[Craic] Response to article, “Toronto needs housing at any height. That includes in the Beach” | The Star

[Rob Anderson]

“To hell with the village. Onward and upward.”
- Emma Teitel, Toronto Star Columnist

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/09/03/toronto-needs-housing-at-any-height-that-includes-in-the-beach.html

I asked my friend his thoughts about Canada’s immigration policy in the light of Emma Teitel’s recent article in The Star, entitled “Toronto needs housing at any height.  That includes the Beach.”

He responded by outlining what appear to be conflicting goals which may actually work against their realization:
1) We want ever growing immigration---450 k approx this year ----high % head to the big cities.
2) We want to rein in housing costs.
3) We want greater density esp in big cities, but appear to be unwilling to expend vast sums to build the infrastructure to accommodate this growth.
4) NIMBY forces are strong --- so all this has to be solved in someone else's neighbourhood.
5) We want to eliminate homelessness.

My response:

Thanks for your thoughts.  How to unravel these various conflicting goals?

I have been stating similar concerns for many years now, esp since I read Shawn Micallef’s book, “Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness,” published in 2014.

Concurrent with Rob Ford’s campaign for re-election, Micallef toured the upsidedown horseshoe which I call the “Edge City” set along the perimeters of Toronto.  He spoke with candidates and various citizens, many of whom were immigrants, about their circumstances and the issues that they faced.  For several years I tried to get my Book Club to read the book before its currency waned but to no avail.  Very unfortunate, as the issues the Urban Reporter for The Toronto Star highlighted in the high density immigrant areas have only grown more acute: poor housing, children growing up in anonymous overcrowded high rise and high density boxes, desolate environments with few urban amenities, higher incidence of violence, inadequate public transportation, long transit distances to low paying jobs, all contributing to increasing poverty, homelessness, marginalization and mental health issues.

Along came Covid which just exploded Toronto’s blindness to the conditions faced by most immigrants who call Toronto’s “Edge City” home.  All of a sudden, surprise surprise, we realized who was being most battered by Covid…those at the crossroads, including staff in senior homes, warehouses, meat packing plants. These people weren’t living in the places we familiarly call Toronto: Rosedale, Moore Park, the Beaches, Kingsway,  Bloor West Village, Forest Hill, U of T and the Annex.

Meanwhile, corporate landlords, including big REIT’s and even insurance companies with real estate portfolios boasted about their outsized rental profits. Real estate agents, developers, speculators and ultimately investors and pension plans relish this scenario as they can keep building up enormous returns with the build of ever more enormous high rise condos.

Not too many years back, the Liberals boosted annual immigration targets from 250,000 to 350,000 even though they had sought a target of 450,000.  But Covid played havoc with their targets.  Now the Liberals want to up the ante to 450,000 or so for each of the next 3 years to make up for the losses.  Jagmeet Singh and the NDP want to really open up family reunification which would mean an even more elderly and socially dependent population.  For sure, we know that immigrants do not want Thunder Bay, much less Napanee or Dryden. In fact, as you state, half want the GTA and the Waterloo Corridor and maybe now Niagara too.  That means another 650,000 more people crowding into this narrow band, known as the GTA but which I call Belgium.  Currently, 7 million people cluster into this overpopulated and increasingly disjointed area. 

Very infrequent to no mention from political leaders of how immigration quotas must meld with infrastructure, rental availability, transportation, public services, job availability and medical care.  

Meanwhile, it is clear if one travels around this upside down “U” that the GTA is in deep trouble.  Traffic is grinding to a daily crawl, house prices and rental costs have gone through the roof, violence is increasing and wealth disparity is worse than ever.  Doug Ford and his pals would like to work out of this mess by grabbing the aptly named Green $$$ Belt.  Talk about tying a noose around Toronto. It is now difficult to hit the countryside on most days within an hour. Give away the Greenbelt and Torontonians will become even more strangled within the confines of their beloved city.

Who can blame the immigrants…better economic opportunities than in their new country and, in many cases, a less precarious existence because of violence, political oppression, looming environmental disasters in their countries of origin.  Of course, most want to live near others with similar cultural and religious backgrounds. And many also want to be near jobs and schools, training schools, colleges and universities that offer educational upgrades that might contribute to a higher standard of living. Therefore, forget Northern Ontario or New Brunswick. For that matter, forget all of small town Canada too.

Nor is Canada’s immigration policy my only concern here.  But added to this dilemma is that any critique of Canada’s immigration policy is posed in such a way that if you raise concerns, there is an immediate suspicion of racial or ethnic prejudice.  Because we remember the bad old days of anti-Semiticism, anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-any immigrant, the prevailing “we are not racists and we are not Trumpitesl” sentiment is “the more immigrants the better.”  Such comments unfortunately cast the entire debate in racial and ethnic terms with an often too easy won moral virtue which effectively scuttles any analysis of what should be a much debated policy issue.

Now, add to the mix, millenials who are as mad as hell that they can’t seem to get a toehold in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, KW anymore because of outrageous housing costs coupled with vanished pension plans and insecure jobs.  How understandable it is that millennials would turn their sights on the established aging boomer generation whose comfortable living conditions represent everything that most of them can no longer realize. 

Millennials and new immigrants are in deep trouble as are we all with the erosion of social safety nets.  How can a young couple have children and raise a family saddled with such outrageous costs, insecure employment and less than adequate living space?  The whole “megalopolis magnet” needs to be re-envisioned.  In many major cities around the world younger people are not having children or perhaps one.  South Korea, Italy are just 2 examples of countries with dramatically declining birth rates along with dozens of other countries.

So, in comes the easy solution for the housing crunch…Just build it anywhere because we need it.  Our youthful journalist is a perfect example of “onward and upward” irrespective of neighbourhood or any coherent integration of high rise towers within long established neighbourhoods.  The trouble with her perspective is that such a view plays right into the hands of the developers and speculators who can even now build and will increasingly build giant sky spikes without having to seriously adhere to any coherent City Plan if there is one. Everything is fair game for “development.”  All we have to do is look around at the GTA to validate this point.

These conflicts don’t have to be so acute.  Canada needs to not only set immigration quotas that are commensurate with appropriate supporting government policies, but also to reign in speculative condo purchases, stimulate economic growth engines other than real estate, expand R & D, provide incentives for economic development in areas other than the GTA.  I could go on and on, including better supporting strategies for workers, millennials, immigrants and marginalized.

While NIMBY can mean “Don’t mess with my castle,” the alternative, “To hell with the village. Onward and upward,” is a recipe for dismembering Toronto’s unique city of coherent neighbourhoods.  Surely, we can serve people such as Emma Teitel with better proposals than giving way to uncontrolled development anywhere at any height.  

Bob

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