This week, Housing Matters made a deputation for the Planning & Growth Management Committee on the overly prescriptive and constraining Yonge-Eglinton Secondary Plan Update.

We’ve just gotten video of the deputation, viewable below along with a copy of our speech.

Good afternoon.

My name is Chris Spoke and I’m a founding member of Housing Matters.

We are group of Torontonians that advocate for increased housing supply as a response to the affordability crisis that has been pricing young people and middle class families out of the city.

At Housing Matters, we understand that there are essentially three ways to ensure housing affordability in the long run. Those are to,

1. Increase supply,

2. Decrease demand, or

3. Set price controls.

Of these three, we believe that the only sustainable and equitable solution to rising housing prices is to increase supply.

We take very seriously the common sense notion that, if we want more people to have housing in Toronto, we’re going to need to build more housing.

As many of you know, it is very difficult to build new housing in Toronto, in a meaningful way, relative our population growth and new household formation. This is why we have a very low 1.3% rental vacancy rate.

It’s also why prices continue to rise so rapidly. Through land use rules that constrain supply, we’ve made a scarce good scarcer still.

After having reviewed the Midtown in Focus Proposed Secondary Plan Update being considered today, it strikes us as a group that many of the policies listed will exacerbate the supply crunch and affordability crisis — and that, in one of our City’s primary Centres, that the Province has specifically targeted for growth.

The document opens with a nod to Complete Communities, stating that “Midtown will continue to be an inclusive and liveable community that supports the daily needs of people of all ages, incomes, and abilities.”

As new condo prices approach $1,000 per square foot, we’re skeptical that that will play out, and urge Council to consider whether the extremely prescriptive approach taken in this document will place upward or downward pressure on those prices.

To highlight one notable example, this document states that “No tall buildings will be permitted on sites and/or areas not specifically identified as having tall building development potential or infill development potential.”

Of the sites identified on the height map, the overwhelming majority of these already have active development applications. Is this not supposed to be a 25-year plan?

The site located at the South-West corner of Yonge and Roselawn has an active application for a 23 and 27 storey tower development, which meets many of the tall building guideline criteria. The latest Midtown in Focus map however shows this as being a one tower site with a 14 storey height limit, effectively eliminating hundreds of new housing units within a 7-minute walk of the Subway and new LRT line.

As the average price of a single detached home in the area currently exceeds $1.5-million, with policies like this, we are protecting the well established and denying opportunity to those trying to live a car-free lifestyle and attain homeownership.

There are two other examples that I’d like to highlight as being poorly thought out in terms of their impact on affordability.

First, the requirement that larger residential developments provide Section 37 “Density Incentives” acts to shift the burden of funding community benefits from the broader tax base to new homebuyers. This regressive cash grab should be opposed by anybody who cares about affordability — and fairness.

Second, the quotas set for 2- and 3-bedroom units that do not account for market feedback loops and which act to override industry demand forecasts. This sort of top-down planning can only ever lead to malinvestment and the killing of projects that would be rendered uneconomic at the margin.

Taken as a whole, the Proposed Yonge-Eglinton Secondary Plan Update is a very alarming document indeed — one that signals further reluctance by the City to meaningfully address Toronto’s housing shortage and affordability crisis.

If we do not seriously reconsider the approach taken in this document, we will continue to see young people and middle class families moving out to our suburbs and exurbs, while Toronto gradually becomes a playground for the rich and lucky.

There are many other global cities that have gone down this road, to their detriment, and at the cost of diversity and dynamism. Let’s please not follow them.

Thank you.