“Who’s driving the conversation in the GTHA? Banks, builders and brokers, all of which have business interests.”

That’s Paul Smetanin speaking, picking up where this column left off last week: what to do about the housing crisis?

Smetanin is president of the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis and he caught note of last week’s contemplation about boomers and excess housing in boomer homes and the benefits of staying in place (health, community connection). Can boomers be part of the solution? A basement apartment? A retrofitted duplex?

There has to be a bigger conversation, Smetanin agrees, specifically evidence-based policy aimed at benefitting communities. He offers up some interesting statistics: there are more than five million spare bedrooms in Ontario, equivalent to 25 years’ worth of construction. In the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, he adds, there’s 17 years’ worth of construction in empty bedrooms. His group concludes that 85 per cent of those aged 65 and over are “over-housed.”

Before Barbara writes me an email — Barbara was very unhappy with last week’s column — I want to be clear that I’m not telling boomers, myself included, to pack up and move out. I am acknowledging that the barriers to downsizing, for those who want to downsize, are many. And it’s time for some fresh thinking.

Smetanin’s position is this: once we get past the “blame game” — speculators pushing up house prices — what we are experiencing is a failure of governance, a failure of planning.

“The problem is a large part of the population is sitting in homes too large for them,” he says. “For these people to move and right-size, they have no place to go, so they’re staying in place.”

Consider the homeowner who would like to sell and rent, thereby unlocking a handsome capital gain. Perhaps the need to subsidize fixed pension income is an impetus. But the rental stock is not there — Smetanin timestamps the choking off of purpose-built rentals to 1991. “So they have to go from ownership to ownership,” he says.

Ownership of what?

We’ve witnessed the building of “really, really big stuff” on the fringes of the city. And the building of “really small stuff” in the core, represented by junior one bedroom and one bedroom condos in 50-storey towers with overcommitted amenities. (Think here of the 600-square-foot gym for 1,500 residents.)

The new homeowner was the prime target. The homeowner at the more mature end of the wage scale may not be enamored of this offering, with condo fees and potentially transient neighbours adding to their concerns. This is the homeowner in seek of a complete community. I’m generalizing. But we all know that historically low interest rates combined with the condo construction boom and the so-called fear of missing out has built the primary profile of the first-time condo buyer. Home ownership rates in Toronto have risen to 68 per cent from 55 per cent since the 1970s, Smetanin says. The majority of that increase — 70 per cent — occurred in the 10 years from 1996. Happiness for the banks.

What’s missing? “We needed midrise gentle density,” Smetanin says of the planning mismatch. “The planning side has not recognized the movement of demographics.” Not that the demographic forecasting was a challenge. It merely seems to have been largely ignored.

Smetanin defines midrise as no more than 15 storeys, with two- and three-bedroom options outpacing the one-bedroom version. “The question is how to make it behaviourally palatable for people to move. We need to make it a rational choice to go from an oversized choice to a right-sized choice.”

When he says “behaviourally palatable” he’s including retention of quality of life. “What we’re seeing is that people have an affiliation with their community,” he says. He has heard from several householders in a single neighbourhood who are making a collective decision to move. He sees the potential for entrepreneurs to build housing “packages” for neighbourhoods.

The underlying point is this: “Various governments have a finger in different parts of the housing industry, but they don’t see the whole picture.”

Governments move slowly. I have heard from dozens of readers who are puzzling over an immediate housing conundrum.

Here’s one: “Your article about boomers holding onto large homes and the lack of rental units in Toronto opens a discussion that should be pursued. Our situation is that our house is our only asset and our pension. Downsizing means we could rent at a high rate to stay in Toronto, or compete with the millennials to buy a condo or bungalow in Toronto at a price that depletes our pension value. But what if we could duplex our house and sell half of it? We could stay in our neighbourhood, offer a home and asset to a young family, and have money to live on in our retirement. This is an option I would like to see the city consider.”

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Precisely. Time to find out what’s involved in doing exactly that.

Contact Jennifer Wells at jenwells@thestar.ca