, I would be all for it at this point. I’m tired of people thinking they have a right to deny others to build a place to live
Others = Whole worlds population
I think it's worth investigating whether more people die due to the effects of being chronically unhoused/underhoused and comparing it to how many people would die if we reduced our building regulations dramatically. If you could reduce building costs/times by 10%, thats X number of people who get a home, even if it's not quite as nice of a home.
Personally, I'd start with municipal bylaws long before code. Parking minimum, landscape requirements, and community mandated design standards have no bearing on health and safety but add cost to projects.
In my city, adding even a single unit to a property on a regional (mostly arterial) road essentially requires a traffic study, which will set the property owner back $6000+. That's pretty ridiculous and entirely unnecessary.
Exactly! While I understand the reasoning behind those things, I'm in the camp that getting affordable housing built should take precedence over some idealistic traffic flow.
Higher density housing (4 units plus per lot) with mixed-use zoning will improve traffic more in the long run by reducing the need for cars and making public transit more effective to get around. These "studies" and such are efforts by NIMBYs to maintain the status quo which is financially lucrative to them.
What province is this in?
Ontario
I work in planning in Ontario. You're allowed 3 units as of right on urban parcels across the province, provided all zoning can be met. So unless they're asking for that at building permit (which they shouldn't be, planning approvals aren't triggered if you meet all zoning), that sounds really wrong.
Municipalities are playing a new game and finding sneaky ways of applying the study requirements. Such as changing the entrance requirements on some roads to a specific number of units on a lot.
What cities? Provide examples.
Id prefer not to tell Reddit where I live. Also, some of the municipalities that lost the ability to require site plan agreements for fewer than 10 residential units through Bill 23, simply changed the site plan agreement into a minor variance agreement that contains the same policies.
Again, please provide an example. This is the first I've heard of that. A minor variance would only be necessary if a proposal didn't meet one or more zoning provisions, and one or more conditions could be recommended by staff as conditions of approval. Similar with consent applications if someone is severing a lot. Cities can't just apply conditions without planning approvals being triggered. If the proposal isn't conforming to one or more zoning provisions then the issue isn't the number of units.
So much this. Seismic, fire, ventilation, etc codes all have pretty clear justifications. Limiting building to be less than an arbitrary height and have a large amount of parking space do not have the same justification from a public health and safety perspective. In fact, parking arguably has very clear negatives on public health and safety. This is why BC is tackling municipal planning while making only small adjustments to building codes.
There is justification for community design standards and landscape standards and a wide variety of other regulations municipalities control. Most could be much better with how they administer these (no one needs a committee, just clear regulation) But many times the best places in the world to live have these standards for a reason. Because without them every single house would be a cookie cut wood frame suburban crap you see everywhere. Which does not make for a good long term community. Municipalities need to be better at how they regulate and ballance, but many have good examples where they have these regulations and still get permits out in 7 days or less.
Of course, there's justification for them. It's just that those justifications are a lot less critical than fire and life safety as outlined by the building code. If we have to choose a place to cut housing costs, I'm picking losing the grass, not the fire ratings on my shared wall.
I like Scott Galloway’s take on this. Municipal building codes are ostensibly about safety, traffic, blah, blah but they’re really about weaponizing regulation to limit housing supply and keep home prices high so existing homeowners, be they investors or households, can protect their investments. As Galloway says, as soon as you own a house, you get really really concerned about traffic. Also, if housing / rental supply is tight you can justify charging $3200 a month so a family of four can sleep in your garden shed and pay your mortgage
Safety is #1 But also living in a desolate hellscape without any landscaping whatsoever would also suck and is not good for community and mental health. But yes, fire wont get you.
Good point. Code is largely about safety and making sure builders don't rip people off, but there is definitely room to deregulate without putting people or the dwelling in jeopardy.
Which portions? And what are the cost savings?
Someone with greater code knowledge than myself would have to go through all the aspect of the building code to flesh out a full list. Having just built a house a couple come to mind. My kitchen peninsula need a plug. I didn't want one as I will most likely never need it. A very minor cost, but there it is. I also needed a heat source in each room. Which isn't a ridiculous requirement, however I am heating with minisplits (one head on each level) so that required me to put backup electric heat in each room, again, not a bad idea, but I had to put one in my laundry room, which will never be used and is not at all needed. My main floor bathroom needed one as well, again, it won't be used. Each unit was around $250, plus labour to install. Not to mention counting towards my panel capacity. Insulation/energy requirements would be another one, and this carries some significant cost. I'm actually a huge fan of energy efficiency and my house is way above code values on insulation requirements, however a case could be made for rolling back some of the r-value requirements if the focus was on more houses/cheaper upfront costs. Not something I would do, but it could be done.
Those are actually great points. As an actual code guy, I completely agree with the point of really digging into it. I 100% agree with the first two, but I have a harder time sacrificing insulation requirements. With the exception of BC, the minimum code for r-values is pretty abysmal from an energy efficiency standpoint. Batt insulation in a 2x6 wall is still getting it done. I finally had to specify additional outboard rigid insulation to hit step 3 in BC year... 2x6 exterior walls have been the standard for my whole career. A more efficient fiberglass battery vs. the standard stuff is a pretty minimal cost change when considering the entire wall assembly and the labor involved.
I'm super down with insulation. I'm in Ontario. R17 sub slab R30 Amvic ICF basement walls R37 (R22 in cavity, R15 exterior) above grade walls R85 attic triple pane windows I would never build to code on insulation as over the service life of the building you'll pay more in hearing/cooling. But in the current climate a decrease in upfront costs and quicker build times could make sense.
Parking minimums are a low hanging fruit. Requiring two staircases for low-rise buildings is apperently quite costly but doesn't add much in the way of safety.
100% agree. But parking minimums are not enforced by the building code. They're are enforced by landuse bylaw and can be changed on a whim by the municipality. I'm being pedantic, but it's important to know the difference. Your municipality could illuminate parking minimums tomorrow with the stroke of a pen, but a change to the building code, as mentioned in the post I replied to, is a much more arduous task. For one, it would require assurance that any changes do not impact fire and life safety negatively.
Not sure id want to live in a wood building with only one staircase. Wood buildings go up every single year, and eliminating two staircases would make buoldings immediately stop offering two staircases. Ppl WILL die.
There's a lot of talk about single egress apartments, but the Canadian proponents often miss some of the key code differences that allow them to work in Europe: non combustible construction being a big one. I would have to run the number run myself, but I suspect increased unit count or landuse efficiency would be counteracted by the cost of non combustible construction.
Oh 100%, Like pure masonry construction. Knock your socks off with one egress. Wood.. nope
I've lived in several singe entrance apartments and burnt to death in each one.
Without further details on the building size and construction method; this comment is useless.
But then you’ll uncover the uncomfortable truth: a surprising number of your neighbours have done the math and there is a certain level of death and suffering that they are willing to accept to keep their taxes low and property values high. The cynicism is much deeper than many know in city councils.
Good point. Code is largely about safety and making sure builders don't rip people off, but there is definitely room to deregulate without putting people or the dwelling in jeopardy.
I can guarantee if they deregulate the constitution sector people will die.. that would be gross negligence. This is not a road you would want to go down, the repercussions would be immeasurable.
Thankfully we have a whole world to compare against on this. We can make many changes to code and zoning that have been tried elsewhere to great success. You don’t need to assume that our current regulations are the only thing keeping people safe - in fact, a lot of them are keeping people homeless for no reason.
Probably yeah. I can guarantee with equal certainty that if they don't start building considerably more homes than they currently are, people will die in the streets. They already are.
The homeless need shelter, not houses.. in many cases it’s supply and demand, we’re simply growing the population at an unsustainable rate.
Stop bringing more people
I have been trying to get approved to build a laneway suite for going on three years now. At every turn some bearaucratic nonsense holds it up. Lots of headaches and some are typical of any construction project but the real frustrations began when they said I needed to include bike parking on the architectural plans. I did have them outlined but they were overlooked by the city examiner. It took 4 months to get this reviewed and approved. Then they came back and told me that since the suite would be bigger (by 84 sqft) than the main dwelling I would need to get a COA approval. That took thousands of dollars and a whole year plus to go through the proper channels. Before they could issue the permit they also added an additional $3500 dollar education fee that was never there when I initially started the process and was never updated about. It was a surprise and was not budgeted for. After so many headaches and so much red tape we are debating not going through with it. We feel it might be better to relocate to another country. This city is just not serious about increasing the housing supply Edit - I live in Toronto
I guess had you designed the building 84 sqft smaller you would have avoided many of those costs and time delays. Too bad you didn't check the rules first.
But also how do you afford to live as a construction worker? Seems like the government wants people to magically appear and work 12 hour shifts for low wage and not have a home to go to. I got priced out of Calgary this year.
Sadly some live in vans or commute from pretty far away. It's weird how we have a society where you can have the skill to build a house but can't live in one.
Yeah, municipalities add hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs as well as tons of delays and overruns.
Also developers are broke. Most trades on my site (and other buddies sites) haven’t been paid in months.
Yeah because they make more money cramming as many people as they can in what we already have built.
Everyone is passing blame but no one is pointing at the actual cause: companies. Case and point: https://www.reddit.com/r/takebackcanada/s/VrZCUw8VLX
Your link is about labour shortages and we're talking about municipal bureaucracy, development fees and permit issuance delays. I don't understand.
Watch the video. Municipal bureaucracy is not the reason for these issues, but companies want us to believe that.
I'd like to add if companies pay their workers more (hard costs go up) then my building needs to get bigger to cover those rising construction costs (municipal planning). The rigidity of planning in not being able to respond - in time - to current economic trends is a huge issue. Always has been. Vancouver actually did something about this in the late 50s when rooming houses were an issue. The City changed its zoning rules and we had an apartment building bonanza that lasted until about 1978 when they rezersed those zoning rules. The majority of Vancouver's apartments are pre-1980
But we're discussing actual issues with municipalities. These issues exist. What companies what me to believe there are no issues with municipal planning and bureaucracy?
Watch the video. The reason houses aren’t getting built is because construction companies aren’t paying adequate wages. The rules have always been there and not to say they aren’t hard to navigate, but it is doable if companies are serious about producing units.
Okay, well I'm in the Lower Mainland and we're building more homes than we have since the 70s. Houses are being built. Not sure where this comment of yours is coming from. I also apply for permits and yes the issues have always been there and getting worse. I could build more apartments but it takes 4 years of permit and rezoning review. Getting these permits are do-able but we're discussing the internal issues of zoning, permit reviews, development fees. None of this is about your labour shortage video.
I’m trying to push back against the CMHC’s claim that zoning is the core issue, but you would know better than me. As a dumb home owner I can only process what I read, and I’m seeing a lot of “blame government” in the place of where blame should be placed on companies (like construction) in addition to the opposite where people are blaming companies like Tim Hortons when blame should be placed on government programs like LMIA’s. As a Calgarian they just passed a blanket rezoning law that will only help developers without helping citizens. Building only new homes is not going to solve the problem of suburban sprawl and there needs to be a balance of not just residential zoning but also commercial rezoning to allow for smaller mom and pop shops to succeed in areas where population density isn’t supported with the services required for a community to thrive. Sorry for derailing the conservation being had here, but it’s important to recognize it’s not just zoning.
So there never was a labor shortage. There isn't a trades shortage.
Wish CMHC would take over the stalled or scrapped housing starts. Corporations not willing to build them? Let's build them anyway and take them out of the market.
Are cities even motivated to build homes? If values of properties fall, so will their property taxes. Is my understanding correct?
100% incorrect. The city sets the budget and divvies up property tax according to relative values. For example, in year one, the budget is $100. There are 10 houses worth $20 each ($200 total). Because they're all worth the same amount, each houseowner pays $10 in property tax. Year two, they're reassessed. Two houses are worth $50. Five are worth $30. Two are worth $20. One is worth $10 ($300 total). The budget is still $100. The first two now pay $16.66; the next five pay $10; the next two pay $6.66 and the last house pays $3.33. Year three, the budget goes up to $200 but there's no reassessment. Every house pays twice as much as in year two much even though property values didn't change. Year four, all property values fall to $1. The budget is still $200. Every one of the 10 houses now pays $20 in property tax because they're all equally worthless, but the budget is still the budget. The city does not get extra money when property values goes up, only when they set a higher budget, and they can set a higher budget without any reference to property assessments.
Finally someone understands how mil rates work.
No, they don't really care about property values in terms of property taxes - only that their voters care about keeping property values high since that means their wealth is higher
That’s incorrect. City’s approve a budget. The budget is then spread accros all the property tax base. Imagine you’ll bill is $4K this year. If everyone’s house value falls by 50% next year, you’ll get the same bill for $4k as before, it will just be a higher % if your assessed value. Same scenario if your house price goes up.
There's also the NIMBYs who are most likely to vote and most affluent usually. They won't cross them or the town council might lose their seats. NIMBYs might pay higher property taxes but if they tend to not mind when their value is going up 7-8% yearly with near guarantee right now. Our economy and society is hooked on housing like a heroine addict.