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Unless the competitive market for land is restored on the urban fringe, it is unlikely that housing affordability will be materially improved

But, it is unlikely that Yellowbelt development will improve housing affordability. Land values in the Yellowbelt are already high and so denser development there would not moderate housing costs nearly as much as a competitive urban fringe market would. Further, as research from Ryerson University indicates, improving housing affordability requires increasing the supply of ground-oriented (single-family) housing, not more multi-family condos and townhomes. Households have differing housing needs and the supply needs to reflect that. Not all houses are the same.

Higher-density Yellowbelt development could also make Toronto’s horrific traffic congestion even worse, with additional quality-of-life compromises. And there is no point in trying to invoke the mantra of “public transit” as the solution: most jobs in the CMA are beyond reasonable commuting time by transit, and no current proposals would change that.

The Ontario government’s foreign-buyer tax has so far stopped the virtual house-price hyperinflation among the Toronto area’s most desired and speculatively attractive houses. But this has not improved middle-income housing affordability. Toronto Real Estate Board data show that monthly price increases among the least-costly houses — condominium apartments — have been double those of wages, as reported by Statistics Canada.

Unless the competitive market for land is restored on the urban fringe, it is unlikely that housing affordability will be materially improved. This does not require the low-density development, or sprawl, of suburban Boston or Atlanta, which have less than a third of the urban density of Toronto’s 905 suburbs. Indeed, Toronto is the least sprawling of any large urban area in Canada — or the United States. The planning policies that preceded Places to Grow produced this by permitting a competitive market for land on the periphery.