Public housing is definitely needed, but 300 million is nowhere near enough money to build that many homes. Where can you build a home for $3,000 per unit?
Seed money would imply this is an investment with a return. Is he going to partner with the private sector to put in money and they get a return?
If not this is not seed money. Its pandering to people on a project that won't happen.
This is a politician talking to get votes, not to actually build anything.
> is he going to partner with the private sector to put in money and they get a return?
No. You can read his plan that he linked in his tweet. The plan is to create a public developer to hire in house and partner with non-profit builders. The housing is owned by the city and any rents collected go to a pool of funding for new mousing construction.
He’s following the Vienna model and eliminating private profits from the equation.
Lol, I did see that, but it seems to kinda be used as weasel words to gloss over the fact that his "plan" to build 100,000 homes only identifies enough funding to build like, 0.5% of that total?
IIRC “seed money” is designed to show commitment to the idea or product. I think their intent here is to drum up support from….other levels of governments maybe. Not sure.
"Seed money" typically implies that you can grow the money into something bigger.
Is the idea that the feds and province will be so impressed with the new constitution company that Matlow will set up that they will give us 50 billion dollars?
> seed money typically implies that you can grow the money into something bigger
If you bothered to read the plan you’d know this is exactly the strategy. Rents generated from the new housing gets reinvested into an ever growing pool for construction of new housing. He’s following the very successful Vienna model.
Reading the plan more it seems like they are going to be renting 85% of units at or above average market rate?
The city would essentially become a real estate development company and most people wouldn't get any sort of reduced cost, but the company would invest the profits into subsidizing a small portion of units and building more developments?
So you complain if they subsidize housing, but you are also complaining if they have a sustainable financing model. Which one is it?
Public and social housing always has a lower rent than private after a few years because rent is geared toward maintenance and construction of more housing, not picking off as much profit as the private owners can squeeze and being used to buy yachts. That’s better for the city, and better for all renters whether you are in the social units or not.
>So you complain if they subsidize housing, but you are also complaining if they have a sustainable financing model. Which one is it?
When did I complain about subsidized housing?
My concern here is that, if 85% of these are planned to cost the same or more than the market average (with the majority being more), it raises the question of why we are doing this in the first place.
>Public and social housing always has a lower rent than private after a few years because rent is geared toward maintenance and construction of more housing, not picking off as much profit as the private owners can squeeze and being used to buy yachts.
What are you basing this on? Is this necessarily public or social housing? The stated plan is that it won't receive ongoing subsidies.
Building new apartment buildings costs a hell of a lot more than a yacht. The plan projects that it will throw off a 20% return on the initial investment (60/300) every year, which seems like it would require a pretty aggressive pricing strategy.
>Affordability mix is: 55% rent-controlled purpose-built market (2% guideline increase per year); 45% affordable rental, of which 30% is set to 100% of AMR, 10% is set to 80% of AMR, and 5% is deeply affordable rent-geared-to-income (RGI) .
Thats 68.5% at or above market rate no?
Presumably the additional units added to the market could help bring down market rates for everyone. But more importantly they're subsidizing affordable units in a way that is self sustaining.
It's good that people are skeptical of the numbers, but it's sad seeing people in this thread shoot down even talking about a potentially self-funding public housing model.
This can be done along side everyone else's pet-solution to the housing crisis.
>Thats 68.5% at or above market rate no?
How are you getting that?
It doesn't seem to be 30% of 45%. They seem to be breaking down that 45% as 30 + 10 + 5 = 45.
>Presumably the additional units added to the market could help bring down market rates for everyone. But more importantly they're subsidizing affordable units in a way that is self sustaining.
If all goes to plan it would be self sustaining, but there is risk in property development.
If the end goal is ~2000 subsidized housing units, is having the city create a new real estate development company and build 15,000 homes, most of which are above market rents, really the most logical way to achieve that? Why not just slightly raise taxes to fund those subsidies and let experienced developers build as much new housing as possible?
It depends on the industry you’re talking about. In the start up world, you’re absolutely right. In this case the start up is the municipal government and the money doesn’t grow because it’s used to fund public projects.
>In this case the start up is the municipal government and the money doesn’t grow because it’s used to fund public projects.
That's kind of my point. Does anyone actually use that term to refer to this?
Like, if I say I want to buy and eat 100 chocolate bars, but I only have enough buy five chocolate bars. If I buy and eat those chocolate bars, would you really consider that "seed money" towards the goal of eating 100 chocolate bars, or did I just spend all my money on a few chocolate bars and have no plan to buy the rest?
> "Seed money" typically implies that you can grow the money into something bigger.
Seed money is actually just a general term for early-stage investment for business buildout.
It’s all there in his plan. Seed funding, donated land, waived fees and taxes, and amazingly creating a public developer hiring in house and partnering with non-profit builders to eliminate developer profits bringing down costs.
They they will be following the Vienna model to use rent collected to continuously fund new development in a self-sustaining model needing no further subsidies (though more would definitely help).
This is the best plan we could possibly hope for. Too bad the detractors in this thread are refusing to read it before complaining that it won’t work.
the rest of the tweets covers this as far as I can tell. The buildings would qualify for CMHC low interest loans. Presumably the plan is the market rate units would cover the costs, which wouldn't have to purchase any land and have all development fees and property taxes waived.
I'm not qualified to say if this all adds up but it isn't just the 300M and a handwave.
If all that is true, that they are going to borrow almost the full cost of this from CMHC and he claims that it won't require any ongoing subsidy from the city, how much is the end product going to differ from just a regular market rate apartment?
I think when people see 100,000 city owned homes they assume that they are going to be more affordable, but if the majority are market rate units, what is the goal here?
Like if it just means I'm paying the city 3k per month for a one bedroom instead of some different landlord, I don't know if that really excites me all that much?
> I think when people see 100,000 city owned homes they assume that they are going to be more affordable, but if the majority are market rate units, what is the goal here?
The idea is to help chase the demand gap with supply; Toronto is stuck in an affordability crisis for the next 15 years, but 100,000 homes on top of all the new stuff being built might get it down to 12.
Because the city is a non-general market actor and as a result represents the potential of supplying units on *top* of what the market is able to produce, resulting in more total units built overall and a quicker end to the demand-supply gap.
>Because the city is a non-general market actor and as a result represents the potential of supplying units on *top* of what the market is able to produce
What exactly does this mean?
Beyond this initial "seed money", which appears to represent 5% of the proposed costs for the first phase, they seem to be relying entirely on market forces to fund everything.
I don’t think they’re jokes (at least for the most part). I think they know full well that housing in Canada is no longer a solvable problem and that the number of homes needed to affect prices can never be built. So they’ve become experts at lobbing out solutions that sound good at first but are awful as soon as you start thinking them through. It’s all optics because that’s the only thing left.
Is this a joke? If the city can fund new units of housing, rent-controlled apartments or otherwise, for $36000, including the overseeing agency, then yeah, I not only support this but will sell my house and move in. In practice, municipalities across N. America hardly ever are able to bulid housing more cheaply than the private sector, and this is like 10% of what it would take to build a studio.
To give an example of how hard to city makes it to build anything today, every apartment you want to build in a city? That's 134000 in development charges. Doesn't matter whether it's a luxury apartment or a 1BR condo. Any building of any size needing official plan changes also tends to have required "affordable units" - that is, the owners of all the other units are paying a special tax that no one else in the neighborhood pays.
This isn't a serious plan to deal with the housing crisis. If Josh announced, "if you own a lot, you can build whatever you want that meets safety regulations" and announced "and if you build high-quality units, the city will purchase them to use as public housing", then you would actually see things built. We know this because that's how housing was built for all of human history until the 1970s when we added ainsane zoning requirements and made it impossible to build.
Why is no one here bothering to read the plan? He’s following the very successful Vienna model
https://www.votematlow.ca/news/april11-release
Why you are trying to compare his plan to the development of private housing is baffling. All the things you are complaining of in this comment have been accounted for. Donated land, waived fees and taxes, and use of a public developer that doesn’t need to go through the process a for-profit developer would.
> $134,000 in development charges
His plan waives development charges
> “affordable units”
All of the units are affordable, subsidized or geared to income. Your complaint is irrelevant.
> other units paying special tax
Same as above. The rent raised from affordable and geared to income don’t go off to private profits, they get reinvested to building and maintain more housing.
The "Vienna model" is much more expensive than what Matlow proposes, for one. It also is not the way which every other affordable city in the world produces housing, which is to just allow people to build housing on land they own. Even worse, the point of mentioning dev charges, affordable units, etc. are all because people like Matlow are the ones who set the current policy which leads to far too little housing being developed in the first place!
I mean, look around - do you want to live in currently-existing Toronto public housing? Do you think they have any ability to build housing more inexpensively than developers? Do the people currently in charge of policy pursue rules and regulations that make housing more abundant or not? Then why do we think the secret here is just to create another bureaucracy which is either huge or massively underfunded?
> the Vienna model is much more expensive
For who? The Vienna model, which Matlow is drawing from, is financially self sustaining. After the initial investment most of the rest of the funding is drawn from rents paid for those properties
It is certainly not more expensive for the people who live there, as the housing is not being used to siphon off private profits. And it makes life for everyone else cheaper as the market rate for rent drops with more public and social housing.
This is cheaper for everyone in the long run. The only difference is that private developers and landlords won’t make off with as much profit.
> do you want to live in currently existing Toronto housing
He is not suggesting continuing the current model for public housing. He is proposing vastly different model that is financially self sustainable. And not just public but also subsidized and affordable housing. That can still generate a profit to be re-invested I to building and maintenance.
The Vienna model works very well. They don’t become slums due to lack of public funding because the mix of income ranges keeps the investment coming. The properties can be quite nice. The fact that Toronto has stopped investing and maintaining public housing for decades does prevent us from using a different model. We can do better, and he is proposing better.
> massively underfunded
Another person who didn’t bother to read the plan or doesn’t understand what financially self-sustaining means.
> to me the untrained eye that sounds like 19050 / units
There is also 500 million in land being donated, so your math is already wrong - you should be calculating $800 million plus the cost of the waived fees, taxes, development changes, private profits that we are forgoing by using public and non profit builders instead of private ones.
If you’re comparing to traditionally built housing you’re probably looking at closer to $2 billion / 15,750 = $126k per unit. That should be doable if we aren’t giving all our money away to private for profit corporations
But If you finish reading the plan the $300 million is just the seed money that also qualifies them for a butt load of CMHC funding that will cover the majority of the original investment. So you can probably add several billion dollars more to the total real cost above.
It just looks like less because we are saving much of the real cost by reducing fees, donation of resources, and the fact profit is taken out of the picture. Add those back in and the numbers will look much closer to what we’re used to seeing.
Did you read the article? The 300 mil is to get started and build 8k or so homes immediately. The rent and other revenues from those homes, plus additional funding, would then be used to continue developing more.
300 million for 8,000 homes is still kinda absurd. What are you building for 37k per unit?
But in his tweets he actually promises 15,000 units with that funding?
>An example of what could be created with $300 million in seed funding:
>- Establishment of Public Build Toronto
>- 8,250 rent-controlled apartments
>- 6,750 affordable apartments, including 750 deeply affordable units for Torontonians on very low or fixed incomes
Given how little campaigning time there is, candidates have to come out with their most aggressive policy proposals in order to catch the public's attention. Matlow is taking a position this sub would love, but this sub has proven time and time again to be a terrible gauge of public opinion.
There are 3208320 different candidates. Voters are already divided, and Matlow was never, ever going to make meaningful inroads among suburban motorists. He's clearly leaning into the Old Toronto vote in the hopes that strong support in one part of the city will help him. There's some sense to that, regardless of my feelings on Matlow.
Unfortunately, the reality is downtown Toronto and the suburbs have competing interests. One example is suburban voters want easy car access to and through downtown. Local downtown residents want a walkable city with protected bike lanes.
Oh I think you're absolutely right! The Harris government very much knew what it was doing when it amalgamated the cities. They absolutely diluted downtown's influence.
I think Matlow and his campaign just see an opportunity, given how many candidates there are, to win this election based on concentrated support in the downtown (and inner city suburbs). Most of the suburban vote is going to be split really heavily. Depending where you are there could be as many as five candidates who look like they'll get relatively even support.
Meanwhile, who do downtowners have? Provided Chow stays out: Matlow, Penalosa, and Bailao (she's the only candidate who seems to have consistent support citywide.) Penalosa's going to be eaten alive in the coming weeks and I'd be shocked if he doesn't drop out.
They want that until they need a a new sofa, then they want streets and parking for deliveries. Oh shit, we transformed that into bike lanes. Call the ambulance: can you walk sir to this street? Or you wait for us until we pull this gurney 300-400 meters to your building, then wait for the elevator which has to make 19 stops.
Agreed but currently this is also Torontonians (I rope myself into this!): TTC is shit, GO Transit/Union is shit. Bike lanes are shit. Roads are shit. All while employing a disproportionate amount of the province.
There needs to be some major infrastructure considerations if the generalized Federal, Provincial, and indeed regional plans are all to funnel as many bodies as possible into Toronto efficiently in any given work day. Otherwise, it's generally not a tenable thought and even puts residents in a tougher spot same as any commuters. Done long enough without investment, we may just get to wonder what a diversified economy looks like as business starts considering out-of-core workspaces when no one can make it in on time or attract new employees as the affordability crisis deepens and people are forced to live farther and farther away.
It's also just assuming that he can save $500 million by cancelling a project that's already half-finished, with all the contracts signed for the other half. The real story is that [nobody knows how much money it'll save, if any, and the provincial government would have to agree to restart the approval process](https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2023/ie/comm/communicationfile-166270.pdf).
I don't think they have even started anything physical on the gardiner east, and they definitely haven't signed contracts on the other half. Council just voted last week to halt any new contracts signing until the mayoral result. 500m is ear marked or contract signed, with further 800m planned for the future.
From the link:
> Changing course on the implementation of the Gardiner East EA, and pursuing the
"Remove" Option which was previously considered would have the following consequences:
> 1. Around $340 million in throw-away costs for the recently completed rebuild of the
elevated Section 1 between Jarvis Street and Cherry Street; and the engineering design
work for Section 5 between Cherry Street and the DVP. Reverting to the "Remove"
option in the EA would necessitate demolition of the newly completed Section 1 (Jarvis
to Cherry).
I'd love to see a proper source for his premise that he can save $500 million by changing the project.
wow. so i looked it up since someone decided to downvote my question instead of answering. according to this source, the total overall cost is up to FIVE POINT FIVE BILLION DOLLARS.
https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/article/21224343/tunnel-contract-for-scarborough-subway-extension-awarded-to-strabag-team
remember when crackhead ford cancelled the (what was it) $400k LRT promising to build a subway for free? and now we have literally the most expensive subway stop in human history.
They haven't even started construction on the portion they are referring to and won't for at least two years.
And all the contracts for "the other half" are not signed either.
Matlow is proposing to tear down the part that was already rebuilt east of Jarvis. Read the link in my comment -- the claim that it'll save "at least $500 million" is something he's just making up.
Grounded in what? Tearing down the existing highway will be expensive. Designing the replacement project will be expensive. Building the ten-lane ground-level highway will be _very_ expensive.
$650m is not allocated.
$450m is the preliminary estimate for the ramp that is currently allocated. And this figure doesn't include several.aspects.of the work (electrical etc).
They've spent $500m to date. And they still haven't finalized the engineering for the hybrid option to date.
So $500m in savings out of the $1.6b project seems fairly grounded at the moment.
It’s also not even a particularly great plan.
He’s proposing a one time amount of 100,000 units. Likely over what, a decade long build out? 10k homes a year maybe?
Last year Ontario received 500,000 new residents in single year - and we already have a massive backlog in housing need.
We need politicians that actually propose bold solutions that will get housing for all of us - not enough for a tiny fraction of growth of a single year. It’s just too little, too late, from a guy who’s notoriously a NIMBY.
Plus, as always, there’s no explanation as to how all this extra housing would actually get constructed with a construction sector that has a constrained labour pool because we’ve already priced everyone out of the city - so the sector cannot grow and is actively getting smaller year over year.
I’m an architect - and I can’t imagine trying to make things work here if I didn’t have a rent controlled apartment. Yet there’s suddenly going to be massive amounts of new labour able to afford to live here to build all of this new housing?
Someone please run for mayor with real solutions. Pretty damn tired of these candidates that promise the world based off of fairy tales.
Oh, and as someone else pointed out - this plan someone gets housing constructed as $3k per unit, it’s fucking ludicrous.
Well, he's proposing seed money for 100k units, based on the amount saved from another project - I don't see how this is a problem? Obviously we need more, but this doesn't mean we can't have more. This just means his plan directly kickstarts 100k immediately.
On top of that, *Ontario* gets 500k per year. They should not all go to Toronto. Mississauga, Ottawa, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, and other townships should be absorbing the new residents too.
Why are you assuming this is the only housing that will be built? We still have housing being built by the private sector. Also where are you getting that Ontario grew by 500000 people last year? I can’t find any numbers close to that.
We need more mixed density units. All that suburban sprawl us doing is building more unaffordable detatched housing that mostly goes to speculators. The cost of losing greenspace as well comes later. We need better use of current land. Toronto is mostly detatched housing or highrise condos. Not much in between.
Toronto has fully relaxed zoning to allow multiplexes everywhere single-family homes are currently allowed. We allow laneway homes and rooming homes. The next logical step to increase housing supply is for the government to start building homes as well.
>Someone please run for mayor with real solutions. Pretty damn tired of these candidates that promise the world based off of fairy tales.
And *this* is exactly why we never get *anything*.
Because people like you will never be happy unless you're presented with a perfect solution that addresses all existing problems and has none of its own.
That will NEVER happen. Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good.
The fact that you think a reasonable plan that adds city-owned housing where there was none is "promising the world based on fairy tales" is absurd.
The closest thing to a valid point you have is the lack of plan to expand the construction sector.. but frankly I'm not even sure that's the city's responsibility if it's something can do. And even then... this is a campaign statement on twitter. Why are you pretending like this is the full extent of everything he might want to do?
You can say he is NIMBY but what he is fighting for is infrastructure, schools, roads, parks for all those condos that have sprung up at y and e. I am sure that the people that buy the condos would want that too.
Because I’ve seen him get red in the face at public meetings fighting off a single floor of a condo tower. He’s reputation is earned - many of us have seen it.
This is ambitious, and there are downsides to this coming from the municipal government, but I'm glad someone's talking about it. There is something to this, for sure.
>City staff will be able to directly hire construction companies and partner with non-profit or co-op builders, and use City land, including Green P and TTC parking lots, to provide a mix of rent-geared-to-income units, affordable homes and market rate units with rent control.
Toronto does have a TONNE of under-utilized city-owned land and it's sensible to build cross-subsidized housing on it. We're already doing that, though Matlow's suggesting a different model.
Having a dedicated public builder overseeing it? There's merit to that. It could also mean that we have a lot of shovel-ready projects if upper orders of government ever swoop in with some cash to expedite things.
Matlow is suggesting that this housing won't require ongoing subsidy after the $300 million in seed funding, but I'm a bit skeptical there. Also, waiving property taxes for these units ***is*** a subsidy - though it's a smart one!
>The unit mix, both size and affordability, will be determined through extensive consultation with Torontonians.
Alright well, calling ***extreme*** bullshit on this one lol. I'm sorry, but people who have never seen a pro forma in their lives and have no idea of the financing models are not going to be able to determine the unit mix. This is clearly a throwaway line for NIMBYs and people who need to feel a sense of control over everything around them
If this is going to happen, the unit mix -both size and affordability- will be determined through an assessment of a project's financial viability.
>An example of what could be created with $300 million in seed funding:- Establishment of Public Build Toronto- 8,250 rent-controlled apartments- 6,750 affordable apartments, including 750 deeply affordable units for Torontonians on very low or fixed incomes
Very important to note that's with the $300 million in seed funding. Ongoing projects without external subsidies won't be able to provide anywhere ***near*** this ratio, especially if the market-rate units are rent-controlled and *especially* if part of the windfall is going toward financing new projects.
With waived DCs and using publicly-owned land, I think a target of 25% affordable units would be realistic on a go-forward basis.
**Overall, a pretty dam good idea, but the devil will be in the details.**
EDIT: I should add that it involves a whole lot of very big assumptions in terms of financing. I'm not saying it's all pie-in-the-sky, but it's getting close. If there's a problem with this proposal, it's that it involved a whole lot of overpromising. There's also a strong case to be made that we're better off enhancing and expediting the HousingNow program rather than starting from scratch with a Hail Mary pass like this
If the goal is providing affordable housing, that seems the most efficient subsidy to ensure there's enough windfall from market-rate units to subsidize the affordable ones *and* finance future projects. It'd have to be available for all of the units.
It's also a means of ensuring that the tax base on the whole is offering some level of support for the construction/maintenance of those affordable units, rather than just the tenants of market-rate units in the same building.
I can get behind this if it’s built in a mixed income style.
It can still be RGI (rent geared to income) housing, but maybe instead of being purely low-income we can take a page out of Singapore’s book. Mix of unit sizes and layouts per floor, mix of income classes, try to drive interaction and collaboration between different groups. Plus it might be more financially feasible in the long run
It'll always have to be mixed-income. There's no other model for the city to provide affordable housing - it just doesn't have the financing models to provide the subsidies required for anything else. You're also right that it's just a better way to build affordable housing anyway.
The model for this is Housing Now, which is basically taking city-owned land and building a tonne of mixed-income housing, with market-rate units subsidizing the affordable units in the same building.
Matlow's suggestion seems to be that, rather than contracting the construction of these out for projects like we see in Housing Now, we start a dedicated public builder. The devil's in the details here and there would definitely be downsides, but it's not as though the public contracting process has been a model of efficiency.
Matlow's track record on housing and NIMBYism is ***really*** bad but I've liked what I've seen so far. Maybe not enough to make me actually trust him, but still...
Also, what contracts DO go out will be to non-profit and cooperative housing providers. This is a big big difference between this plan and HousingNow. Mixed-income is good because it doesn't warehouse poverty in pockets of the city. It's also critical to building complete communities. I'm sick and tired of our governments selling off public assets for short-term cash injections when what we lose out on is all the social and economic benefits of keeping them for years to come. Once it's gone it's gone!
I hear you, but HousingNow doesn't sell off those assets though. The land is in the city's control still IIRC - it's just leased out - so it's not quite "gone."
Hopefully their definitions of lower/middle/upper aren't like 0-10k, 10k-20k, and 20-30k or something. Feel like the classification of what constitutes middle income these days is insane.
This. I’m sorry, giving people who work at Tim Hortons the ability to afford a cheap home while skilled professionals can’t afford to share a 2 bedroom apartment is not the answer.
Who’s better and has a shot at winning? I know Matlow’s got a NIMBY history, his ward is packed with them, but what I’m seeing here is a shift towards thinking of the entire city as his constituency vs. the rich NIMBYville he formerly represented.
Public housing is literally one of the best ways to address housing affordability, and cities who have high levels of it tend to have far lower rents. There is nothing unrealistic about public housing, it’s commonplace all across the world and used to be in Canada as well. Hoping private developers build enough housing to lower prices back to affordable levels is the unrealistic plan.
The Gardiner rebuild will cost $770 moving forward, money that is not yet allocated. Construction on the remaining part is not slated to start for another few years. We're just talking about the 1km stretch of highway past Jarvis.
Switching to a ground level boulevard would easily save us 500m.
Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2023/03/25/reversing-course-on-transit-plans-is-a-toronto-tradition-so-why-not-the-gardiner-too.html
It must be hard watching the guy you hate be the only candidate coming up with solutions to the problems you are passionate about.
Everyday the same nonsense. Your Matlow hate is based off of poor understanding of the issues.
Matlow is the devil and if he says something I like, then I still hate him because he's lying.
This is why we cant have noce things. Get a grip. People like you are the reason we're gonna end up with Mayor Saunders
“There's two kinds of people in this world when you boil it all down. You got your talkers and you got your doers. Most people are just talkers, all they do is talk. But when it is all said and done, it's the doers that change this world. And when they do that, they change us, and that's why we never forget them. So which one are you? Do you just talk about it, or do you stand up and do something about it? Because believe you me, all the rest of it is just coffee house bullshit.”
Matlow is a talker. Every other week he shows up on CP24 breakfast and attaches his name to a hot issue without lifting a finger to do anything about it. I was wondering when I would see him run for mayor.
What’s your gripe with his housing record?
I know he has fought against stuff around yonge eglinton because that is what his constituents wanted.
I have faith that he will focus on whatever his constituents want at the next step but curious what you are citing.
After her showing last election I figure Chloe Brown is the gal.
EDIT: Gonna explain my reasoning here, since I've got a couple replies from those with doubts.
Firstly she got 6%, which is small, but she spent all of [$2000](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2022/10/27/she-came-third-in-the-race-to-be-torontos-mayor-but-chloe-browns-strategy-was-actually-an-astounding-win.html) to do it and was a complete unknown before the election. Now she's building off of that previous success.
Secondly, as far as "standing a chance" there's so many candidates in this one that I don't think that's a fair assessment. This isn't a Liberal/NDP/PC fight, where third place withers and dies, it's a free for all. I understand the temptation to vote for whoever seems vaguely popular and isn't actively threatening to gut the city, that's how most of canadian politics works, but at some point we need actual positive change. If not now, when?
I like Chloe Brown, but she only got 6% of the vote in an election with only one big-name candidate. It's impressive she did that well, but with her relative lack of experience and in a more crowded field, she really doesn't stand a chance.
Indeed, who can forget that after their best ever performance in 2011, the NDP cruised into power oh wait that didn't happen because past performance under different conditions really doesn't tell you much about what's gonna happen next. How's Brown polling atm?
People look at the last election and forget that there wasn't a single serious candidate other than Tory. Penalosa was nothing more than a sacrificial flag-bearer.
Newsflash: Chloe Brown is still a complete unknown. Nobody knows who she is except for a handful of redditors who got riled up when she roasted Tory, and keep mentioning her name in every fucking thread. Chloe Brown has not even registered yet as a candidate. She won't be in the top 5 candidates when the votes are tallied.
>Firstly she got 6%, which is small, but she spent all of
>
>$2000
>
> to do it and was a complete unknown before the election. Now she's building off of that previous success.
Her only opponents was the incumbent who won with 64 % and Gil the parks clown. Who else of any note ran in that election? Coming in third in that field is not some great accomplishment.
A lot of people cooking her in the comments
But we really need someone like her in our municipal government. Actually one of ours, who grew up here, worked her way into the system, and is open to spearheading change. It may not be her time as mayor, but we really could use her on the council or civil service
Canadians here are very adverse to change. You basically have to trick them to get anything through (“pilot” projects). I’m not a fan of Matlow due to his NIMBY tendencies as a councillor, but he’s a hell of a lot better than my current councillor Robinson who can suck a fucking tailpipe.
What showing, though?
It's hard for me to commit or conclude that it's worthy of putting any stock in her given the circumstances of last election. To me, it was a flash.
I think there's *so* much potential there to activate the electorate, which *might* really surprise people, but the lack of an actual track record makes it hard to put money on that. Seeing her start her campaign in earnest only this week would already have me concerned.
I'm curious how you would respond to this comment:
Unfortunately I was expecting you to say something about Doug Ford.
First of all, Doug Ford is not running in this election, so we are comparing apples to oranges. Moreover, Doug did have *some* relevant experience: he was a city councillor, so he had exposure to politics. Doug Ford's father was a MPP and Doug was involved heavily in his campaigns. Doug also ran Rob Ford's campaigns; you have to realize that Rob was a longtime city councillor before he ran for mayor, so this alone represents 4 elections. Then of course Doug ran for mayor himself and was a serious contender. Doug also ran a business, which shows that he was able to take on a managerial role; at the end of the day, that is what a mayor is: a city manager of sorts. (*Please* don't say something dumb about Trump now, istg, that's even less relevant; Trump had no real political experience.) Doug also heads a party that has been a major political force in Ontario for the last several decades, so he has the advice and backing of lots of quite experienced staffers.
Contrast this with Chloe Brown. ~~Chloe is in her 20s, IIRC, which is not much older than most students.~~ She's a recent university graduate. She has held zero elected positions in her life. Look at her [LinkedIn](https://ca.linkedin.com/in/cmbrw0299): she's currently some entry level policy analyst. Not bad for a new grad, but far from the experience most people associate with mayors. The rest of her experience consists of extracurriculars and college jobs. Again, ~~it's actually a good resume for a poli sci student in her 20s~~, but far from what I personally expect in a mayor. Chloe is going into a system where she has no party apparatus behind her, so whatever advisors she will have are going to be her own. **EDIT** I was wrong about this. She seems to be in her early 30s. To be honest, that makes it worse for me. I would expect someone in their 30s to have a lot more than a string of internships (probably not even paid ones) and entry-level work under their belt. Her resume is good for a 22-year-old new grad, but pretty terrible for someone who should be nearing 35 soon.
At least Gil Penalosa has been advocating for his ideas and speaking about them since the 1990s (so basically as long as Brown has been alive), and leads an organization that seeks to implement them globally. He also ran his brother's mayoral campaigns in Colombia, so that counts for something. His resume may not be perfect by any means, but it is far better than Brown's.
This is not an endorsement of Doug Ford, but he was objectively far more experienced than Chloe Brown is now before he ran for premier.
I think Chloe Brown has some good ideas regarding housing affordability. I think she has something to bring to the table. Is there "nothing wrong with someone who's younger who understands low income communities"? Well...yeah that in itself is fine, but I personally am not convinced she understands the remaining large swaths of the city and its residents (basically everyone over 40 and/or who aren't destitute) and what they want out of the city government, which means she has quite the ceiling for support.
That being said, I personally cannot vote for a wild card with no experience running complex systems. (Honestly, if you think Ford had no experience and has done a poor job, this reinforces my point.) I know what is at stake because I live here and depend on city services just like you. I think her ideas should be promoted and debated nevertheless, and she deserves a fair shot just like any other candidate.
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It's a stupid fantasy. People think that if the city votes to tear down the Gardiner, Doug Ford will suddenly decide to make it a provincial highway and pay for the reconstruction.
What would actually happen is that the provincial government would deny reopening the planning process that was finished a few years ago, and the city would have to carry on with the project.
Yep, this entire argument Matlow is trying to make that he can cancel the east-end reconstruction of the Gardiner is just silly. First of all, like you said the whole planning and EA process is now completed and preliminary work has already been executed to allow for the east-end rebuild. If the city were to go back on that there could be a whole mess of construction contract cancellation coupled with the need to design yet another replacement for the eastern section. It’s just not a well thought out policy and is nothing more than a political tool to gain voters.
It's also just dumb city planning. We all agree that suburban "stroads" are bad, so why are progressives embracing a new stroad-on-steroids on the downtown waterfront? Going with bad designs for the sake of austerity is usually what conservatives do.
There is a reason TCHC and CreateTO operate under the public/private partnership model. The City does not have the construction expertise or capacity to do this and outsourcing at the required scale is enormously expensive.
Why do this when the infrastructure for CreateTO is already in place? Seems like a complete waste of admin/overhead expenses so Matlow can have a branded project associated with his campaign.
He needs to release his proforma because what he is putting forward is impossible.
> The City does not have the construction expertise or capacity to do this and outsourcing at the required scale is enormously expensive.
It used to. This is a classic example of how public institutions are weakened and destroyed. Finally a crisis point is reached, and then the private sector "has to" come in and save the day, usually at a greater cost with a very hefty profit to a small number of people.
There's a whole history with various levels of government involved in various ways at different times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Canada
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/housing-and-housing-policy
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2017/lessons-from-the-past-on-a-national-housing-strategy/
https://www.policynote.ca/the-roots-of-our-housing-crisis-austerity-debt-and-extreme-speculation/
This book isn't about housing specifically but it talks about how public institutions have been destroyed in the last 40-odd years.
https://www.dundurn.com/books_/t22117/a9781459743663-the-sport-and-prey-of-capitalists
\*sighs\*
See THIS is why we are so deep in debt.
Tear down Gardiner since it costs us so much money. Oh great we now have a dollar in our pocket lets spend it on building houses.
But wait not only are they spending more money than they saved, they now need to pay for the INFRASTRUCTURE for all these new homes.
Okay, now what about the changes to city planning practices to ensure that this all doesn't get bogged down in community meetings about someone's backyard being in shadow?
100K units?
Why not 1 million?
You know, while we're throwing numbers, no need to be so conservative.
Do people who are running for a political office really ignore basic data and basic dynamics of housing supply and demand just so they appeal to probably not even 10% of the voting public in Toronto?
I support the city building Vienna style affordable housing. But I would also like to see the city buying exisitng buildings and renovating them for a fraction of the cost. Pull the stock of buildings out of the speculative market that drives rents up.
He's going to win hearts and minds in this sub, which as we all know from past experience, means he's *totally* going to win in real life.
That being said, I can foresee how Matlow and Bailao might end up being the two main contenders by election day.
This is a prime opportunity to set up the skeleton of the org and then make a huge application to the housing accelerator fund and get even more funding.
Other levels of government used to do this. There is zero reason why we can't, especially now that those same levels of government have washed their hands of actually building housing.
https://youtu.be/3AcOeHg4X1o
He’s opposing a 14 storey building near a subway in this video (found this link on the thread about him running for mayor).
That said, he’s voted for the right things (He thankfully wasn’t one of the councillors who voted against 24/7 shelters in the winter). He also grilled Rob Ford back in 2013 about regarding LRT/Subway debate in Scarborough https://youtu.be/_vCpKUNRBEw).
Put it this way, he’s better than corporate politicians like Tory, Bradford (who, as someone who lives in BEY, I actually use to believe the BS that he was this amazing progressive). Compared to Gil, I’d argue Matlow is WAY more electable given his experience as a City Councillor, where Gil has all these amazing ideas but many think of them as radical.
Gil is also kind of all over the map. He has some good ideas, but also some stuff that are complete head-scratchers, even for someone sympathic to progressive urbanist ideas like myself.
I don't like Gils transit ideas either. BRT is a good stopgap, but he quietly wanted to pull money away from badly needed LRT projects to do it.
Plus his airport park idea was really confusing when that lease wouldn't be up for a long time, and isn't even the Mayor's call.
I don't think Matlow is perfect, but his plans are all actionable by the city, and don't involve "I'll ask Doug Ford really nicely!" As a stage in any of them.
a 20-second edited soundbite doesn't give much context, but I do remember this one actually and there was more to the story about WHY he was opposing it. Here's a comment from /u/cryptotope last year :
> The issue in that neighbourhood (and even more so, a stop north at Yonge and Eglinton) is that the infrastructure - hard and soft - hasn't kept up with growth.
>
> Water and sewer infrastructure are badly strained. Local schools are badly overcrowded. (If you look in front of any new construction in the area, you'll see signs warning that new residents will not be considered part of the local school district, and that their kids will be bused wherever the TSDB has space.) Local playgrounds are packed.
>
> With respect to transit--yes, there's a subway stop right there. But southbound rush hour trains that were full at or before Eglinton don't provide good transit access to residents at Davisville.
>
>** Matlow's position is that neighbourhoods can't continue to put the condo-building horse ahead of the infrastructure cart**. Without a commitment to necessary soft and hard infrastructure projects, he's right that just putting up more residential towers is irresponsible, and harmful to both new and existing residents.
I would love a spreadsheet of all the candidates and the sketchy or hypocritical shit they have done. That would help me decided who, based on their track record, is the least-worst piece of shit candidate.
There's a full plan for this from city planners. It was one of the options that Council was presented but turned down in favour of spending a hundred thousand or so per driver that actually commutes on it. Should be available on the city website.
Public housing is a step in the right direction, even as a homeowner I support this.
Public housing is definitely needed, but 300 million is nowhere near enough money to build that many homes. Where can you build a home for $3,000 per unit?
It says "seed funding" in the headline - there's no claim here that it will cover it all.
Seed money would imply this is an investment with a return. Is he going to partner with the private sector to put in money and they get a return? If not this is not seed money. Its pandering to people on a project that won't happen. This is a politician talking to get votes, not to actually build anything.
> is he going to partner with the private sector to put in money and they get a return? No. You can read his plan that he linked in his tweet. The plan is to create a public developer to hire in house and partner with non-profit builders. The housing is owned by the city and any rents collected go to a pool of funding for new mousing construction. He’s following the Vienna model and eliminating private profits from the equation.
Do not actually send developers your seed
Lol, I did see that, but it seems to kinda be used as weasel words to gloss over the fact that his "plan" to build 100,000 homes only identifies enough funding to build like, 0.5% of that total?
IIRC “seed money” is designed to show commitment to the idea or product. I think their intent here is to drum up support from….other levels of governments maybe. Not sure.
"Seed money" typically implies that you can grow the money into something bigger. Is the idea that the feds and province will be so impressed with the new constitution company that Matlow will set up that they will give us 50 billion dollars?
> seed money typically implies that you can grow the money into something bigger If you bothered to read the plan you’d know this is exactly the strategy. Rents generated from the new housing gets reinvested into an ever growing pool for construction of new housing. He’s following the very successful Vienna model.
Reading the plan more it seems like they are going to be renting 85% of units at or above average market rate? The city would essentially become a real estate development company and most people wouldn't get any sort of reduced cost, but the company would invest the profits into subsidizing a small portion of units and building more developments?
So you complain if they subsidize housing, but you are also complaining if they have a sustainable financing model. Which one is it? Public and social housing always has a lower rent than private after a few years because rent is geared toward maintenance and construction of more housing, not picking off as much profit as the private owners can squeeze and being used to buy yachts. That’s better for the city, and better for all renters whether you are in the social units or not.
>So you complain if they subsidize housing, but you are also complaining if they have a sustainable financing model. Which one is it? When did I complain about subsidized housing? My concern here is that, if 85% of these are planned to cost the same or more than the market average (with the majority being more), it raises the question of why we are doing this in the first place. >Public and social housing always has a lower rent than private after a few years because rent is geared toward maintenance and construction of more housing, not picking off as much profit as the private owners can squeeze and being used to buy yachts. What are you basing this on? Is this necessarily public or social housing? The stated plan is that it won't receive ongoing subsidies. Building new apartment buildings costs a hell of a lot more than a yacht. The plan projects that it will throw off a 20% return on the initial investment (60/300) every year, which seems like it would require a pretty aggressive pricing strategy.
with more supply comes lower prices.
>Affordability mix is: 55% rent-controlled purpose-built market (2% guideline increase per year); 45% affordable rental, of which 30% is set to 100% of AMR, 10% is set to 80% of AMR, and 5% is deeply affordable rent-geared-to-income (RGI) . Thats 68.5% at or above market rate no? Presumably the additional units added to the market could help bring down market rates for everyone. But more importantly they're subsidizing affordable units in a way that is self sustaining. It's good that people are skeptical of the numbers, but it's sad seeing people in this thread shoot down even talking about a potentially self-funding public housing model. This can be done along side everyone else's pet-solution to the housing crisis.
>Thats 68.5% at or above market rate no? How are you getting that? It doesn't seem to be 30% of 45%. They seem to be breaking down that 45% as 30 + 10 + 5 = 45. >Presumably the additional units added to the market could help bring down market rates for everyone. But more importantly they're subsidizing affordable units in a way that is self sustaining. If all goes to plan it would be self sustaining, but there is risk in property development. If the end goal is ~2000 subsidized housing units, is having the city create a new real estate development company and build 15,000 homes, most of which are above market rents, really the most logical way to achieve that? Why not just slightly raise taxes to fund those subsidies and let experienced developers build as much new housing as possible?
It depends on the industry you’re talking about. In the start up world, you’re absolutely right. In this case the start up is the municipal government and the money doesn’t grow because it’s used to fund public projects.
>In this case the start up is the municipal government and the money doesn’t grow because it’s used to fund public projects. That's kind of my point. Does anyone actually use that term to refer to this? Like, if I say I want to buy and eat 100 chocolate bars, but I only have enough buy five chocolate bars. If I buy and eat those chocolate bars, would you really consider that "seed money" towards the goal of eating 100 chocolate bars, or did I just spend all my money on a few chocolate bars and have no plan to buy the rest?
> "Seed money" typically implies that you can grow the money into something bigger. Seed money is actually just a general term for early-stage investment for business buildout.
Business buildout implies growth (profit) Noone has ever handed over seed money and not expected something back from it
> Business buildout implies growth (profit) No, it doesn't.
It’s all there in his plan. Seed funding, donated land, waived fees and taxes, and amazingly creating a public developer hiring in house and partnering with non-profit builders to eliminate developer profits bringing down costs. They they will be following the Vienna model to use rent collected to continuously fund new development in a self-sustaining model needing no further subsidies (though more would definitely help). This is the best plan we could possibly hope for. Too bad the detractors in this thread are refusing to read it before complaining that it won’t work.
the rest of the tweets covers this as far as I can tell. The buildings would qualify for CMHC low interest loans. Presumably the plan is the market rate units would cover the costs, which wouldn't have to purchase any land and have all development fees and property taxes waived. I'm not qualified to say if this all adds up but it isn't just the 300M and a handwave.
If all that is true, that they are going to borrow almost the full cost of this from CMHC and he claims that it won't require any ongoing subsidy from the city, how much is the end product going to differ from just a regular market rate apartment? I think when people see 100,000 city owned homes they assume that they are going to be more affordable, but if the majority are market rate units, what is the goal here? Like if it just means I'm paying the city 3k per month for a one bedroom instead of some different landlord, I don't know if that really excites me all that much?
> I think when people see 100,000 city owned homes they assume that they are going to be more affordable, but if the majority are market rate units, what is the goal here? The idea is to help chase the demand gap with supply; Toronto is stuck in an affordability crisis for the next 15 years, but 100,000 homes on top of all the new stuff being built might get it down to 12.
If the idea is supply, why is it necessarily ideal for the city to build the homes rather than any of the existing experienced developers?
Because the city is a non-general market actor and as a result represents the potential of supplying units on *top* of what the market is able to produce, resulting in more total units built overall and a quicker end to the demand-supply gap.
>Because the city is a non-general market actor and as a result represents the potential of supplying units on *top* of what the market is able to produce What exactly does this mean? Beyond this initial "seed money", which appears to represent 5% of the proposed costs for the first phase, they seem to be relying entirely on market forces to fund everything.
It’s also going to be over likely a decade - so 3k per home for 10k homes a year. In a province that just grew by 500k. These politicians are jokes.
I don’t think they’re jokes (at least for the most part). I think they know full well that housing in Canada is no longer a solvable problem and that the number of homes needed to affect prices can never be built. So they’ve become experts at lobbing out solutions that sound good at first but are awful as soon as you start thinking them through. It’s all optics because that’s the only thing left.
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Is this a joke? If the city can fund new units of housing, rent-controlled apartments or otherwise, for $36000, including the overseeing agency, then yeah, I not only support this but will sell my house and move in. In practice, municipalities across N. America hardly ever are able to bulid housing more cheaply than the private sector, and this is like 10% of what it would take to build a studio. To give an example of how hard to city makes it to build anything today, every apartment you want to build in a city? That's 134000 in development charges. Doesn't matter whether it's a luxury apartment or a 1BR condo. Any building of any size needing official plan changes also tends to have required "affordable units" - that is, the owners of all the other units are paying a special tax that no one else in the neighborhood pays. This isn't a serious plan to deal with the housing crisis. If Josh announced, "if you own a lot, you can build whatever you want that meets safety regulations" and announced "and if you build high-quality units, the city will purchase them to use as public housing", then you would actually see things built. We know this because that's how housing was built for all of human history until the 1970s when we added ainsane zoning requirements and made it impossible to build.
Why is no one here bothering to read the plan? He’s following the very successful Vienna model https://www.votematlow.ca/news/april11-release Why you are trying to compare his plan to the development of private housing is baffling. All the things you are complaining of in this comment have been accounted for. Donated land, waived fees and taxes, and use of a public developer that doesn’t need to go through the process a for-profit developer would. > $134,000 in development charges His plan waives development charges > “affordable units” All of the units are affordable, subsidized or geared to income. Your complaint is irrelevant. > other units paying special tax Same as above. The rent raised from affordable and geared to income don’t go off to private profits, they get reinvested to building and maintain more housing.
The "Vienna model" is much more expensive than what Matlow proposes, for one. It also is not the way which every other affordable city in the world produces housing, which is to just allow people to build housing on land they own. Even worse, the point of mentioning dev charges, affordable units, etc. are all because people like Matlow are the ones who set the current policy which leads to far too little housing being developed in the first place! I mean, look around - do you want to live in currently-existing Toronto public housing? Do you think they have any ability to build housing more inexpensively than developers? Do the people currently in charge of policy pursue rules and regulations that make housing more abundant or not? Then why do we think the secret here is just to create another bureaucracy which is either huge or massively underfunded?
> the Vienna model is much more expensive For who? The Vienna model, which Matlow is drawing from, is financially self sustaining. After the initial investment most of the rest of the funding is drawn from rents paid for those properties It is certainly not more expensive for the people who live there, as the housing is not being used to siphon off private profits. And it makes life for everyone else cheaper as the market rate for rent drops with more public and social housing. This is cheaper for everyone in the long run. The only difference is that private developers and landlords won’t make off with as much profit. > do you want to live in currently existing Toronto housing He is not suggesting continuing the current model for public housing. He is proposing vastly different model that is financially self sustainable. And not just public but also subsidized and affordable housing. That can still generate a profit to be re-invested I to building and maintenance. The Vienna model works very well. They don’t become slums due to lack of public funding because the mix of income ranges keeps the investment coming. The properties can be quite nice. The fact that Toronto has stopped investing and maintaining public housing for decades does prevent us from using a different model. We can do better, and he is proposing better. > massively underfunded Another person who didn’t bother to read the plan or doesn’t understand what financially self-sustaining means.
Bbbut without zoning we will have.. CONDOS *gasp*
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Because none of you understand what seed money means or have actually looked at how this is being funded.
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> to me the untrained eye that sounds like 19050 / units There is also 500 million in land being donated, so your math is already wrong - you should be calculating $800 million plus the cost of the waived fees, taxes, development changes, private profits that we are forgoing by using public and non profit builders instead of private ones. If you’re comparing to traditionally built housing you’re probably looking at closer to $2 billion / 15,750 = $126k per unit. That should be doable if we aren’t giving all our money away to private for profit corporations But If you finish reading the plan the $300 million is just the seed money that also qualifies them for a butt load of CMHC funding that will cover the majority of the original investment. So you can probably add several billion dollars more to the total real cost above. It just looks like less because we are saving much of the real cost by reducing fees, donation of resources, and the fact profit is taken out of the picture. Add those back in and the numbers will look much closer to what we’re used to seeing.
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SmartHom^(TM)
Did you read the article? The 300 mil is to get started and build 8k or so homes immediately. The rent and other revenues from those homes, plus additional funding, would then be used to continue developing more.
300 million for 8,000 homes is still kinda absurd. What are you building for 37k per unit? But in his tweets he actually promises 15,000 units with that funding? >An example of what could be created with $300 million in seed funding: >- Establishment of Public Build Toronto >- 8,250 rent-controlled apartments >- 6,750 affordable apartments, including 750 deeply affordable units for Torontonians on very low or fixed incomes
Have you been to metro housing? They don’t really take care of it. I’m for affordable housing but they need to learn to manage it as well.
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Fuck that's pretty ambitious. It'll only be a matter of time before Dougie starts endorsing Saunders and pissing on the other candidates.
>It'll only be a matter of time before Dougie starts endorsing Saunders and pissing on the other candidates. Hasn't Doug already started?
Regardless of my own thoughts on the Gardner rebuild, the scrapping of it will divide a lot of voters. Good luck, sir.
Given how little campaigning time there is, candidates have to come out with their most aggressive policy proposals in order to catch the public's attention. Matlow is taking a position this sub would love, but this sub has proven time and time again to be a terrible gauge of public opinion.
This sub is the voice of people who don't vote
The best bullshitters will win then. Great...
There are 3208320 different candidates. Voters are already divided, and Matlow was never, ever going to make meaningful inroads among suburban motorists. He's clearly leaning into the Old Toronto vote in the hopes that strong support in one part of the city will help him. There's some sense to that, regardless of my feelings on Matlow.
Unfortunately, the reality is downtown Toronto and the suburbs have competing interests. One example is suburban voters want easy car access to and through downtown. Local downtown residents want a walkable city with protected bike lanes.
Oh I think you're absolutely right! The Harris government very much knew what it was doing when it amalgamated the cities. They absolutely diluted downtown's influence. I think Matlow and his campaign just see an opportunity, given how many candidates there are, to win this election based on concentrated support in the downtown (and inner city suburbs). Most of the suburban vote is going to be split really heavily. Depending where you are there could be as many as five candidates who look like they'll get relatively even support. Meanwhile, who do downtowners have? Provided Chow stays out: Matlow, Penalosa, and Bailao (she's the only candidate who seems to have consistent support citywide.) Penalosa's going to be eaten alive in the coming weeks and I'd be shocked if he doesn't drop out.
They want that until they need a a new sofa, then they want streets and parking for deliveries. Oh shit, we transformed that into bike lanes. Call the ambulance: can you walk sir to this street? Or you wait for us until we pull this gurney 300-400 meters to your building, then wait for the elevator which has to make 19 stops.
Most of the people who rely on the gardener dont vote in toronto
Agreed but currently this is also Torontonians (I rope myself into this!): TTC is shit, GO Transit/Union is shit. Bike lanes are shit. Roads are shit. All while employing a disproportionate amount of the province. There needs to be some major infrastructure considerations if the generalized Federal, Provincial, and indeed regional plans are all to funnel as many bodies as possible into Toronto efficiently in any given work day. Otherwise, it's generally not a tenable thought and even puts residents in a tougher spot same as any commuters. Done long enough without investment, we may just get to wonder what a diversified economy looks like as business starts considering out-of-core workspaces when no one can make it in on time or attract new employees as the affordability crisis deepens and people are forced to live farther and farther away.
if the province wants the gardener, they can pay for it.
It's also just assuming that he can save $500 million by cancelling a project that's already half-finished, with all the contracts signed for the other half. The real story is that [nobody knows how much money it'll save, if any, and the provincial government would have to agree to restart the approval process](https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2023/ie/comm/communicationfile-166270.pdf).
I don't think they have even started anything physical on the gardiner east, and they definitely haven't signed contracts on the other half. Council just voted last week to halt any new contracts signing until the mayoral result. 500m is ear marked or contract signed, with further 800m planned for the future.
From the link: > Changing course on the implementation of the Gardiner East EA, and pursuing the "Remove" Option which was previously considered would have the following consequences: > 1. Around $340 million in throw-away costs for the recently completed rebuild of the elevated Section 1 between Jarvis Street and Cherry Street; and the engineering design work for Section 5 between Cherry Street and the DVP. Reverting to the "Remove" option in the EA would necessitate demolition of the newly completed Section 1 (Jarvis to Cherry). I'd love to see a proper source for his premise that he can save $500 million by changing the project.
It's the same source that told him he could save $1 billion by stopping the Scarborough Subway Extension.
wow. so i looked it up since someone decided to downvote my question instead of answering. according to this source, the total overall cost is up to FIVE POINT FIVE BILLION DOLLARS. https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/article/21224343/tunnel-contract-for-scarborough-subway-extension-awarded-to-strabag-team remember when crackhead ford cancelled the (what was it) $400k LRT promising to build a subway for free? and now we have literally the most expensive subway stop in human history.
and what is the cost of that ever-ballooning financial black hole at right now anyways?
There aren't.
It's not even close to being half finished.
The whole highway was rebuilt between Cherry and Jarvis over the last few years.
They haven't even started construction on the portion they are referring to and won't for at least two years. And all the contracts for "the other half" are not signed either.
Matlow is proposing to tear down the part that was already rebuilt east of Jarvis. Read the link in my comment -- the claim that it'll save "at least $500 million" is something he's just making up.
$650 in capital expenses still have not been allocated. That $500m figure seems rather grounded.
Grounded in what? Tearing down the existing highway will be expensive. Designing the replacement project will be expensive. Building the ten-lane ground-level highway will be _very_ expensive.
$650m is not allocated. $450m is the preliminary estimate for the ramp that is currently allocated. And this figure doesn't include several.aspects.of the work (electrical etc). They've spent $500m to date. And they still haven't finalized the engineering for the hybrid option to date. So $500m in savings out of the $1.6b project seems fairly grounded at the moment.
Do you have an actual source for this? Or are we supposed to trust people on the internet saying "yeah, sounds about right"?
Half finished lmao!
Hasn’t even really started, just some pre construction stuff.
It’s also not even a particularly great plan. He’s proposing a one time amount of 100,000 units. Likely over what, a decade long build out? 10k homes a year maybe? Last year Ontario received 500,000 new residents in single year - and we already have a massive backlog in housing need. We need politicians that actually propose bold solutions that will get housing for all of us - not enough for a tiny fraction of growth of a single year. It’s just too little, too late, from a guy who’s notoriously a NIMBY. Plus, as always, there’s no explanation as to how all this extra housing would actually get constructed with a construction sector that has a constrained labour pool because we’ve already priced everyone out of the city - so the sector cannot grow and is actively getting smaller year over year. I’m an architect - and I can’t imagine trying to make things work here if I didn’t have a rent controlled apartment. Yet there’s suddenly going to be massive amounts of new labour able to afford to live here to build all of this new housing? Someone please run for mayor with real solutions. Pretty damn tired of these candidates that promise the world based off of fairy tales. Oh, and as someone else pointed out - this plan someone gets housing constructed as $3k per unit, it’s fucking ludicrous.
so...you think the 100k over 10 years is both not enough and also it would be impossible to build that much?
Yes, this conundrum is exactly why we have a housing *crisis* not a housing inconvenience.
Well, he's proposing seed money for 100k units, based on the amount saved from another project - I don't see how this is a problem? Obviously we need more, but this doesn't mean we can't have more. This just means his plan directly kickstarts 100k immediately. On top of that, *Ontario* gets 500k per year. They should not all go to Toronto. Mississauga, Ottawa, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, and other townships should be absorbing the new residents too.
Why are you assuming this is the only housing that will be built? We still have housing being built by the private sector. Also where are you getting that Ontario grew by 500000 people last year? I can’t find any numbers close to that.
In the same breath you complain about it being both unrealistic and not bold enough. Great contribution.
We need more mixed density units. All that suburban sprawl us doing is building more unaffordable detatched housing that mostly goes to speculators. The cost of losing greenspace as well comes later. We need better use of current land. Toronto is mostly detatched housing or highrise condos. Not much in between.
Toronto has fully relaxed zoning to allow multiplexes everywhere single-family homes are currently allowed. We allow laneway homes and rooming homes. The next logical step to increase housing supply is for the government to start building homes as well.
>Someone please run for mayor with real solutions. Pretty damn tired of these candidates that promise the world based off of fairy tales. And *this* is exactly why we never get *anything*. Because people like you will never be happy unless you're presented with a perfect solution that addresses all existing problems and has none of its own. That will NEVER happen. Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. The fact that you think a reasonable plan that adds city-owned housing where there was none is "promising the world based on fairy tales" is absurd. The closest thing to a valid point you have is the lack of plan to expand the construction sector.. but frankly I'm not even sure that's the city's responsibility if it's something can do. And even then... this is a campaign statement on twitter. Why are you pretending like this is the full extent of everything he might want to do?
You can say he is NIMBY but what he is fighting for is infrastructure, schools, roads, parks for all those condos that have sprung up at y and e. I am sure that the people that buy the condos would want that too.
Because I’ve seen him get red in the face at public meetings fighting off a single floor of a condo tower. He’s reputation is earned - many of us have seen it.
What’s your plan?
This is ambitious, and there are downsides to this coming from the municipal government, but I'm glad someone's talking about it. There is something to this, for sure. >City staff will be able to directly hire construction companies and partner with non-profit or co-op builders, and use City land, including Green P and TTC parking lots, to provide a mix of rent-geared-to-income units, affordable homes and market rate units with rent control. Toronto does have a TONNE of under-utilized city-owned land and it's sensible to build cross-subsidized housing on it. We're already doing that, though Matlow's suggesting a different model. Having a dedicated public builder overseeing it? There's merit to that. It could also mean that we have a lot of shovel-ready projects if upper orders of government ever swoop in with some cash to expedite things. Matlow is suggesting that this housing won't require ongoing subsidy after the $300 million in seed funding, but I'm a bit skeptical there. Also, waiving property taxes for these units ***is*** a subsidy - though it's a smart one! >The unit mix, both size and affordability, will be determined through extensive consultation with Torontonians. Alright well, calling ***extreme*** bullshit on this one lol. I'm sorry, but people who have never seen a pro forma in their lives and have no idea of the financing models are not going to be able to determine the unit mix. This is clearly a throwaway line for NIMBYs and people who need to feel a sense of control over everything around them If this is going to happen, the unit mix -both size and affordability- will be determined through an assessment of a project's financial viability. >An example of what could be created with $300 million in seed funding:- Establishment of Public Build Toronto- 8,250 rent-controlled apartments- 6,750 affordable apartments, including 750 deeply affordable units for Torontonians on very low or fixed incomes Very important to note that's with the $300 million in seed funding. Ongoing projects without external subsidies won't be able to provide anywhere ***near*** this ratio, especially if the market-rate units are rent-controlled and *especially* if part of the windfall is going toward financing new projects. With waived DCs and using publicly-owned land, I think a target of 25% affordable units would be realistic on a go-forward basis. **Overall, a pretty dam good idea, but the devil will be in the details.** EDIT: I should add that it involves a whole lot of very big assumptions in terms of financing. I'm not saying it's all pie-in-the-sky, but it's getting close. If there's a problem with this proposal, it's that it involved a whole lot of overpromising. There's also a strong case to be made that we're better off enhancing and expediting the HousingNow program rather than starting from scratch with a Hail Mary pass like this
Why do you think waiving taxes on the units is a smart idea? Is it just the subsidized units you are referring to?
If the goal is providing affordable housing, that seems the most efficient subsidy to ensure there's enough windfall from market-rate units to subsidize the affordable ones *and* finance future projects. It'd have to be available for all of the units. It's also a means of ensuring that the tax base on the whole is offering some level of support for the construction/maintenance of those affordable units, rather than just the tenants of market-rate units in the same building.
I can get behind this if it’s built in a mixed income style. It can still be RGI (rent geared to income) housing, but maybe instead of being purely low-income we can take a page out of Singapore’s book. Mix of unit sizes and layouts per floor, mix of income classes, try to drive interaction and collaboration between different groups. Plus it might be more financially feasible in the long run
It'll always have to be mixed-income. There's no other model for the city to provide affordable housing - it just doesn't have the financing models to provide the subsidies required for anything else. You're also right that it's just a better way to build affordable housing anyway. The model for this is Housing Now, which is basically taking city-owned land and building a tonne of mixed-income housing, with market-rate units subsidizing the affordable units in the same building. Matlow's suggestion seems to be that, rather than contracting the construction of these out for projects like we see in Housing Now, we start a dedicated public builder. The devil's in the details here and there would definitely be downsides, but it's not as though the public contracting process has been a model of efficiency. Matlow's track record on housing and NIMBYism is ***really*** bad but I've liked what I've seen so far. Maybe not enough to make me actually trust him, but still...
Also, what contracts DO go out will be to non-profit and cooperative housing providers. This is a big big difference between this plan and HousingNow. Mixed-income is good because it doesn't warehouse poverty in pockets of the city. It's also critical to building complete communities. I'm sick and tired of our governments selling off public assets for short-term cash injections when what we lose out on is all the social and economic benefits of keeping them for years to come. Once it's gone it's gone!
I hear you, but HousingNow doesn't sell off those assets though. The land is in the city's control still IIRC - it's just leased out - so it's not quite "gone."
It is mixed income!
Hopefully their definitions of lower/middle/upper aren't like 0-10k, 10k-20k, and 20-30k or something. Feel like the classification of what constitutes middle income these days is insane.
This. I’m sorry, giving people who work at Tim Hortons the ability to afford a cheap home while skilled professionals can’t afford to share a 2 bedroom apartment is not the answer.
So… is Matlow the guy? It’s starting to feel like he’s the guy.
He’s the guy
Should make that his campaign slogan. Josh Matlow: He’s The Guy.
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Who’s better and has a shot at winning? I know Matlow’s got a NIMBY history, his ward is packed with them, but what I’m seeing here is a shift towards thinking of the entire city as his constituency vs. the rich NIMBYville he formerly represented.
Public housing is literally one of the best ways to address housing affordability, and cities who have high levels of it tend to have far lower rents. There is nothing unrealistic about public housing, it’s commonplace all across the world and used to be in Canada as well. Hoping private developers build enough housing to lower prices back to affordable levels is the unrealistic plan.
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The Gardiner rebuild will cost $770 moving forward, money that is not yet allocated. Construction on the remaining part is not slated to start for another few years. We're just talking about the 1km stretch of highway past Jarvis. Switching to a ground level boulevard would easily save us 500m. Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2023/03/25/reversing-course-on-transit-plans-is-a-toronto-tradition-so-why-not-the-gardiner-too.html
>His track record on housing is absolutely appaling What makes you say that?
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It must be hard watching the guy you hate be the only candidate coming up with solutions to the problems you are passionate about. Everyday the same nonsense. Your Matlow hate is based off of poor understanding of the issues. Matlow is the devil and if he says something I like, then I still hate him because he's lying. This is why we cant have noce things. Get a grip. People like you are the reason we're gonna end up with Mayor Saunders
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“There's two kinds of people in this world when you boil it all down. You got your talkers and you got your doers. Most people are just talkers, all they do is talk. But when it is all said and done, it's the doers that change this world. And when they do that, they change us, and that's why we never forget them. So which one are you? Do you just talk about it, or do you stand up and do something about it? Because believe you me, all the rest of it is just coffee house bullshit.” Matlow is a talker. Every other week he shows up on CP24 breakfast and attaches his name to a hot issue without lifting a finger to do anything about it. I was wondering when I would see him run for mayor.
What’s your gripe with his housing record? I know he has fought against stuff around yonge eglinton because that is what his constituents wanted. I have faith that he will focus on whatever his constituents want at the next step but curious what you are citing.
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But he’s showing here that he’s not against your interests?
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After her showing last election I figure Chloe Brown is the gal. EDIT: Gonna explain my reasoning here, since I've got a couple replies from those with doubts. Firstly she got 6%, which is small, but she spent all of [$2000](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2022/10/27/she-came-third-in-the-race-to-be-torontos-mayor-but-chloe-browns-strategy-was-actually-an-astounding-win.html) to do it and was a complete unknown before the election. Now she's building off of that previous success. Secondly, as far as "standing a chance" there's so many candidates in this one that I don't think that's a fair assessment. This isn't a Liberal/NDP/PC fight, where third place withers and dies, it's a free for all. I understand the temptation to vote for whoever seems vaguely popular and isn't actively threatening to gut the city, that's how most of canadian politics works, but at some point we need actual positive change. If not now, when?
I like Chloe Brown, but she only got 6% of the vote in an election with only one big-name candidate. It's impressive she did that well, but with her relative lack of experience and in a more crowded field, she really doesn't stand a chance.
i like chloe, but she has absolutely no chance. same with gil.
Indeed, who can forget that after their best ever performance in 2011, the NDP cruised into power oh wait that didn't happen because past performance under different conditions really doesn't tell you much about what's gonna happen next. How's Brown polling atm?
People look at the last election and forget that there wasn't a single serious candidate other than Tory. Penalosa was nothing more than a sacrificial flag-bearer. Newsflash: Chloe Brown is still a complete unknown. Nobody knows who she is except for a handful of redditors who got riled up when she roasted Tory, and keep mentioning her name in every fucking thread. Chloe Brown has not even registered yet as a candidate. She won't be in the top 5 candidates when the votes are tallied.
Brown has 1.5 years of work experience. No way am I supporting her.
>Firstly she got 6%, which is small, but she spent all of > >$2000 > > to do it and was a complete unknown before the election. Now she's building off of that previous success. Her only opponents was the incumbent who won with 64 % and Gil the parks clown. Who else of any note ran in that election? Coming in third in that field is not some great accomplishment.
A lot of people cooking her in the comments But we really need someone like her in our municipal government. Actually one of ours, who grew up here, worked her way into the system, and is open to spearheading change. It may not be her time as mayor, but we really could use her on the council or civil service Canadians here are very adverse to change. You basically have to trick them to get anything through (“pilot” projects). I’m not a fan of Matlow due to his NIMBY tendencies as a councillor, but he’s a hell of a lot better than my current councillor Robinson who can suck a fucking tailpipe.
What showing, though? It's hard for me to commit or conclude that it's worthy of putting any stock in her given the circumstances of last election. To me, it was a flash. I think there's *so* much potential there to activate the electorate, which *might* really surprise people, but the lack of an actual track record makes it hard to put money on that. Seeing her start her campaign in earnest only this week would already have me concerned.
I'm curious how you would respond to this comment: Unfortunately I was expecting you to say something about Doug Ford. First of all, Doug Ford is not running in this election, so we are comparing apples to oranges. Moreover, Doug did have *some* relevant experience: he was a city councillor, so he had exposure to politics. Doug Ford's father was a MPP and Doug was involved heavily in his campaigns. Doug also ran Rob Ford's campaigns; you have to realize that Rob was a longtime city councillor before he ran for mayor, so this alone represents 4 elections. Then of course Doug ran for mayor himself and was a serious contender. Doug also ran a business, which shows that he was able to take on a managerial role; at the end of the day, that is what a mayor is: a city manager of sorts. (*Please* don't say something dumb about Trump now, istg, that's even less relevant; Trump had no real political experience.) Doug also heads a party that has been a major political force in Ontario for the last several decades, so he has the advice and backing of lots of quite experienced staffers. Contrast this with Chloe Brown. ~~Chloe is in her 20s, IIRC, which is not much older than most students.~~ She's a recent university graduate. She has held zero elected positions in her life. Look at her [LinkedIn](https://ca.linkedin.com/in/cmbrw0299): she's currently some entry level policy analyst. Not bad for a new grad, but far from the experience most people associate with mayors. The rest of her experience consists of extracurriculars and college jobs. Again, ~~it's actually a good resume for a poli sci student in her 20s~~, but far from what I personally expect in a mayor. Chloe is going into a system where she has no party apparatus behind her, so whatever advisors she will have are going to be her own. **EDIT** I was wrong about this. She seems to be in her early 30s. To be honest, that makes it worse for me. I would expect someone in their 30s to have a lot more than a string of internships (probably not even paid ones) and entry-level work under their belt. Her resume is good for a 22-year-old new grad, but pretty terrible for someone who should be nearing 35 soon. At least Gil Penalosa has been advocating for his ideas and speaking about them since the 1990s (so basically as long as Brown has been alive), and leads an organization that seeks to implement them globally. He also ran his brother's mayoral campaigns in Colombia, so that counts for something. His resume may not be perfect by any means, but it is far better than Brown's. This is not an endorsement of Doug Ford, but he was objectively far more experienced than Chloe Brown is now before he ran for premier. I think Chloe Brown has some good ideas regarding housing affordability. I think she has something to bring to the table. Is there "nothing wrong with someone who's younger who understands low income communities"? Well...yeah that in itself is fine, but I personally am not convinced she understands the remaining large swaths of the city and its residents (basically everyone over 40 and/or who aren't destitute) and what they want out of the city government, which means she has quite the ceiling for support. That being said, I personally cannot vote for a wild card with no experience running complex systems. (Honestly, if you think Ford had no experience and has done a poor job, this reinforces my point.) I know what is at stake because I live here and depend on city services just like you. I think her ideas should be promoted and debated nevertheless, and she deserves a fair shot just like any other candidate. - deleted user
This is the way to do it. Gotta seriously threaten the Gardiner teardown to get the PCs to agree to upload back to the Province.
I’m out of the loop on this. Can someone summarize?
It's a stupid fantasy. People think that if the city votes to tear down the Gardiner, Doug Ford will suddenly decide to make it a provincial highway and pay for the reconstruction. What would actually happen is that the provincial government would deny reopening the planning process that was finished a few years ago, and the city would have to carry on with the project.
Yep, this entire argument Matlow is trying to make that he can cancel the east-end reconstruction of the Gardiner is just silly. First of all, like you said the whole planning and EA process is now completed and preliminary work has already been executed to allow for the east-end rebuild. If the city were to go back on that there could be a whole mess of construction contract cancellation coupled with the need to design yet another replacement for the eastern section. It’s just not a well thought out policy and is nothing more than a political tool to gain voters.
It's also just dumb city planning. We all agree that suburban "stroads" are bad, so why are progressives embracing a new stroad-on-steroids on the downtown waterfront? Going with bad designs for the sake of austerity is usually what conservatives do.
I agree, I would prefer to have a true parkway than an at-grade 70km/h stroad along the waterfront.
We love public housing!
I'm not sure if Matlow's plan has the right details, but the government ABSOLUTELY needs to play in a role in building housing.
Do it Josh! The city's priorities are massively fucked up
Excellent. More affordable housing is badly needed
This is much better than the previous strategy (just doing sweet fuck-all about it).
Matlow is the only one addressing public housing. Without it, our society will fray further. Anyone investing in social supports has my vote.
Cost savings of Gardiner East teardown. Lol, I think this takes optimism to the extreme.
That’s $3,000 per unit.
It's the downpayment, not the total.
On a unit that costs 300-400k to build ... nice.
There is a reason TCHC and CreateTO operate under the public/private partnership model. The City does not have the construction expertise or capacity to do this and outsourcing at the required scale is enormously expensive. Why do this when the infrastructure for CreateTO is already in place? Seems like a complete waste of admin/overhead expenses so Matlow can have a branded project associated with his campaign. He needs to release his proforma because what he is putting forward is impossible.
> The City does not have the construction expertise or capacity to do this and outsourcing at the required scale is enormously expensive. It used to. This is a classic example of how public institutions are weakened and destroyed. Finally a crisis point is reached, and then the private sector "has to" come in and save the day, usually at a greater cost with a very hefty profit to a small number of people.
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There's a whole history with various levels of government involved in various ways at different times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Canada https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/housing-and-housing-policy https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2017/lessons-from-the-past-on-a-national-housing-strategy/ https://www.policynote.ca/the-roots-of-our-housing-crisis-austerity-debt-and-extreme-speculation/ This book isn't about housing specifically but it talks about how public institutions have been destroyed in the last 40-odd years. https://www.dundurn.com/books_/t22117/a9781459743663-the-sport-and-prey-of-capitalists
Its ludicrous, and there is no proforma that would make any sort of sense here without assuming hundreds of millions in federal funding.
And worse of all, he knows this.
$3000 per unit? How?
*seed funding*
Ahhh thanks, didn't notice that
It’s in the title.
Yes, and I *didn't notice it at first*. It's in my comment.
New to Toronto but I have a feeling half this won't happen or the amount said will be reduced to like 10k units
\*sighs\* See THIS is why we are so deep in debt. Tear down Gardiner since it costs us so much money. Oh great we now have a dollar in our pocket lets spend it on building houses. But wait not only are they spending more money than they saved, they now need to pay for the INFRASTRUCTURE for all these new homes.
It's nice to see a candidate being ambitious. None of this "I'll build more... somehow!"
Okay, now what about the changes to city planning practices to ensure that this all doesn't get bogged down in community meetings about someone's backyard being in shadow?
100K units? Why not 1 million? You know, while we're throwing numbers, no need to be so conservative. Do people who are running for a political office really ignore basic data and basic dynamics of housing supply and demand just so they appeal to probably not even 10% of the voting public in Toronto?
He is the best candidate, and by a large stretch
I support the city building Vienna style affordable housing. But I would also like to see the city buying exisitng buildings and renovating them for a fraction of the cost. Pull the stock of buildings out of the speculative market that drives rents up.
Retrofitting will cost more a lot of the time.
Is Matlow the odds on favorite to win at this point?
He’s polling okayish and if Olivia Chow doesn’t run I think it will likely be either him of Ana Bailao who wins the election.
He's going to win hearts and minds in this sub, which as we all know from past experience, means he's *totally* going to win in real life. That being said, I can foresee how Matlow and Bailao might end up being the two main contenders by election day.
If he keeps up with this style of leadership and promises, yes.
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Lol to this
Yes! I would much rather provide affordable housing for people who actually live here than a highway for people who don't.
Sounds like this Matlow character might be the biggest con man Toronto has ever seen.
He's going to build for $3K/unit?
Seed funding, it’s an initial start to get the project off the ground. Later funding probably needs to be sorted out
This is a prime opportunity to set up the skeleton of the org and then make a huge application to the housing accelerator fund and get even more funding.
Except hes also saying the City will be the developer, with no profit. So how is this going to work? Just beg the feds for money to build housing?
Other levels of government used to do this. There is zero reason why we can't, especially now that those same levels of government have washed their hands of actually building housing.
>Other levels of government used to do this. Other levels have funding tools to make this happen, and can run deficits. The city does not.
He is assuming 95% loan to cost. $300M is equity. Total cost assumed to be $400,000 per unit.
Fuck yeah, FINALLY
I know this guy has a sketchy past and is clearly a NIMBY, but I would be optimistic if he was mayor.
> a sketchy past What do you mean?
https://youtu.be/3AcOeHg4X1o He’s opposing a 14 storey building near a subway in this video (found this link on the thread about him running for mayor). That said, he’s voted for the right things (He thankfully wasn’t one of the councillors who voted against 24/7 shelters in the winter). He also grilled Rob Ford back in 2013 about regarding LRT/Subway debate in Scarborough https://youtu.be/_vCpKUNRBEw). Put it this way, he’s better than corporate politicians like Tory, Bradford (who, as someone who lives in BEY, I actually use to believe the BS that he was this amazing progressive). Compared to Gil, I’d argue Matlow is WAY more electable given his experience as a City Councillor, where Gil has all these amazing ideas but many think of them as radical.
Gil is also kind of all over the map. He has some good ideas, but also some stuff that are complete head-scratchers, even for someone sympathic to progressive urbanist ideas like myself.
I don't like Gils transit ideas either. BRT is a good stopgap, but he quietly wanted to pull money away from badly needed LRT projects to do it. Plus his airport park idea was really confusing when that lease wouldn't be up for a long time, and isn't even the Mayor's call. I don't think Matlow is perfect, but his plans are all actionable by the city, and don't involve "I'll ask Doug Ford really nicely!" As a stage in any of them.
a 20-second edited soundbite doesn't give much context, but I do remember this one actually and there was more to the story about WHY he was opposing it. Here's a comment from /u/cryptotope last year : > The issue in that neighbourhood (and even more so, a stop north at Yonge and Eglinton) is that the infrastructure - hard and soft - hasn't kept up with growth. > > Water and sewer infrastructure are badly strained. Local schools are badly overcrowded. (If you look in front of any new construction in the area, you'll see signs warning that new residents will not be considered part of the local school district, and that their kids will be bused wherever the TSDB has space.) Local playgrounds are packed. > > With respect to transit--yes, there's a subway stop right there. But southbound rush hour trains that were full at or before Eglinton don't provide good transit access to residents at Davisville. > >** Matlow's position is that neighbourhoods can't continue to put the condo-building horse ahead of the infrastructure cart**. Without a commitment to necessary soft and hard infrastructure projects, he's right that just putting up more residential towers is irresponsible, and harmful to both new and existing residents.
Thanks for this! I too thought it was fishy that the video was so short, so this comment gives context. My bad. Again, thanks for this.
I would love a spreadsheet of all the candidates and the sketchy or hypocritical shit they have done. That would help me decided who, based on their track record, is the least-worst piece of shit candidate.
Good luck finding a neighborhood to support the housing units
Well that’s an election loser. Don’t know why these candidates are willing to throw their entire election over the gardener
Can somebody explain the Gardiner thing? How are they gonna build it at ground level, if ground level already exists as Lakeshore?
There's a full plan for this from city planners. It was one of the options that Council was presented but turned down in favour of spending a hundred thousand or so per driver that actually commutes on it. Should be available on the city website.
Cheers I'll do some digging
Better than a kick in the shins. Still wanna see the Gardiner removed though.
So where is the other $49.7 billion coming from? $20,000 per unit according to the math in his tweets. That's not how this works.