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"LRTs displace all the poor people"?
#91
The rents will be substantially lower in areas E of Cedar St or so, but a location on King or Charles would still be very much accessible for transit.
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#92
Pity the Hope Campus never panned out. So many of them would be settled in newly built offices with little redevelopment potential in the foreseeable future.
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#93
The land is still there. And there are more development opportunities on the Borden-King-Ottawa-Charles block.
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#94
Don't forget the large lot on Charles south of Stirling (next to KW Counselling).
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#95
Assuming the land value hasn't already gone up too much due to LRT proximity.
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#96
(04-10-2017, 05:21 PM)DHLawrence Wrote: Assuming the land value hasn't already gone up too much due to LRT proximity.

https://www.realtor.ca/Commercial/Vacant...rio-N2G2N1
1/3 to 1/10 what land cost in the core.
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#97
When a social agency's primary mission is to help people in need, we really need to include in that calculation things like the time it takes out of a person's day to have their home be in an apartment in south kitchener, one essential service be out on Victoria St. N, another be at the Boardwalk or beyond, and suddenly you've made it such that these people have no hope of even taking advantage of the services "available" to them. We've even had to create entire bus routes just to get people to existing "cheap" social services facilities, and this is beyond nonsense, a far bigger waste of money than paying for more sensibly located land.
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#98
Who was proposing to move social services or NGOs to Victoria N or to the Boardwalk? We were discussing downtown/midtown locations.
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#99
Not us, but that ones federal/provincial/municipal governments have control over. In my view, we should be working with agencies to find them spaces that make sense from a transportation perspective, as we as a city benefit or suffer when our residents in need aren't able to get what they need because of changes to the city that push things around. It seems ridiculous to me that we create and pay for a band-aid bus (stub-)route to access some of these services, but don't seem to consider offering support to help them stay in place, or at least in better places.
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I guess another thing to consider, transportation wise, is what modes of transportation people are using to get to these services. If it is generally foot/bike/bus, then putting something at the end of a 30 minute bus line can have the same effect as moving a car-centric service two towns over. Is there an ideal travel time to get from one place to another, much the same as there is the ideal travel time between home and workplace before someone moves either work or home to be closer to the other?
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And that's how my mother got out of jury duty years ago before she had her licence. She was in the Kitchener jury pool (not sure why it wasn't ours), but living in Cambridge pre-GRT meant the only way to get to the courthouse without taking a cab was walking to Sportsworld and getting the bus.

I suspect that historically that has also played a part in the complaints about services moving to Kitchener from Cambridge. Even with GRT and iXpress, it's still nearly an hour's ride from Ainslie from Charles Street if you don't have a car, and that's in good traffic.
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Interesting article that touches on a renovation at 270 Spadina Rd E, "Woodside Terraces":

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/869...-approval/

Quote:Workers stripped the building down to bare concrete before installing floor-to-ceiling windows and new electrical, plumbing, heating and cooling systems. The 53 multiple-bedroom apartments were divided into 103 suites with quartz countertops, plank floors, contemporary bathrooms and kitchens.
...
Workers had to remove mould from many units. There was extensive water damage in others.

This is what people mean when they complain about gentrification. And it really is a shining example the double-edged sword.
Those 53 units were clearly in disrepair, and not a healthy place to live in, but the 103 units that replaced them are now too small for families, and likely cost almost the same in rent.

The article connects this to the Charles-Madison Drewlo development, which has agreed to have affordable housing as a component (managed by Kitchener Housing), which will help offset the displacement. But this is something that we will see time and time again. As downtown continues to heat up as a location, we're going to see more and more displacement. Some people are relatively content living in a cheap slum, but their options are going to become more and more limited with each renovation project.

I doubt that inclusionary zoning-esque deals like the city's with Drewlo will be able to cover the gap. If only the government would get back into the business of building housing.
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(06-25-2018, 09:28 AM)Markster Wrote: Interesting article that touches on a renovation at 270 Spadina Rd E, "Woodside Terraces":

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/869...-approval/

Quote:Workers stripped the building down to bare concrete before installing floor-to-ceiling windows and new electrical, plumbing, heating and cooling systems. The 53 multiple-bedroom apartments were divided into 103 suites with quartz countertops, plank floors, contemporary bathrooms and kitchens.
...
Workers had to remove mould from many units. There was extensive water damage in others.

This is what people mean when they complain about gentrification. And it really is a shining example the double-edged sword.
Those 53 units were clearly in disrepair, and not a healthy place to live in, but the 103 units that replaced them are now too small for families, and likely cost almost the same in rent.

The article connects this to the Charles-Madison Drewlo development, which has agreed to have affordable housing as a component (managed by Kitchener Housing), which will help offset the displacement. But this is something that we will see time and time again. As downtown continues to heat up as a location, we're going to see more and more displacement. Some people are relatively content living in a cheap slum, but their options are going to become more and more limited with each renovation project.

I doubt that inclusionary zoning-esque deals like the city's with Drewlo will be able to cover the gap. If only the government would get back into the business of building housing.

I actually don't know much at all about government built housing, but I wouldn't really think it's the best, or even a good option.

The government is might be too tempted to build it on the cheap, using cheap inaccessible land, with low quality construction leading to the issues noted in the Spadina building.

Also, creating a concentration of affordable housing isn't as good a policy as spreading it out, it's better for the area, and for the individuals.

I have no real idea how this is done though, so those fears may be naive.
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A good nearby example is Regent Park in Toronto. In the 50s and 60s, the entire district was built as low-income, government-owned housing; this concentration of low income had the now-well-known effects of high crime and poor living standards. Over the past decade or so all the old buildings have been demolished and a new neighbourhood is replacing it; this is a mix of subsidized and rental units, built by a group of developers. It's working out far better, so far.
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Indeed, there are lessons to be learned from 50+ years ago.
But I don't think that building no public housing needs to be the obvious takeaway from that.

In the case of Regent Park, the rebuild is a success, but it's almost entirely just replacing existing public housing at a 1-1 rate. It is just treading water.
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