Faced with increasing pressure to respond to widespread concerns about the cost of living and questions about his leadership, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a series of new measures Thursday meant to deal with rising housing and grocery prices.
That one is caused by zoning.
If I can make a low-rise building and sell 12 units for $250k on the same property that I can build two detached houses to sell for a $million, I’ll do the former, right?
But city hall is going to make me drag out the approval process for the low-rise for 3 years and grind me down to 6 units. I’ll just save the ball-ache and build the mcmansions.
Zoning laws are definitely a big (probably the largest) part of it, but it’s not the only issue. Even when buildings with a higher number of units is approved, they tend to be more upscale. There’s not a lot of lower end housing being built in any capacity.
I mean yeah, they charge what the market will bear, and the market can bare a crapload right now. I mean, if you just upzoned and cut out the red tape, eventually the price would come down as supply ramped up to meet the demand… but I don’t think anybody can wait for “eventually”.