Population and Housing

[danbrotherston]

Condo developer plans to buy $1-billion worth of single-family houses in Canada for rentals: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business...houses-in/

Modern block-busting? If you buy up the neighbourhood, no one objects if you tear it down and build something bigger. Mind you, at today's prices, that *might* get you a 1,000 homes.

On a related note, what's the Region's plan for when we run out of water? Our groundwater supply is getting close to its limit. (Stantec report to the Region, 2015 PDF)  Currently the Region maintains a 20% surplus "supply gap."  According to the report linked here, by 2029, if anyone major source in our system goes offline (ie an accident, or technical failure), "Additional supply will be needed to be online prior to 2029 to increase total available supply".  By 2044, and if no new sources are added to the system, the supply gap will have disappeared. The 2015 Master Plan suggests that the Region might be able to extend our water supply to 2050 with some upgrades and new wells without needing drastic action. 

After 2050, a pipe to Lake Erie and introducing water reuse (ie reclaiming and reusing water on site and not dumping treated water into the Grand River) would be the only options to increase supply.

This report does not mention population predictions but I would wonder if the the current explosion in development has shortened the window to when we run out of local water.

The plan is and always has been reduction in usage. I'm pretty sure there's a new plan that has shown that the 2050 timeframe for a pipeline has now been pushed out beyond the forecasting horizon. Ultimately, our region has been a model for managing water use, and our per capita water consumption is relatively low for Ontario levels.