if you don't build what people want to buy, they won't buy it.
the cause is that the product is not meeting demand, primarily due to location.
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they keep saying this, but they never do it.
i'll believe it when i see it.
the issue isn't development fees, it's actually low demand and it's not something that can be resolved by tinkering with a fee structure or an interest rate. the expectation is that they're mostly going to build big houses in the suburbs, which is kind of out of touch. there's an underlying expectation from government that people want to continue living in the 20th century, but they don't. these developers build these family homes in these isolated communities and they can't sell them because nobody wants to live in isolated suburbia anymore. people want to live closer to downtown, so they save up to buy houses in the core, and sit on rental units in the core for years in order to do it.
the politicians don't get the logic because they don't understand the market. people buying homes don't want new houses out in the 905, they want old houses in the 416. these old houses in the core of the city have massive demand, so the price shoots up. there are cheaper houses out in the 905 that don't sell because nobody wants to live there.
if you want to expand the city, it would help to expand the downtown character of the city so people continue to feel like they're in the city, while moving further out of it. that's the only way to increase the size of the city, itself. this might mean more homes made of brick and less made out of pre-assembled factory instruction. it might mean expanding transit and widening sidewalks to make suburban areas feel more like downtown. it might mean more nightlife options, and less big box stores.
that might increase sales, but none of this actually solves the housing problem.
frankly, the city should be reversing the flow of people. instead of building urban sprawl that everybody is trying to get out of in order to get back downtown, they should build large skyscrapers full of low-rent apartments on the edge of the city, moving tens of thousand of poor people to the outskirts of town and let the market react to that. people want out of suburbia. but if you build up in suburbia, it will feel less like suburbia. the residents of these buildings will build new communities and new cities around their structures, stores and other things will open, etc and then the property values will rise when the area urbanizes.
i've been watching them do this for years, now. twenty years, it seems. all politicians ever want to build or support building are cookie-cutter mcmansions in boring nowheresville, and they can't sell, and can't resell. the politicians need to get their head around the reality that they're out of touch with canadians, who want to live downtown.
the other thing is the question of livable condos and apartments downtown, and the government needs to intervene, because what the market is building is dorm rooms masquerading as condos. but it has to understand the market first.
i want every politician to make a pledge to try to understand what housing demand is before they commit to spending any more money on it.
it has been rent that has been out of control, not food, and this has an oversized effect on low income people like myself.
i've posted about fighting the rats and the junkies in here.
i got a big apartment for cheap. that's why. the rats are dead and the junkies are gone this week, at least legally. but it's been a half year of it.
my finances are ok, because i made the choices i made, which a lot of people couldn't or wouldn't make, or might not have had the choices to make.
i buy almost no junk food, and i've actually seen very little inflation here in the price of dairy, fruits and vegetables. some items are cheaper now than they used to be. none of my staple items have gone through the roof.
but i see how the price of some items in the store has gone up when i walk by them, too. prepared meals are up. meat is up. junk food is up. brand name cleaning supplies are way up.
i admit i'm annoyed by the price of toothpaste. that's about it.
...coffee. coffee is up. but that has to do with growing constraints from climate change and something that was actually happening anyways.
how about some math?
i think that a lot of people don't realize or understand that a dominant reason that groceries went up is that the minimum wage went up, which isn't some gotcha trick by the corporation, it's just a reflection of the reality that labour costs have gone up recently. a lot.
well, guess what?
city employees are going to be making close to twice minimum wage, on average.
it's an incoherent and stupid idea.
the city of toronto should drop the bullshit and just focus on opening food banks downtown.
the idea makes no economic sense.
i've already done this.
city run grocery stores should be expected to make groceries more expensive, not less expensive, because you're increasing labour costs by taking on government employees and because you're no longer operating at economies of scale. the premise that the idea is based on, which is that grocery stores are running a business model based on price gouging, is demonstrably false, or at least it is when it comes to actual groceries. regardless, the cost inputs to get a city to do this increase over a grocery store, they don't decrease.
it follows that the store is either going to be unable to compete with the private sector because the prices are too high, or they will mark everything down, take a loss, and pay for it with tax money, rendering the whole thing as a stupid, expensive, performative waste of time.
the money would be better spent on government food bank donations. while i don't think government should run grocery stores, i do think that governments should be running food banks, and it bothers me that this is left up to charity when it's something the state should clearly be doing, and doing better.
i don't generally support the death penalty and i agree that there are some problems with the character of this law. that said, i also understand that there's a minimal amount of space in israel, and the israelis are essentially trying to clear out the prisons.
i have a better idea.
why doesn't israel reach out to the russians and ask if they are willing to accept labourers sent to siberia?
the mistake iran is making is that it thinks it has some chance to win, but it's not exactly a mistake. it's mass suicide. if iran had any chance of success at all, it would be right to treat trump with contempt.
they'd rather die.
they think they're going to heaven.
it's like heaven's gate, or jonestown.
they're going to blow themselves up instead of negotiate, and trump is either too stupid or too senile to get it. but they're also running out of time, and the americans will be in there soon enough.
i just want to point out that this consistent posteuring by trump is extremely retarded:
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week that he was not sending ground troops to Iran, but added: "If I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you".
that kind of idiocy is going to get washington nuked.
it's exceedingly imperative that actors are predictable and rational. they will be destroyed, otherwise.
right now, it doesn't matter. but, if trump or any other president acted like that in a real war, it would generate an instant attack. nobody would spend the time trying to figure trump out, they'd just launch.
serious militaries don't tolerate retards that behave like that.
the idea that attacking a regime that just slaughtered 50,000 of it's own people is immoral speaks deeply to the pope's broken moral compass, and probably also to his latent anti-semitism. he's just about the last person i'd want to consult for moral clarity.
in fact, i would expect the pope to get along splendidly with the mullahs, although i wouldn't want the mullahs to give the pope any bad ideas and would want to scurry him along.
i don't know why they don't just get rid of the sonofabitch. what's the point? let him blather away in a shack in tuscany.