‘Naturally affordable’ housing is the the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker of urban housing. (Not quite as likely to be extinct, true enough. The last recorded Ivory-Bill sighting in its Louisiana swamp habitat was 1944).
In North America these days, naturally affordable housing is probably not entirely extinct, but is a super-threatened species everywhere as housing prices soar.
For the purposes of this article we’ll follow in the footsteps of the development industry’s home-financing theories as characterized by the YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard1) movement that is popular in the United States. That theory is based on so-called laws of free market supply and demand. If enough demand exists for affordable housing, developers will supply it, if only . . .
If only the government would stop attempting to regulate housing, letting the housing development industry shrug off its by-law corsets and breathe again. In that case, developers would build more, bringing down prices until the magic of the market laws would serve everybody’s need. Yes indeed, as expensive new housing ages, prices for older housing would fall until there would even be naturally-occurring affordable housing (let’s use the old-fashioned definition: no more than 30% of a family income).
Well now, the City of Mississauga has stepped up to the plate and driven a stake through the black heart of this baseball metaphor, and as well through the heart of the entire fanciful YIMBY movement.
Mississauga has responded to the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force at length, but here are two examples:
“Allowing increased heights and densities across the board will likely not lead to more housing or more affordable housing. To date, in Mississauga’s experience, allowing for unlimited heights and density in the downtown core has not led to major increases in supply or improved affordability,” and
“Staff have found that developers phase growth in order to manage any downward pressure on unit prices.”
Wow! Of course, everybody in cities around the world know developers will slow down production to keep housing prices higher, but cozy relations with developers usually ensure that city staff and politicians just wince and hold their tongues.
Good for the truth speakers in Mississauga!
Naturally, builders are pushing back. The Toronto Star reports that the Mississauga Chief Planner’s statement that the building industry phases growth is “absolutely absurd,” according to the Building Industry and Land Development Association.
But Mississauga doesn’t stop there. Along with a number of Task Force ideas it likes, it has several more bones to pick with Ontario’s conclusions, many of them unsurprising for a task force child of the notoriously developer-friendly Ontario Conservative government now in power.
The Affordability Task Force Report is available at the Government of Ontario’s site: Report of the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force
Responses from the City of Mississauga‘s include a staff report: Report of the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force and Implications for Mississauga and a news release: Improving Housing Affordability While Protecting Local Communities: Mississauga Responds to Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force Report
And if you’re a Toronto Star subscriber, or due for a free read, here’s their analysis: Developers limit production to keep home prices high, Mississauga report says — a claim the builders’ association calls ‘absurd’
Footnotes
- For more on YIMBY, try: Trendy YIMBY Affordable Housing Activists Are Sheltered In A House Of Straw
