Population and Housing

[danbrotherston]

Maybe I am wrong and the region can accommodate 300,000 people in shoebox towers in the downtowns or at various midrise infill projects that take years to build due to nimby protests. In the mean time I am glad I got into the housing market a couple years ago, because prices will probably continue to skyrocket in this region due to the artificial constraint.

So, the choice is single-family housing sprawl into the farmlands, with more car-centric transportation, or everyone living in a shoebox?

We are talking about a 30-year projection. There is no need to have housing for 300,000 more people this year or even in 10 years. 300,000 people is probably around 110,000 housing units, maybe only 100,000, given the current average household size of 2.9, and some people living in shared accommodations. That's around 3,600 housing units per year.

Let's assume 1,200 single-family/semi-detached houses, 1,200 in townhome/low-rise developments and 1,200 in mid-rise/high-rise developments, each per year. That's maybe 30-40 townhome/low-rise projects (depending on the size mix) and 5-10 mid-rise/high-rise projects, again depending on the mix. Averages for 30 years, lower in the near future and higher in the 2040s. Those numbers are really not stunningly high.

How many acres of land does it take to put 1,200 single family homes? That development pattern seems disastrous to me.

We already have more than enough single family housing in the region, there is huge unmet demand for other forms, I'd rather see a 20 to 10 to 1: 2,300 midrise, 1,200 highrise, and 120 low rise homes per year.

That being said, no matter how you break it down, I think those numbers are exceptionally high compared with what is being built right now. How many townhome projects are we doing per year? I wouldn't think we're even close to that number. Even high rises would only be just barely hitting those numbers I think, and we consider this a "massive building boom".

I think the fundamental problem is that for decades (almost everyone alive and vocal right now) building has been mostly sprawl which is largely invisible. Which means all of a sudden when we are doing infil people think OMG a building boom. When really, there isn't that much being built.

Edit: Just to add some math, the smallest average lot size I was able to find was around 0.14 acres. While our new lots may be significantly smaller, we also need to account for roads and drainage, so I'd consider that a reasonable estimate. That means we would be consuming 1.5 square km in sprawl per year to build 2,500 homes. I think that is disastrous.