High Canada immigration, good for .ca? (1 Viewing)

In Kitchener-Waterloo.....

Any guesses why the guy in the house is selling?

Would you buy that house?

No skinny dipping at night there anymore.

rlm said:

It just sucks when you invest in something, a lifestyle and a major financial investment, and then you watch it get devalued around you courtesy of the gov't changing the rules on you. Not sure if you're old enough yet to have dropped 7+ figures on your dream place, but once you do, you will know exactly what we're talking about. And of course politicians would never approve zoning changes, homeless shelters, injection sites, etc, in their neighbourhoods!

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Is your dream place located next to a major transit station in an area that's already been congested for the past five years? Where this development is recommended is cities like Brampton and Mississauga, not some BC ski town with land as far as the eye can see.

Immigration plays a huge part in the housing crisis, but so does NIMBYism.

rlm said:

And of course politicians would never approve zoning changes, homeless shelters, injection sites, etc, in their neighbourhoods!

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That's for sure and you can bet that the ultra-affluent areas will mysteriously be exempted from these multi-house zoning changes.

mcm said:

Where this development is recommended is cities like Brampton and Mississauga, not some BC ski town with land as far as the eye can see.

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Wrong. These zoning changes are taking place across Canada and ironically, the housing plans I posted were found on a site from a small city in BC - I forget exactly which one I found it at, but it was either Prince George or Victoria, both of which are under 100K.

And your "close to transit" requirement is also incorrect, as the Liberals stipulated a 4-6 mini-house design in areas WITHOUT nearby bus or rail/subway transit, and a recommendation of 8 mini-houses per lot for those with transit access.

You should read up about this stuff.

P.S. If they pulled this multi-house scam in Brampton, the entire city would be in permanent gridlock.

Here's the link and it was from Victoria:

New standardized designs will help build more homes quicker | BC Gov News

It's a bit different from what is coming to Ontario, as it states "will allow three to four units on land currently zoned for single-family homes and duplexes, and as many as six units near bus stops" when in Ontario it will allow up to 8 multi-homes per lot with bus transit nearby.

mcm said:

Immigration plays a huge part in the housing crisis, but so does NIMBYism.

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Well you convince Trudeau to lower immigration rates to reasonable numbers (100K per year is the most common recommendation, with no 60-100 year-old relatives skimming in under "family reunification") and I'll get hard at work lowering the incidences of NIMBYism.

DomainRecap said:

And your "close to transit" requirement is also incorrect, as the Liberals stipulated a 4-6 mini-house design in areas WITHOUT nearby bus or rail/subway transit, and a recommendation of 8 mini-houses per lot for those with transit access.

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I said the government is prioritizing projects planned around public transit hubs. Brampton, the city that received $114 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund, made it clear that all multiplexes must be built within 800 metres of transit.

Please do not put words in my mouth.

mcm said:

Please do not put words in my mouth.

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Well, you seem to be off on your own conversation that doesn't link to anything I've posted concerning "existing one house lots being rezoned for up to 8 mini-houses", but you seem to be having a good time.

And that's the important thing.

It's also pretty obvious you're from Toronto (I used to live there too) where parts of this stupid plan might actually work, as you've got some serious tunnel vision on what this "plan" truly represents to the rest of Canada, especially smaller cities like Kitchener or Victoria.

I think I'm done here, but it might be fun to revisit this thread in 5-10 years to see if Canada is a better or worse place to live. I'm pretty confident it's going to be the latter.

DomainRecap said:

Well, you seem to be off on your own conversation that doesn't link to anything I've posted concerning "existing one house lots being rezoned for up to 8 mini-houses", but you seem to be having a good time.

And that's the important thing.

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You say this but link to an article that parrots what I'm saying here

Since we're on the topic of housing, I must ask, as I know some of you have children around my age (mid-twenties): Do you truly think they have a shot at homeownership, or is the plan to let them live with you forever?

I take occupancy in March. Maybe then I'll adopt that "I've got mine, screw you" mentality.

mcm said:

Since we're on the topic of housing, I must ask, as I know some of you have children around my age (mid-twenties): Do you truly think they have a shot at homeownership, or is the plan to let them live with you forever?

I take occupancy in March. Maybe then I'll adopt that "I've got mine, screw you" mentality.

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Well, I think they do have a shot at home ownership. My step daughter is mid 30's with a spouse, they're successful, both work, combined income probably $300K+, have one kid, bought a starter half duplex, then last year upgraded to a nice and reasonably priced house that suits their needs. I think they'll be fine. My daughter is mid 20's with a serious boyfriend, they both work, he bought a starter apartment/condo and while it's definitely going to be harder (because they live in a less affordable market than the step-daughter does), I think they'll be fine too over the long run. She's lived at home for 2 years after graduating but I get the feeling she's planning to move out in the coming months. No pressure from us, she's just deciding on her own. Her work is only 10 minutes from us, so she really had no real motivation to move out until she got a serious boyfriend.

But the question is, do you just allow historically high immigration to continue when it seriously impacts affordability? While there are more factors than just immigration (airbnbs, foreign absentee ownership, etc), the housing market can only respond so fast. If your bathtub is overflowing, you don't start grabbing buckets and towels first, you shut off the tap first. Maybe if you're 3 years old you don't think of that, but any adult would. We need some adult supervision in the gov't again.

I think most of us would agree that immigration is definitely a good thing for many reasons, and even necessary. But yes, it does seem the numbers are maybe too big and I have to wonder about the distribution of those numbers. I think some way of ensuring immigrants get equally spread out across all provinces and communities is important too, thus allowing for a more subtle impact on resources.

Technically I'm an immigrant too, but coming from the states I guess you'd say I'm not a visible immigrant and it doesn't really feel like much of a change so that I don't even really feel like an immigrant would. Other than having to show I was married to a Canadian, had a employable degree and enough $$ in the bank to live off of, moving to Canada wasn't otherwise all that different than moving from one state to another.

And here's a thought. I'd like to think that citizenship is a privilege and not a right. There are a lot of lazy crap citizens that only want to abuse society, not contribute or at least peacefully exist within it. I'd LOVE to make a trade for immigrants that do want to contribute. Unfortunately we can't yank citizenship - but maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if we could! Not sure where we'd send them though, haha. Too bad we can't just send them to Australia like GB once did, lol.

And congrats @mcm on your new place!!

MapleDots said:

In Kitchener-Waterloo.....

Any guesses why the guy in the house is selling?

Would you buy that house?

No skinny dipping at night there anymore.

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Ouch, that's brutal. Its too easy to have looked at the property, saw all single family zoning and plans all around, thought no problem, lets buy! Then a few years later, wham, the local gov't decides they need cheaper high density housing so they rezone next door and you get screwed. Around the corner from my house, the park we were promised which was in the community plan got rezoned as another 6 lots - at least they were single-family lots still though - but still not what we were promised either.

I bet these multi unit developments on a single lot bring in more taxes to the government than building a single house. They can now 4x and 6x the tax if they go by unit. Taxes are one of the biggest costs when building a residence, but don’t look to government to lower those even though they say they want more affordable housing.

domains said:

I bet these multi unit developments on a single lot bring in more taxes to the government than building a single house. They can now 4x and 6x the tax if they go by unit. Taxes are one of the biggest costs when building a residence, but don’t look to government to lower those even though they say they want more affordable housing.

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For sure - its all about taxes and I'm not even sure some of these municipalities even give a crap about immigration, as long as they think there's enough demand to sell higher density housing (i.e. more taxes per expenses), then they can be more profitable and justify more raises. In fact I think they measure taxes and expenses (paving, maintenance, etc) per foot of curb. So all that matters is getting a higher tax/expense ratio per foot of curb. And density is how they do that.

rlm said:

But the question is, do you just allow historically high immigration to continue when it seriously impacts affordability? While there are more factors than just immigration (airbnbs, foreign absentee ownership, etc), the housing market can only respond so fast. If your bathtub is overflowing, you don't start grabbing buckets and towels first, you shut off the tap first. Maybe if you're 3 years old you don't think of that, but any adult would. We need some adult supervision in the gov't again.

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I'm not saying our country's immigration isn't out of control; that's not why I initially replied to this thread. Even if we were to halt immigration tomorrow, there would still be a decade-long housing crisis. Knowing this, should we continue to kick this can down the road until our immigration problem is solved?

Also, can we make a liberal grievance thread already?

Canada is becoming a cesspool of garbage, can you guess where most of the immigrants are coming from? Even if you find an apartment its been destroyed by 10 immigrants crammed into a two bedroom.

Eric said:

Canada is becoming a cesspool of garbage, can you guess where most of the immigrants are coming from? Even if you find an apartment its been destroyed by 10 immigrants crammed into a two bedroom.

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7301714540771806510

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Your Comment Speaks Volumes!

Eric said:

Even if you find an apartment its been destroyed by 10 immigrants crammed into a two bedroom.

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That's because it takes the wages of 10 immigrants to pay our insane rental prices.

mcm said:

I'm not saying our country's immigration isn't out of control; that's not why I initially replied to this thread. Even if we were to halt immigration tomorrow, there would still be a decade-long housing crisis. Knowing this, should we continue to kick this can down the road until our immigration problem is solved?

Also, can we make a liberal grievance thread already?

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No, you are right, there needs to be a multi-pronged fix for sure. Stopping foreign investment into Canadian real estate that then sits idle is a good start that I know they're starting to address in BC. However, its really hard for the gov't to turn down free money - that's why there's so much money laundering that goes on in BC casinos that the gov't is happy to turn a blind eye to. I think a lot of asian money makes its way to Vancouver. I think that's also a big factor here at least.

Regarding city planning - I find this video by an ex-colleague (from Tucows) and friend of mine explains pretty well, why "car centric urban sprawl" doesn't work for cities and why the taxes don't continue to cover the cost of maintaining the infrastructure.


Edit: I should add that I've grown up in a suburb of Berlin and have almost always lived in suburbs, usually in a townhouse or detached home. In the GTA I lived in Mississauga and Oakville.