Article content continued

A capacity-constrained city with a perennial shortage of affordable housing and limited transport capacity, Toronto may be courting trouble by pursuing thousands of additional highly-paid workers. If you think housing prices and rents are unaffordable now, wait until the Amazon code warriors land to fight you for housing or a seat on the subway.

The tech giants do command a much more favourable view in North America than they do in Europe. Still, their reception varies, especially in the cities where these firms are domiciled. Consider San Francisco, which is home to not one but many tech giants and ever mushrooming startups. The city attracts high-earning tech talent from across the globe to staff innovative labs and R&D departments.

These highly paid workers routinely outbid locals and other workers in housing and other markets. No longer can one ask for a conditional sale offer that is subject to financing because a 20-something whiz kid will readily pay cash to push other bidders aside.

We wonder whether Toronto’s residents, or those of whichever city ultimately wins Amazon’s heart, will face the same competition from Amazon employees as do the residents of Seattle? The answer lies in the relative affordability gap.

Amazon employees with an average income of US$100,000 will compete against Toronto residents whose individual median income in 2015 was just $30,089. It is quite likely that the bidding wars that high-earning tech workers have won hands down in other cities will end in their favour in the city chosen for Amazon HQ2.