General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[bravado]

Bold Action: continuing to add more costs to medium and high density housing in a generational housing crisis 

How so?

Forcing developers to under-price one specific type of housing just means we will get even higher costs passed down to customers OR we will just get less of it.

Forcing a 50 unit apartment to sell a portion for less but allowing a 50 unit detached home subdivision to sell all 50 at full price just means you’re going to get more houses and fewer apartments. Our cities seem to think that developers are somehow not motivated by costs.

[tomh009]

How so?

Forcing developers to under-price one specific type of housing just means we will get even higher costs passed down to customers OR we will just get less of it.

Forcing a 50 unit apartment to sell a portion for less but allowing a 50 unit detached home subdivision to sell all 50 at full price just means you’re going to get more houses and fewer apartments. Our cities seem to think that developers are somehow not motivated by costs.

At the peak, 5% of the units would need to be affordable. So, let's assume for the affordable units, the rent or selling price will cover only half the costs (in most cases it will cover more than that). Based on that, 95% of the buyers will need to cover 97.5% of the costs. A 2.6% uplift in prices is certainly not massive, and will not price many people out of the market. The affordable units will be available for those struggling with today's housing prices in any case.

I would personally be happy to pay 2.6% more for my next real estate purchase if it enables 5% affordable housing.

That said, they really should apply this type of inclusionary zoning to new lower-density subdivisions as well.

[danbrotherston]

Bold Action: continuing to add more costs to medium and high density housing in a generational housing crisis 

How so?

AFAIK:

They are requiring medium and high density housing developers to include affordable housing (a cost).

They are not requiring developers of low density sprawl (the most subsidized form of housing) to similarly include affordable housing.

I have no doubt that most on council are doing this because they want to help, but this is an obvious economic disincentive.

[danbrotherston]

Forcing developers to under-price one specific type of housing just means we will get even higher costs passed down to customers OR we will just get less of it.

Forcing a 50 unit apartment to sell a portion for less but allowing a 50 unit detached home subdivision to sell all 50 at full price just means you’re going to get more houses and fewer apartments. Our cities seem to think that developers are somehow not motivated by costs.

At the peak, 5% of the units would need to be affordable. So, let's assume for the affordable units, the rent or selling price will cover only half the costs (in most cases it will cover more than that). Based on that, 95% of the buyers will need to cover 97.5% of the costs. A 2.6% uplift in prices is certainly not massive, and will not price many people out of the market. The affordable units will be available for those struggling with today's housing prices in any case.

I would personally be happy to pay 2.6% more for my next real estate purchase if it enables 5% affordable housing.

That said, they really should apply this type of inclusionary zoning to new lower-density subdivisions as well.

I think the point is that this is a 2.6% increase in the cost of medium and high density housing relative to low density housing.

Even if it is small, it's one of many many subsidies which do this...

[IronDev]

Forcing developers to under-price one specific type of housing just means we will get even higher costs passed down to customers OR we will just get less of it.

Forcing a 50 unit apartment to sell a portion for less but allowing a 50 unit detached home subdivision to sell all 50 at full price just means you’re going to get more houses and fewer apartments. Our cities seem to think that developers are somehow not motivated by costs.

At the peak, 5% of the units would need to be affordable. So, let's assume for the affordable units, the rent or selling price will cover only half the costs (in most cases it will cover more than that). Based on that, 95% of the buyers will need to cover 97.5% of the costs. A 2.6% uplift in prices is certainly not massive, and will not price many people out of the market. The affordable units will be available for those struggling with today's housing prices in any case.

I would personally be happy to pay 2.6% more for my next real estate purchase if it enables 5% affordable housing.

That said, they really should apply this type of inclusionary zoning to new lower-density subdivisions as well.

Unclear where you got your numbers from. The policy does not allow for the affordable units to be sold at an affordable rate, and the rental rate does not even come close to covering half the cost of the unit. Including lifecyle ownership, these affordable units are costing over 100% of the cost to build.

Generally, the cost divided by the total number of market units is still digestible. But stack it onto the insane amount of fees (that are always increasing) that new housing is burdened with it is no surprise why we're in this cost crisis. Over 30% of the cost of a new condo is fees. 

The conversation should be focused on landowners paying higher property taxes so that the city is not reliant on taxing new housing. It is wildly unequitable, and these policies have clearly been coopted by NIMBYs trying to keep their property values inflated.

[ac3r]

Kitchener properties to be designated under Ontario Heritage Act

Council approved the designation of the following Kitchener properties under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act.

60 Victoria Street North

Weird choice to designate this as a heritage building...I don't see what is special about this one, though I haven't looked at the report. But considering it has had so many modifications over the years - particularly the bricking up of many of the original windows - it seems like a strange choice when the originality has been lost.

[the_conestoga_guy]

Kitchener properties to be designated under Ontario Heritage Act

Council approved the designation of the following Kitchener properties under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act.

60 Victoria Street North

Weird choice to designate this as a heritage building...I don't see what is special about this one, though I haven't looked at the report. But considering it has had so many modifications over the years - particularly the bricking up of many of the original windows - it seems like a strange choice when the originality has been lost.

I agree, so I dug into the Heritage Committee docs to see if there was more info. From page 64/211 of the link:
https://pub-kitchener.escribemeetings.co...ntId=16384

We are seeking support and expertise recommendations from the Kitchener Heritage Committee to preserve the original 1913 section at 60 Victoria Avenue, Kitchener, for adaptive re-use. Additionally, we require recommendations for the potential demolition of the remaining addition(s) to facilitate the progress of the Kitchener Central Transit Hub project.

There is an image that shows the different sections of the building on page 58. In this case, they're just hoping to preserve the section closest King St, and would like to be consulted on any future modifications to the building. I certainly hope that restoration work to the property would include replacing the windows with some that resemble the original ones. I really think that cleaning up this building (in addition to building the transit hub) will do a lot to improve the streetscape along this stretch. Now if we could only solve homelessness...

[danbrotherston]

Weird choice to designate this as a heritage building...I don't see what is special about this one, though I haven't looked at the report. But considering it has had so many modifications over the years - particularly the bricking up of many of the original windows - it seems like a strange choice when the originality has been lost.

I agree, so I dug into the Heritage Committee docs to see if there was more info. From page 64/211 of the link:
https://pub-kitchener.escribemeetings.co...ntId=16384

We are seeking support and expertise recommendations from the Kitchener Heritage Committee to preserve the original 1913 section at 60 Victoria Avenue, Kitchener, for adaptive re-use. Additionally, we require recommendations for the potential demolition of the remaining addition(s) to facilitate the progress of the Kitchener Central Transit Hub project.

There is an image that shows the different sections of the building on page 58. In this case, they're just hoping to preserve the section closest King St, and would like to be consulted on any future modifications to the building. I certainly hope that restoration work to the property would include replacing the windows with some that resemble the original ones. I really think that cleaning up this building (in addition to building the transit hub) will do a lot to improve the streetscape along this stretch. Now if we could only solve homelessness...

At this point, nobody should give the heritage committee any credibility. Assuming they're acting in bad faith (or deluding themselves to achieve their NIMBY goals, which is same difference) is a good heuristic.

[ac3r]

Ah okay, that makes more sense. The original building is quite nice indeed. If they can fix that up and restore it to a more original condition, then integrate it into the new train station, I think it would be really nice. I'd welcome preserving the addition too, if they could just fix up the brick and windows on it. While many on this forum think heritage preservation is annoying or even pointless in most cases, I'm a strong defender of it when warranted. I'd rather have a city that has a mixture of old and new, lest the entire place turns into some gentrified globalized homogenous wasteland where everything ends up looking the same.

Edit: Wow that heritage report just reminded me that there was an End of the Roll warehouse where that parking lot is. I completely forgot that existed.

[Acitta]

https://pub-kitchener.escribemeetings.co...ntId=16384

Today I learned after more than 22 years in Kitchener that "Huether" is properly pronounced "Heater" rather than "Hugh-thur".

I agree, so I dug into the Heritage Committee docs to see if there was more info. From page 64/211 of the link:
https://pub-kitchener.escribemeetings.co...ntId=16384

[tomh009]

At the peak, 5% of the units would need to be affordable. So, let's assume for the affordable units, the rent or selling price will cover only half the costs (in most cases it will cover more than that). Based on that, 95% of the buyers will need to cover 97.5% of the costs. A 2.6% uplift in prices is certainly not massive, and will not price many people out of the market. The affordable units will be available for those struggling with today's housing prices in any case.

I would personally be happy to pay 2.6% more for my next real estate purchase if it enables 5% affordable housing.

That said, they really should apply this type of inclusionary zoning to new lower-density subdivisions as well.

Unclear where you got your numbers from. The policy does not allow for the affordable units to be sold at an affordable rate, and the rental rate does not even come close to covering half the cost of the unit. Including lifecyle ownership, these affordable units are costing over 100% of the cost to build.

Generally, the cost divided by the total number of market units is still digestible. But stack it onto the insane amount of fees (that are always increasing) that new housing is burdened with it is no surprise why we're in this cost crisis. Over 30% of the cost of a new condo is fees. 

The conversation should be focused on landowners paying higher property taxes so that the city is not reliant on taxing new housing. It is wildly unequitable, and these policies have clearly been coopted by NIMBYs trying to keep their property values inflated.

So, you are saying that affordable rent would be less than half market rent? 1BR for well under $1000, then? I have admittedly not seen how they define "affordable" here. But even if the affordable units are $800 and the market rent ones $2000, that's still only a 3.2% uplift, making that $2000/month 1BR unit $2065. If the $65/month is too much, how do we get affordable units built? I have not seen any other realistic solutions, either from the municipalities (who don't really want to be in the housing business) or the private sector.

As for the balance between development charges and property taxes, that's another (political!) discussion, made more difficult by the high visibility of the property taxes. But shifting that would not inherently solve the issue of the lack of affordable housing.

[bravado]

Because we are unable to have a discussion about funding our cities equitably, we will keep taxing good development to death and then wringing our hands when the inevitable happens and we have a generational housing crisis.

We should be incentivizing good development, not adding more fees and exceptions and bad ideas on top of it. What a waste of political capital.

[ac3r]

Today I learned after more than 22 years in Kitchener that "Huether" is properly pronounced "Heater" rather than "Hugh-thur".

I wonder how they came up with that haha. In the German language, Huether isn't pronounced anything like "heater"...it's more like...hoo-tear? I guess it was probably just easier to say. I'm fluent in German but the pronunciation of things is still a challenge and I've always referred to it as "Hugh-thur" as well.

[tomh009]

Today I learned after more than 22 years in Kitchener that "Huether" is properly pronounced "Heater" rather than "Hugh-thur".

I wonder how they came up with that haha. In the German language, Huether isn't pronounced anything like "heater"...it's more like...hoo-tear? I guess it was probably just easier to say. I'm fluent in German but the pronunciation of things is still a challenge and I've always referred to it as "Hugh-thur" as well.

Most likely the original spelling is Hüther, which translates to a herder. It's the "y" sound that English doesn't have, as in fünf (five).

[ijmorlan]

Edit: Wow that heritage report just reminded me that there was an End of the Roll warehouse where that parking lot is. I completely forgot that existed.

And the retaining wall along the tracks is actually the back wall of End of the Roll (and before that, other warehouse uses presumably). I’m actually not clear on why they repaved the entire lot — a lot of it was covered with the concrete floor of End of the Roll. Why not just remove the roof and columns, leaving the floor as pavement and the back wall as retaining wall?