[ad_1]
There’s corruption, and then there’s what Doug Ford’s government is doing in Greenbelt. After promising (and promising, and promising — as many as 18 times between 2018 and 2021) to Ontario voters that “we won’t touch the Greenbelt,” his government has done just that with a recently announced land swap, one which will see parcels of land within the Greenbelt exchanged for those outside its boundaries. That trade just so happens to benefit a group of real estate developers with ties to his Ontario PC Party — including one that scooped up a piece of land in the proposed swap zone just two months ago.
This isn’t the first time the Ford government has made decisions about the Greenbelt that seem to disproportionately benefit a small group of developers — who, by the way, are also major donors to his Ontario PC Party. Count National Observer of Canada and the Star in Toronto reported in 2021, the government’s plan to build Highway 413 and connect York, Peel and Halton regions to the northwest of the Greater Toronto Area will threaten environmentally sensitive areas and chew up land designated as part of the protected Greenbelt. It also promised to help some wealthy real estate developers make a killing on the land they had accumulated.
“The group of [eight] the developers own 39 properties covering 3,300 acres conservatively valued at nearly half a billion dollars, according to land registry documents,” wrote Emma McIntosh, Noor Javed and Steve Buist. ” The value of those lands could increase dramatically if the highway is built and residential, commercial and industrial development is allowed to spread along the route.” Those developers, they say, also contributed a combined $813,000 to the Ontario PC Party since 2014.
Now, it seems, the Ford government is at it again – with some of the same players, no less. The DeGasperis family, featured prominently in the Observer/Star reporting, is the single biggest beneficiary from the Ford government’s latest foray into the Greenbelt. They even borrowed $100 million in 2021 (at a reported interest rate of 21 percent) to buy property in Vaughan that includes protected land. That land, it is fair to assume, is now worth many multiples of what they paid.
The Ford government, which cleared 15 parcels of land totaling 7,400 acres as part of the “More Homes Built Fast Act 2022,” is trying to suggest it is part of its effort to reduce home prices and increase affordability. But carving out the Greenbelt won’t really help address, much less solve, Ontario’s housing shortage. The 50,000 homes to be built on these newly opened lands will be anything but affordable, given their proximity to the Greenbelt, and will do little to apply downward pressure on prices. Instead, they will make the developers who own those lands in the Ford government’s decision richer than they already are — and they already are a lot richer.
Given Ford’s large government majority, and his personal immunity from embarrassment, it’s likely that the stench of these sweetheart deals will turn him around. He could, if he wanted to, take those lands, pay the developers who bought them what they were worth before the June election and put them up for an open bidding process. At least then the taxpayer gets the full amount.
But Ontarians should also consider how Ford won that majority, and the role they may have played in helping facilitate it. Housing was the central issue of the recent provincial election, and Ford sold Ontarians on his promise to solve it. A big part of that is his plan to deal with the kind of NIMBYism that has made it nearly impossible to add meaningful density to most parts of Toronto. “NIMBYism is a significant and persistent barrier to housing affordability everywhere,” says the 2022 report from Ontario’s Housing Affordability Task Force. “We cannot allow the opposition and politicization of individual housing projects to prevent us from meeting the needs of all Ontarians.”
What people are reading
And yet, for the most part, that’s exactly what happened. For all its recent growth over the past two decades, Toronto’s housing stock is still dominated by single-family homes. As a result, while comparable cities such as London and New York have more than 11,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, Toronto has less than half that number. When you combine mass migration from other parts of the country and the world with stubbornly stagnant housing stock and extremely low interest rates, you effectively mix an explosive cocktail — one that has driven housing prices higher over the past few years. year.
In that kind of environment, people — especially young buyers and renters who carry that explosiveness — will look to almost anything in search of a solution. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say, and Ford is more than happy to take advantage of that desperation. He blamed his decision to carve out the Greenbelt on “the inaction of previous governments who didn’t want to take bold steps to build housing.”
The only thing brave about Ford’s decision, mind you, is the way it suffocates the public’s nose with the smell it does. But the reluctance of homeowners and their neighborhood associations to provide truly bold housing ideas in the past, especially those that threaten the equity they have built up in their own homes, has led to us at this point. Now, the choice is clear: either we address the growing desperation among renters, youth and other non-homeowners and offer some real sacrifices, or someone else will do it for us.
[ad_2]
Source link
