Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 13 November 2016

There is something surreal about watching a debate in York Regional Council about affordable housing.

It is a very clubby atmosphere and disagreements, where these exist, are expressed gently.

The members of the club are comfortably housed yet all around there is an unfolding housing crisis. The report before them describes the scale of the challenge.

New housing is unaffordable for many. New rental housing scarcely exists.

61 new private sector rental units were built in the whole of York Region in the last four years. Of these, 4 were completed last year and 7 in 2014.

The situation is dire.

The average resale price of a house in the Region rose by 103% between 2005 and 2015. Yet, over the same period, average hourly wages only rose by 18%. 

Going through the roof

The average price of a new single detached home is going through the roof. In 2015 it was a staggering $988,638. It is anyone's guess what the figure is today.

Last year, the maximum affordable ownership price (using the provincial definition) was $459,170 region-wide. Only 40% of all new housing was affordable and one bedroom condos made up over half of these "affordable" units.

Mayor Justin Altman, the self confessed quiet man from Whitchurch-Stouffville and a relatively new member of the club, laments that new houses are selling for $1.1-$1.3m in his patch. He can be nervous talking to the older and more experienced members. Now he is gabbling, firing a million questions at the bemused Chief Planner, Valerie Shuttleworth. Now Altman plaintively asks: what is to be done?

Do developers need incentives?

Newmarket's John Taylor switches the focus to rental where the numbers are "abysmally low". But, apparently, we are in a fortunate moment in time where we can nudge the market and the development industry into action. He says they are very close to doing it themselves - without incentives. But now he is warning us we have got to make sure we are not "over-incentivising".

Now he is wandering into the weeds, talking about rental related development charges (DCs). Why not consider a different rate for rental housing? We have one for hotels.

Valerie Shuttleworth, talking slowly and deliberately so as not to leave anyone behind, is not sure DCs can be structured by tenure. But perhaps they can do it by apartment size? This is a rare admission of ignorance and is all the sweeter for it. Ms Shuttleworth has perfected the art of talking down to people, perhaps without realising she is doing so. Earlier she apologises for using the word "decile" as if we would all be left bewildered.

Now she looks to Bruce Macgregor, the Chief Administrator, who agrees the Council should be able to incentivise rental.

Land Prices and Land Supply

Richmond Hill's Vito Spatafora wonders aloud how it is possible to get more affordable housing when land prices are rising in the corridors.

Yes. Perhaps land supply is the problem. Mayor Steve Pellegrini from the rural fastness of King certainly thinks so. He tells us whole swathes of land in the Greenbelt and in the Oak Ridges Moraine are out of bounds, putting pressure on what's left.  

Gino Rosati from Vaughan says where demand is high and supply is low the number of people who fall into the "can't afford" category will grow. I see people nodding their heads as if they've heard something new and profound.

Tippy-toe

Shuttleworth senses controversy lies ahead and says she will "tippy toe" into the land supply issue. She tells her audience the Region is required to have a 10 year supply of land designated for residential use and a three year supply serviced for residential development. Land supply, she says, may be a factor. We may not have an "over supply". And homes are bigger now. (True. But who are the people buying these gigantic mansions?)

Up on the screen we see a list of potential incentives to get developers building what is needed rather than what they can sell for the biggest profit. There are grants and loans and deferrals and exemptions from taxes and charges and fees of one kind or another.

But do the developers need these inducements?

In a telling intervention, the Region's treasurer Bill Hughes reminds us that development charges represent less than 5% of the cost of new residential build in York Region. In 2012 when development charges were raised, developers predicted this would lead to a slump in new building. Hughes says it doubled.

A little less conversation, a little more action

Vaughan's Mayor, Maurizio Bevilacqua, ruffles feathers when he says the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and he fears for the future. He asks Shuttleworth to "bring the future to the present". What will 2026 look like in terms of housing options?

Shuttleworth says future housing trends are the hardest of all to predict. We rely on the market. The developers build our communities.

The Region's Director of Strategies and Partnerships, Lisa Gonzales, says the development industry is building what people are buying. The fact is many people can't afford to buy what is being built now. Shuttleworth says people like teachers and nurses and even urban planners are being shut out of the market. To gentle amusement she excludes herself from the list.

Bevilacqua says a big bang is needed - not endless incrementalism. The development community, who are doing very well thank you, is absent. They are not coming up with ideas. They've got to be creative and put things on the table.

"There are too many conversations on process."

Naturally lit product

Markham's well paid Mayor, Frank Scarpitti, calls for more "ground level naturally lit product". This is the weird language senior club members use to describe what the rest of us call houses. Secondary suites (or basement apartments) are not the solution. He says businesses need people to live close to where they work.

In an astonishing break with the Club's unwritten code of conduct, Taylor directly challenges Scarpitti, dismissing his comments about basement apartments, saying they are "absolutely crucial" in Newmarket and have been for many years. He tells us they represent a big piece of affordable housing in the Town.

Taylor is more energised than I've seen him in a long time. He looks at Bevilacqua for support and tells him his insights are important. We learn from Taylor there were 5,500 people on the waiting list for social housing ten years ago. Now there are 13,600.

"We need rental housing and we can make progress on this file ourselves."

212 Davis Drive

Now he is bathing in the glow of the new rental apartment block going up at 212 Davis Drive. As we all know, he has been to the top. He chastises his colleagues for their neglect of rental housing and for their lack of vision. He wants to see buildings like 212 Davies Drive sprouting up every two years all over the place.

Newmarket's Tony Van Trappist, a club member for fourteen years, snoozes in his chair, saying nothing.

His thoughts are elsewhere.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 04 November 2016

To York Regional Council (3 November) where I hear tributes to Danny Wheeler, the veteran Regional Councillor from Georgina who, sadly, died earlier this week.

Outside the Regional HQ the flags are flying at half mast.

As I listen to the tributes I look at the framed photograph occupying Danny Wheeler’s usual place in the Council Chamber, sandwiched between the Regional Chair, Wayne Emmerson, and Markham’s Frank Scarpitti, the highest paid Mayor in Ontario.

In an eloquent tribute, Scarpitti tells us Wheeler would often lean across towards him and give his quick fire assessment of their colleagues’ contributions to the debate. We are left wondering what was said.

There are other tributes including one from Markham’s normally loquatious Jack Heath who tells us Wheeler’s death has affected him greatly. Very simple but moving.

Now we are on to the day’s ordinary business.

The Regional Council Chamber is like a giant seminar room where all manner of interesting things are discussed and debated and for free. The meetings should be streamed and televised and this, at long last, is coming. It would be an education for us all.

X Rated

I had no idea, for example, that last year’s slide presentation by a certain Ian Buchanan, on the innocent sounding subject of Forest Management was peppered with, I assume, pornographic images.

The jovial Regional Chair Wayne Emmerson introduces Mr Buchanan with a comment that is definitely below the belt:

“No X rated pictures this year? No bugs?”

Mr Buchanan wisely chooses to ignore this provocation.

This year’s presentation on the Region’s Forest Management Plan mercifully shows nothing but trees. Now I am listening to John Taylor telling us all about the vast tree canopy that blankets Newmarket. He sees it from the top of the 15 storey rental apartment building currently under construction at 212 Davis Drive. He loves telling people he has been to the top.

We have three other presentations.

First up is Anne-Marie Carroll, the General Manager for Transit and Transportation Services at VivaNext. The questions come thick and fast, mostly about fares.

Markham’s Jim Jones – who thinks outside the box – wants to know why transponders can clock drivers using the 407 and bill them but there seems to be no corresponding technology for bus travel. When people are paying $4 cash for journeys in York Region why can’t people jump on and off buses for 50c if they only want to travel a block or two? Why can’t they use transponders on their wrists or mobile phone? Terrific question.

John Taylor wants to know about the UPass (or university pass) and how it will increase revenue. There are 12,000 students at York University but only 3,000 purchase a monthly pass. What can be done to boost take up?

Water and Sewage again

Now it is the turn of Mike Rabeau who gives us an update on water and wastewater capital spending. His presentation gallops along, the delivery full of pace. Here is someone who evidently enjoys talking about pipes and pumps and effluent. I see Newmarket’s Deputy Chief Planner, Jason Unger, in the public gallery, soaking it all up. Nothing Rabeau says changes the cold reality that Newmarket’s water and wastewater capacity will be rationed until 2024.  There are no questions just an audible sigh of relief that the enthusiastic Mr Rabeau is supervising things.

Now we are on to the Regional “Seniors Strategy”. Packed full of arresting statistics. Seniors (65+) in York Region are living longer – to 84.1 years on average compared to 81.5 in Ontario and 81.1 in Canada.

Healthy and Wealthy

44% of York Seniors say their heath is excellent or very good.

Seniors in York Region are generally wealthy. The net worth of the Region’s boomers in 2014 was $790,000-$890,000 compared to Canada as a whole where the figure was $378,300-$533,600. There’s this and much more besides.

John Taylor tells us the number of seniors in York Region will soar from 150,000 to 300,000 in the next 15 years. He calls for more innovative housing options for them.

Sitting a few feet away from him is Newmarket’s most celebrated senior, Tony Van Trappist, who, for the moment, is comfortably housed at 395 Mulock Drive.

He remains silent throughout.

There is nothing to engage his interest or curiosity.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 01 November 2016

The Town’s “servicing allocation” policy deserves more attention than it gets.

Developments – even with planning approval - can’t go ahead unless they are hooked up to the water mains and sewage pipes and this “servicing allocation” will be rationed until 2024.

From time to time the Region assigns new capacity to its nine consituent municipalities and they in turn decide how it is divvied up in their patch and which developers are lucky enough to get an allocation. The latest figures show Newmarket is getting just over 2% of the total new capacity being made available by the Region.

It's time to Party!

With the completion of Davis Drive, Mayor Van Bynen declared it was “time to party”. But if too many developers come knocking at the door they will have to be sent away empty handed because of these capacity constraints.

This hasn’t stopped the Town from drawing up a marketing strategy for Davis Drive, designed to lure developers to the corridor even if some of them won't be able to build anything there. What an exquisite irony.

The issue – which sounds dry and technical - rarely rates a mention. A report to yesterday’s Special Committee of the Whole on the 2016 Six-Month Servicing Allocation Review, moved by Dave Kerwin and seconded by Jane Twinney, received no debate at all and was carried nem con.

Regional Councillor John Taylor chose not to comment even though he had been quite agitated (for him) when a related report went up to York Region’s Committee of the Whole on 8 September 2016.

Why is the servicing allocation policy so important?

Water and sewage capacity is effectively rationed in Newmarket until 2024 with the completion of the Upper York Sewage Solutions (UYSS) infrastructure project. York Region’s engineers describe this as a

“sanitary servicing solution to accommodate growth in Holland Landing, Queensville, Sharon and parts of Aurora and Newmarket”.

When complete, UYSS will provide additional servicing capacity for over 80,000 people. (See Note 1 below)

This means that even though a development application gets approval from the Town it has to wait in line until it gets a servicing allocation.

The Town has development applications on file that would require servicing capacity for 7,104 people. We now know there is capacity for an additional 5,784 people up until the end of 2021 – five years away.

Some of the Town’s development applications were approved years ago but the landowner is sitting on the land, choosing not to develop (22 George/39 Davis Drive). Others such as the Clock Tower are awaiting a Council decision. We are told the paperwork for the Townhouse development on protected meadowland at Silken Lauman, a stone’s throw from the proposed new GO Rail Station at Mulock Drive, is being finalized for the OMB. King George School rates a mention as does the controversial Gorham Street apartments. The full list is shown at Appendix A in yesterday’s report. (Agenda item 4)

If there is a burst of development activity in the Centres and Corridors it should make it less likely that developments elsewhere in Town will get a servicing allocation. But it is not quite so straightforward.

“Orderly development”

The Town says it prioritises developments in the Centres and Corridors but that is not the whole story. The report says:

“In addition to the (Servicing Allocation) Policy’s location hierarchy, which seeks to direct servicing capacity to urban centres as a priority, staff also considers matters such as orderly development, completion of communities, and maintaining an on-going sales and building program when considering the distribution of servicing capacity.”

The Town, if it so chooses, could take a much more muscular approach to servicing capacity, directing development to the Centres and Corridors and away from the Gorham Streets of this world where inappropriate development is being shoe-horned into stable residential neighbourhoods in the name of “intensification”.

Glenway

Talking of which… The Marianneville development which is transforming Glenway is only proceeding now because Marianville entered into an agreement with the Town and Region to take action

“to reduce the inflow and infiltration of groundwater and stormwater into the sanitary sewer system… in an effort to make the system more efficient, in effect creating additional capacity in the system”.

So while capacity is currently rationed, inventive developers can move up to the front of the line if they come up with an “Inflow and Infiltration” program that ticks all the right boxes and they are prepared to pay for it.

Taylor “disappointed and concerned” about impact on Newmarket

Back in September at a meeting of the Region’s Committee of the Whole Taylor confessed he was

“disappointed and concerned with what we have in front of us”.

He said the 2016 capacity assignment (which looks forward five years) gave Newmarket additional capacity for 1,500 people through until the end of 2021 out of a total of 71,838 across the Region’s nine municipalities. He told his Regional colleagues the Town was meeting every landowner in the Davis Drive corridor to (a) drum up and (b) gauge interest in intensification. He said the unused capacity shown in the report (4,284) was misleading and that it was much smaller.

The Town could say no

The Town is asking developers to get moving on the Davis corridor but he says

“We could end up having to say no.”

Taylor says the outlook is very uncertain. And this, he says with mild exasperation, is happening in a designated Growth Centre where the Province has already spent millions on new transit infrastructure.

The Region’s Commissioner for Environmental Services, the very impressive Erin Mahoney, tells Taylor the points he makes are very well taken. She talks about the possibility of another Inflow and Infiltration pilot unlocking a further 3,800 for development use in Newmarket. But she is light on detail. (See note 2 below)

The bottom line is this. There is not enough servicing capacity to support significant development along Davis Drive – should the development industry take the bait that the Town is now offering through its marketing initiatives.

And in the absence of significant intensification in the Centres and Corridors, such servicing capacity as Newmarket holds could be allocated to the wrong kind of development in glaringly inappropriate neighbourhoods in Town.

No doubt all done in the name of “orderly development”.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Note 1. Yesterday’s report uses a standard paragraph which tells us:

“Staff now understands that the delivery of the UYSS is expected to be delayed until 2024”

and will report back with updates from York Region.

This phraseology is replicated in the May 2016 and April 2015 servicing allocation reports. You can also read the May 2014 report here. 

The UYSS project includes as a component the twinning of the Newmarket forcemain (a pipe that carries wastewater under pressure) in 2019. This will increase servicing capacity by 1,500 people to a total of 5,784 people which is available for growth to the year end 2021. This Newmarket figure compares with 21,000 for East Gwillimbury. (See Table above)

Note 2. On 22 September 2016, the Regional Council agreed an amendment (to the 8 September report) authorizing staff:

“to consider a second inflow infiltration reduction project in Newmarket based on the same general principles set out in the first pilot project (ie Glenway) provided that the first pilot project is completed or it can be demonstrated that the second developer funded inflow and infiltration project does not impede the ability of the first pilot project (Glenway) to achieve the allocation needed to complete its development up to the maximum capacity stipulated by the project agreement.”

Note 3. A further report (Water and Wastewater Capital Infrastructure Status Update) goes to the Region’s Committee of the Whole for information this Thursday (3 November 2016). It confirms the figures set out in the 8 September 2016 report.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 28 October 2016

I am sitting outside the Small Claims Court this morning, waiting for the fun to begin, when John Taylor shuffles in looking like death warmed up.

He tells me he is unwell and is going to ask for a postponement. My heart sinks. I tell him the trial is not coming on for an hour or two and by then he may feel better. He shakes his head saying he can’t think straight.

His two children have been up all night vomiting. And now the virus has struck at Taylor. He has been awake for ten hours and has been feeling nauseous.  It sounds like a variation on the dreaded norovirus. Aaaaargh!

Later….

Now we all file into the tiny Small Claims Courtroom and I see in front of me Deputy Judge Jack Zwicker.

Taylor asks for a postponement and outlines his symptoms. Urgh!

Now Di Muccio and her husband, John Blommesteyn, affect sympathy while saying the matter has been postponed before and it is all very unfortunate. Blommesteyn is champing at the bit and is raring to go.

Taylor says that if push comes to shove he will stay though he may have to excuse himself from time to time for a bathroom break. Now I am feeling queasy.

Judge Jack won’t buy it. What if this thing is infectious? The Judge says he has heard what he has heard and he is going to postpone the trial until the first available date in the new year. And he won’t allow Taylor to ask for another postponement.

As the clerk leaves the Courtroom to get photocopies of the written order which has just been penned by Judge Jack, he, the judge, suggests the time could be occupied by talking about the action. It sounds as if he is going to propose some kind of impromptu settlement conference.

Now Judge Jack is looking directly at me.

“And who are you?”

I am ready for this and tell him loudly and confidently that I am a member of the public.

Di Muccio yelps:

“No he’s not! He is a blogger. And he has called my husband fat!!”

(This, M’Lud, is a dastardly untruth!! I have described Mr Blommesteyn as “well-padded” and “rotund” but never “fat”.)

Now she goes for the jugular.

“And he is a friend of the defendant!”

This is now getting serious. That's reputational damage! I could sue!

The ashen faced Taylor is determined not to set that hare running:

“He is not my friend.”

Now Judge Jack looks directly at me and says with a smile:

“I am going to say nothing and you will have nothing to blog about!”

Wanna bet?

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.