864-872 King St W | 55, 44, 38, 16 fl | proposed

[Silie]

Tend to agree that overlooking a cemetery isn't the worst. The units on the north and west faces of the building will fare no worse than the apartments along Moore and Union, and I don't think anyone's had problems there. The rent vs. own becomes moot, though, if the rents are "upscale luxury living," with affordability based on 80 percent of market. If only households with incomes above $90,000 a year can afford units that just barely accommodate two people, not much differentiates that development from others in the neighbourhood. Yet again, I wonder if any thought has been given at the regional planning level to the need for service workers (food, retail, cleaning, delivery/transport, shelf-stockers, etc.,) to maintain that upscale luxury standard. I have family members who have worked involuntary part-time overnights for years with a major grocery store, and between them earn about one full-time minimum-wage income. If wages don't even allow for a monthly GRT pass, how can the people who really keep things going live here?

I think it has been discussed elsewhere that there is a disconnect between the Regional planning tools and goals and what Provincial legislation actually allows the Region and Cities to proscribe.  If the Region and Cities were to suggest that they would build enough housing so that everyone who wanted housing to suit their needs within the current urban boundary if only the Province would either provide the funding or give the Region and Cities the funding tools to raise the capital to build enough housing, I doubt that the Province would do so.  Four decades ago, the federal government, provinces and municipalities were actively involved in building a variety of public housing and social housing. Through a series of cutbacks since the mid-1980s, virtually all construction was turned over the private sector who generally chase profits over the actual needs of the community.  The result is either shoebox condos, increasingly larger suburban homes on smaller lots, or "luxury rentals",  all of which leave gaps in the housing pool.  Some non-profit groups, such as Habitat for Humanity, have been able to continue to build housing, but nothing on the level of what could happen if the federal and provincial governments were to actually return to building public housing.

Oh, don't even get me started. I've been a member and board member of a couple of housing co-ops, before and after they were sucked into the maw of the Social Housing Reform Plan as a way to compensate for governmental abandonment of public/social housing. That has been disastrous: co-op and social housing don't work well, since members have assumed responsibility and participation in their community, and morale takes a hit when people who haven't got a clue about co-ops are placed in one and assured by caseworkers that the "rules" don't apply to them. As far as I'm concerned, the private sector has had its turn and really needs to be out of housing altogether. We have seen and are living the fallout. In the meantime, it seems like people have been so divided and discouraged by the housing market that there really isn't the awareness of or ambition to form co-ops and tenants' unions (except as an after-the-fact response to renoviction efforts). Which is a crying shame, because more than ever, this is the time for a massive push toward public and non-market housing, and political/social support of Habitat for Humanity. Anyway, I apologize for pulling this thread off course - back to our regular programming