Housing shortfall, costs and affordability

[mastermind]

By just looking at the minimum wage vs the cost of housing in Ontario you can see how absurd the cost really is.


2023 minimum wage: $15.50
2013 minimum wage: $10.25

2023 (January) average house cost: $798835
2013 average house cost: $391820

Minimum wage has gone up by 151% in 10 years meanwhile the cost of housing on average has gone up by 204%.

So if someone was working minimum wage in 2013 they would need to work for over 18 years to just pay for the average home, that's not even considering all of the other expenses like food, utilities etc. In 2023 that number jumps to 25 years. Obviously there's so many underlying reasons that cause the mess we're in now when it comes to housing affordability but NIMBYs like these people are half the problem. Take for example that Canada has the lowest housing stock of all the G7 countries (424 units per 1000 people) just to get to the average of 471 Canada needs to add over 1.8 million units. When you break it down based upon the 10 largest CMAs the worst for housing per 1000 people is Toronto with 360 per 1000 people, second on that list is KWC with 376 per 1000 people. So KWC is in a deficit of nearly 100 units per 1000 people in comparison to the G7 average. In comparison to Canada we need nearly 50 more units per 1000 people which means 32000 more units. For context Duke Tower has 494 units so we'd need to build 65 more to make up for the defecit KWC has to the rest of Canada which is completely insane. With our region being among the fastest growing CMAs in Canada (10.1%) (Oakville and Brampton while not their own CMAs are the only faster growing regions with a similar population) the number of units we need is only going to keep on growing. So all these NIMBYs just need to suck it up and deal with the fact that KWC is not a small city anymore otherwise they're just going to keep on screwing over the younger generation just like they've been doing by destroying other projects which would add much needed units (VPNA destroying the Mill and Queen development for example, the decrease in height of the buildings behind Block Line station)

Source for the housing stock information: https://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/about/e...2021-.html

I agree with the numbers.  Everything I've read echoes what ZEBuilder said here, and if we really are that far behind in housing then maybe any unused giant parking lot is a great place for some.