municipalities » Ren Thomas

Home sales dive in Toronto and Vancouver

Just a three months after Edward Jones released a report about the precarious state of the Canadian housing market, housing sales fell in Toronto and Vancouver. Citing prices higher than historical averages, easy credit, and lax government policy that allows people to get in over their heads as the three conditions that create a housing bubble, Edward Jones seemed to be right on the money. Is Canada’s housing bubble finally about to burst?

In Toronto, new home sales in June 2010 were 43% lower than they were twelve months earlier, and July was the third consecutive month of decreasing sales. Housing starts in June were 15% lower than they were in May. But not much hand-wringing is going along with these trends: many experts, like Toronto Real Estate Board president Bill Johnson, say the market “has become more balanced.” After all, average prices are still 6% higher than they were last year, and most of the decline seems to be in first-time buyers. Higher-than-average buying in the first quarter of 2010 means that total sales this year are still up by 11%.

Vancouver has also seen record drops from last year, a 45% decline from last July and the third-lowest July in a decade. But again, this had little effect on prices: the average house price in Vancouver fell by just 0.2% to $793,193. Real estate agents estimate that about a third of the buyers are first-time buyers.

Outside of the major centers, where listings were lower and the market appears to be cooling, there are plenty of houses for sale in small- to mid-sized cities. Nevertheless, both economists and the general public are becoming concerned about the state of the housing market and economic instability, as well they should be. I’ve written before on the instability of housing as an investment and the major government supports that encourage the vast majority of people to believe homeownership is the only option. Is this really the only way to house our population? More specifically, should it be the only housing alternative to receive such funding and policy support? Although there has been some tightening of lending policy and mortgage availability, there are still a lot of policies and incentives supporting homeownership. What about using some of this leverage to support rental, co-op and other types of housing?

Sheng and Shanghai

Sheng Zhong recently defended her PhD dissertation at UBC School of Community and Regional Planning. Last year at the Association of American Geographers annual conference, she gave us a little preview of her research results on cultural production sites in Shanghai, focusing on one of the seventy government-designated sites, M50 on Suzhou Creek. She also published this case study in the 2009 issue of Critical Planning (Vol 16): From Fabrics to Fine Arts: Urban Restructuring and Formation of an Art District in Shanghai. Her research consisted of extensive interviews, surveys and site visits of most of these former industrial sites now destined as high-end cultural centers. The concept of the creative class might be controversial here, but Sheng’s research shows the Chinese government is jumping on the bandwagon that supposedly leads to economic growth and development, as suggested by Richard Florida.

In Sheng’s doctoral defense, she contrasted two cultural production sites, one of which developed on its own, as artists found the low-rent buildings vacated by industries that had relocated to the suburbs. The second was designated by the government and targeted for redevelopment. The contrast between the two was very interesting: the first had grown illegally for some time as artists occupied the various buildings on the site, then over a decade gentrified to the point where rents are almost at the upper limit of affordability for small-scale production. The second site was initially designed with high-end stores and upscale landscape architecture targeted to foreign tourists. It is under-used (the rents are too high and there may not be enough demand for the location) and the artwork sold there is unaffordable to the Chinese population.

Dr. Zhong will be starting a post-doctoral position at the National University of Singapore, where she will continue her research on urban redevelopment and the policies that impact growth and change in Chinese cities.

New food policy developments in Vancouver

Cypress Community Garden

Municipalities have become increasingly concerned about food security in the past few years. I’ve written before about Vancouver’s Food Policy Council and some of the work they’ve been doing, including encouraging a by-law to allow backyard chickens. Since then some notable developments have happened in the city.

A few weeks ago, Vancouver city council approved five community projects, agreeing to spend $100,000 on the small-scale projects. One aims to help people on social assistance or small fixed incomes can buy coupons at the beginning of each month for a small fee and redeem them later in the month for fresh fruits and vegetables at a mini-farmers market in the neighbourhood. Another funds the development of farmers markets; several Vancouver neighbourhoods worked with city council to streamline fees and fix restrictive zoning bylaws. Council has now approved the development of interim guidelines and zoning changes to develop new farmers markets and expand existing ones, including the very successful Kitsilano, West End, and Trout Lake markets. I visited the West End farmers market this weekend and found the vendors selling seasonal greens, peppers, berries, cheese, fresh lamb and eggs. The prices, as usual for Vancouver, started around the same as supermarket produce and went up from there, but there’s no denying the freshness of the food. I’m still not sure why farmers markets out here are so pricey, when a dollar or two at a market in Ottawa, London, or Toronto will get you a head of broccoli bigger than your own.

There are lots of other ways to get fresh produce in the city. Vancouver has some amazing community gardens, where residents pay a small fee for a garden plot and grow all sorts of fruits, vegetables and flowers. A friend of mine has a plot at the Cypress Community Garden, which cost her $30 for the summer. She goes to garden work parties with the many other gardeners in the area; Kitsilano is full of apartment dwellers who otherwise wouldn’t have the space to grow their own food.

You can also raise chickens and have access to your own fresh eggs daily, since the bylaw was passed to allow backyard chickens. You can check out all these developments on Vancouver’s Food Policy Council website.

The quiet (data) revolution

The Canadian Census is a major source of data for any researcher in urban planning, sociology, economics, geography, linguistics, and many other fields. While many scholars argue that the Census is prone to error and non-representation (for example, people without a regular address or students living away at college may be underrepresented), it is simply, to quote The Globe and Mail, “Canada’s only complete national database on education, income, employment, ethnicity and language”. It’s also a very costly endeavour undertaken every five years, with the next one scheduled for 2011. Which is probably why Tony Clement, Minister of Industry and Minister Responsible for Statistics Canada, very quietly arranged to scrap the long form next year, although he’s hiding behind alleged privacy concerns. The decision has prompted a quick response from the Canadian Institute of Planners, Metropolis, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, market research companies, and many other organizations who rely upon the data for research and policy work. Provincial governments, non-profit groups and many other bodies dealing with target populations, such as immigrant settlement services or at-risk youth, depend upon the data to develop and deliver their programs effectively.

The Census is a statistically viable data source because it is a mandatory survey administered by government officials, with every fifth household receiving a more in-depth questionnaire, known as the Census long form. Eight basic questions, such as age, sex, marital status, and the relationship of people in a household, are recorded on the short form, and many of these questions date back to 1871. Fifty other questions (that’s right, 50) , such as mode of transportation used to commute to work, commute distance, detailed questions about income and occupation, and detailed questions about ethnicity and immigration are on the long form. Although many of these questions have been on the long form for 35 years, some are relatively new: the two transportation questions, dealing with transportation mode and commute distance, date back to 1996. In the absence of a national transportation survey, this data can tell us which groups travel by transit the most or which cities have the highest cycling rates, just to give a couple of examples. I published a paper in Plan Canada just six months ago that compared youth and young adults’ transportation modes in the ten largest cities in Canada. I’m currently using Census data from 1986 to 2006 to investigate how immigrants’ housing and transportation choices have changed over time.

I fail to see how any of these questions could be considered an invasion of privacy, especially considering the fact that names or any identifying characteristics are never linked to the data. This on top of the fact that Census data in Canada, unlike in the US where data is free and public, is incredibly restricted. Only researchers in government or academia have access to the Census microdata, that 20% sample that contains the long form data. Plenty of other government agencies collect private information: you need to report your height, weight, hair colour and eye colour to get a driver’s license.

The federal government is planning to replace the long form with a voluntary “national household survey” that will be mailed out to approximately 30% of Canadian households, which the Tories argue will reach more households than the long form did. Anyone done a mail-out survey lately? The response rate is usually around 20-40%…what is 30% of 30%? And critics have already noted that the most vulnerable groups, such as immigrants, Aboriginal communities and low-income populations, will be the least likely to respond.

While the opposition parties are marshalling their efforts to reverse the decision, petitions are circled and we all write madly to our MPs, the media has given the issue a fair shake: the issue was covered in all the major papers and online venues, and not just by journalists (see “Canadians must be able to count on Statistics Canada” by academic Richard Shearmur in The Montréal Gazette). In the past week, the Canadian Medical Association, faith groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress, and economists like former TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond have all voiced their objections to the decision to jettison the long form.

Beyond the appalling lack of respect for the vast amount of data generated by the long form and its necessity to researchers, policy makers and community groups, the troubling issue here is that Harper’s “new world order” even extends to the collection of statistics about the people he is supposed to serve.

An update on this story: the head of Statistics Canada, Munir Sheikh, tendered his resignation July 21st over this issue, saying the voluntary “new Census” cannot be considered comparable to the long form.

Housing unaffordability is historically the norm

“Why doesn’t the president of the United States ever get up and say, ‘You can be a full-fledged American citizen and rent an apartment — it’s OK.” David Wessel, economics editor, Wall Street Journal

Americans now pay more for housing than ever before, according to a report by Harvard’s Joint Centre for Housing Studies. In its annual report The State of the Nation’s Housing 2010, researchers write that 18.6 million Americans spend more than half their incomes on housing, up from 13.8% in 2001. While this figure includes both owners and renters, 45.1% of renters are in the bottom income quartile. Homeownership is at a historical low, household income barely increased in the past decade, and rental vacancies are at a historical high. No wonder the authors are calling calling the first ten years of the 2000′s “the lost decade.” But housing “unaffordability” isn’t anything new, nor are our solutions to the problem.

While the Harvard researchers blame falling wages and high unemployment (9.9% in April 2010), high rental vacancy rates and low supply of the most affordable and smallest units are also major issues. Fewer homes were built in the US in 2009 than in any year since WWII, particularly multifamily homes: 62% fewer multifamily developments were begun in 2009 than in 2008. Demolition and conversion of existing low-income rental units is also a major cause for concern. Lower immigration rates are also taking their toll: there was a sharper decline in the number of foreign-born households under the age of 35 than in native-born households from 2009 to 2010. Minority households have been hit hard by the mortgage crisis. In 2009, minorities accounted for 37 percent of householders aged 25–44 and 39 percent of those under age 25. The minority homeownership rate is still expected to increase by 2020, despite lower incomes among foreign-born and minority households and lower immigration rates due to the economic recession.

Some progress has been made in terms of rental housing: rental conversions from foreclosed housing has already been done in many cities, but Housing and Urban Development (HUD) considering introducing market-rental units into its publicly-funded affordable housing developments in order to help pay for much-needed maintenance on the buildings. And the pro-homeownership policies keep coming, including the renewal of the federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers (and its expansion to repeat homebuyers) and Federal Reserve purchases of mortgage-backed securities to help keep interest rates low. But with the expiration of the tax credit program in April 2010, Harvard’s Joint Centre for Housing Studies warns that any good news may not be long-lasting. The problem, they say, is that there is unusually low demand for new homes. The ratio of housing and transportation costs to income has risen steadily over the past fifty years (see Figure 30 and 31 of the report).

As I’ve written before, without massive government programs to support homeownership and assistance for low-income renters, housing has ever been a good deal. Check out the CBC’s digital archives on the development of suburbs. In a video clip from 1954, the narrator explains how expensive homes are for the average person and how far people have to live (up to 50 miles from the city center) to afford them. In 1953, the average Canadian earned $971/month before taxes. Don Mills, the first suburb in Canada, had house prices beginning at $11,000 all the way up to $100,000. Rental rates at that time were $300/month for the average apartment in Toronto (already hovering around 30% of the average Canadian’s income, the level most housing authorities classify as affordable) and $100/month for a basic three-bedroom in the city centre. In the new market-rate high-rise apartment complexes in the suburbs of Toronto, apartments went for less than $100/month. In Montreal, then the largest city in the country, 70% of homes were apartments and the going rent was $70-100/month, only slightly more than the rents in Winnipeg ($80/month). A house in Vancouver was $2,000 cheaper than in the east at the time. While 1950s housing solutions (demolition of existing older housing to make room for low-income public housing developments in city centres, massive concrete high-rises in the suburbs) may have been questionable, they were quite desirable at the time: the wait for affordable housing, like the still-under-construction Regent Park) was 2 years for a $29-90/month rent-geared-to-income apartment. The average rent at Shannon Heights, a 1950s assisted rental development in Halifax, was only $90/month. Commuting to the city became a new drag, and buses quickly replaced streetcars and trains, steps were taken to make commuting more enjoyable. A 1963 video clip records a housewife saying that the lack of transportation options in the suburbs mean she spends considerable time driving her teenagers around; another says her family moved to the suburbs because that’s where they could get a mortgage.

Whatever housing problems we face today, whether it’s affordability or commute distance, they’re nothing new. Solutions to these problems, like artificially stimulating homeownership through tax incentives and policies, are likewise nothing new; housing affordability problems persist. Recently, researchers at the The New York Times compared the cost of living in a suburban house to an urban apartment in the New York City metro area, and found that the suburban option cost a surprising 18% more (“High-Rise, or House with Yard?” July 2, 2010): the big difference was the higher property taxes, and their comparison didn’t include the cost of home repairs. Even the The Wall Street Journal is publishing articles saying homeownership doesn’t work (“Is the Homeownership System Broken?”, June 22, 2010): WSJ economics editor David Wessel is quoted as saying, “So now we have a system where a lot of people own homes but don’t have any equity in them, which means you don’t get any of the virtues of investing in them. And the government has been forced to take over the mortgage financing system, which suggests that it wasn’t a very strong one if the government has to take it over.” This is quite a turn of events. Could North Americans be forging a new path in housing policy?

Transportation governance in Toronto

I wrote recently about the fight to save Transit City, a proposal to extend LRT lines throughout Toronto’s inner suburban neighbourhoods. A while back, I had written about transportation governance in Metro Vancouver and its effects on public transit provision, and noted that Toronto was heading the same way. Well, it has: since 2009, the Metrolinx board has been completely divorced from public process.

Members of the Metrolinx board are appointed by the Minster of Transportation; they are not public officials elected by their municipalities. The current board, like the TransLink board in Metro Vancouver, is made up of mostly private sector business people who may or may not have conflicts of interest in transportation matters (ie. businesses that are located on a street with a proposed LRT line). Knowledge of transportation planning or experience taking public transit are not prerequisites; but to be fair, they never were, even when the board was made up of public officials. The Board can decide whether to hold meetings in public and how often to meet. There is no opportunity for the public to speak at meetings, even if they are allowed to attend, so there’s really no accountability for Metrolinx’ actions. The only recourse the public has is to complain to their MPP. But even if an MPP belongs to the party in power, they likely have no influence over who the Premier appoints as Minister of Transportation and who the Minister appoints to the Metrolinx Board.

It is bizarre that in Canada’s two largest cities, very small appointed boards decide the future of public transportation (11 sit on the TransLink board, and 15 on the Metrolinx board). It’s also a bit of an anachronism; we live in the area of downloaded responsibilities. The federal government offloads responsibility for housing and health care to the provinces; provinces download housing to the municipalities. Why would the province want such a tight grip on public transit provision? What is to be gained? Granted, these two boards are very short-lived so it’s hard to tell what their influence will be (Vancouver’s Canada Line notwithstanding). But like most transit advocates, I remain cynical about the whole issue of private-sector appointed boards making decisions about public spending, even if by some miracle they were actually public transit specialists. We need better governance in place for cities, especially on crucial issues like transportation and housing. Otherwise transportation board decisions will continue to be made as one-offs and there will be a lack of continuity in infrastructure projects and funding.

High homeownership bad for Canada?

I’ve often felt that homeownership is not the rosy American Dream that it claims to be. I find homeownership limiting, both economically and geographically: my parents and their friends, and now friends my own age, seem to sacrifice anything and everything in order to make mortgage payments. The years I worked at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, taught me how the federal housing agency was created partly to help sell the idea of homeownership right after WWII and enable it through a series of government-backed programs and policies. Then there’s my own research in the area of immigrant settlement and housing choice, which included a serious look at Canadian federal housing policies that have slowly eroded rental housing, co-op housing and social housing as options while supporting homeownership through numerous incentives. Let’s just say that it’s no surprise that at age 36, I’m still a renter, bucking the DINK and yuppie trends, a little cynical about the myth that renting is just “throwing your money away.” After all, renting has allowed me to remain flexible, pick up and move to different cities, travel, and live in neighbourhoods I never could have afforded if I had bought.

It appears that Richard Florida agrees with me. Higher rates of renting, public transit use and residential mobility are all key themes in Florida’s latest book, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, released two weeks ago (read a review of the book, and other Florida works and quirks, on Urbanophile). Florida belies the myth that housing is a good investment, particularly when it’s held for 20 or 30 years: the rate of return on housing in the US has generally been quite low, in fact from 1890 to 1990 it was exactly zero. We’ve all seen how difficult it can be to sell a house in recent years in the US, and in earlier recessionary times in Canada: my parents’ current house was bought for $20,000 less than a similar house a few blocks away because the owner had lost her job in the 1990s recession and had to sell quickly. A friend’s parents sold their house in 2007 for almost the same price they paid for it in the early 1980s because the mill in their town had closed, leaving most of the residents out of work.

Overinvestment in housing has decreased investment in other areas like medical technology, software and alternative energy. Florida has written before about the dangers of putting too many eggs in one basket: at the height of the mortgage crisis in the US (in a November 28, 2009 article in the Globe and Mail), he wrote that the mortgage system was directly responsible for the crisis, and that the era of overinvestment in homeownership and car ownership were over. Interestingly, Florida also applies his argument to individuals: Canadians carry more mortgage debt as a percentage of their disposable income than Americans, meaning we have far less to spend on other things. A friend of mine who works in mutual funds and investments tells me the average homeowner pays for their house two and a half times due to interest. This is probably no surprise to those of us living in the country’s biggest cities, where housing prices are astonomical and have not shown any decline in growth since the US mortgage crisis. In fact, housing prices in Canada increased 20% last year.

Florida argues that in cities with higher homeownership, unemployment is also higher because homeowners are less likely to pick up and move when things get tough. He believes that mobility is often the key to employment, and more flexible housing choices are key in times of economic instability. It seems there are other people out there like me, who prefer the flexibility of renting because we want to remain mobile and have no desire to live in one place for twenty years. We aren’t all that uncommon either: 40.1% of the Canadian population moved within the past five years, according to the 2006 Census; 14.1% moved within the last year. Florida correctly predicted that rental housing would play a major role in stabilizing the US economy after the mortgage crisis: families were able to move into foreclosed properties that were renovated and re-marketed as affordable rental housing. This was because the Obama administration wasted no time in investing $4.25 billion on the creation of tens of thousands of federally-subsidized rental units using the federal Making Homes Affordable program.

Vintage 1950s matchbooks featuring real estate ads

In his May 3rd article in the Globe and Mail, Florida goes as far as saying that “home ownership is an impediment to Canada’s long-term prosperity” because high house prices, low interest rates and lax government policies in Canada could spell trouble for the housing market. Even though people have been talking about the “bubble” for over fifteen years, Edward Jones’ recent report predicts Canada’s is about to burst. The federal government recently made it more difficult to get a mortgage and is considering other measures to tighten mortgage availability in order to protect the market from collapse. They eliminated the no down payment mortgage option before the US crisis began, but there is still a 5% down option. What is particularly interesting to me as a non-economist is how the housing market has historically been used to maintain or even increase consumer spending to stave off or recover from economic recession: besides the post-war era, we saw low interest rates brought in after the 1989 stock market crash in Canada and after 9/11 in the US to encourage people to keep buying homes. I guess there’s a fine line between “removing barriers to homeownership” to encourage spending and bringing on an economic meltdown by letting anyone with a a couple of bucks buy a house.

Massive marketing was required to sell the idea of homeownership as a stable, more respectable lifestyle choice. Let’s not forget that those first homes were practically given away at very low prices and low mortgage rates, their construction highly subsidized by federal governments in both the US and Canada. Those cherubic children, war brides and returning vets in 1940s suburban home ads were so convincing that most of us still believe homeowners are somehow better than renters: even Florida hints that switching from homeownership to renting might have “unforseen social costs” for cities and regions. Our own values and biases about homeownership drive the market. Yet a mere 60 years ago, renter households were the majority in both our countries.

The classic French text Un chez-moi à mon coût (2000) (edited by Eric Brassard), which I read at the urging of a fellow renter working at CMHC, carefully dissects all the economic myths of homeownership, arguing that it is often the non-economic factors that are the most influential. The book presents case studies of housing choices of a variety of professionals, both renters and owners, who argue that there is no sound economic argument for homeownership or against renting: it just comes down to personal preference. But we’re so invested in the homeownership ideal that investing in rental housing, or convincing middle-income families to rent, would take a lot of work. The tide may be turning in the US, but with high housing prices and fairly easy access to mortgages, we may not see this shift in Canada until our own mortgage crisis rears its ugly head.

Business location in metropolitan areas

There has been a lot of debate and policy discussion in Metro Vancouver over the increasing suburbanization of businesses over the past two decades. The issue is a concern for planners for many reasons: the dispersed locations encourage urban sprawl and greenfield construction. Because business parks are often far from existing transit infrastructure, they can also increase trips by single-occupant vehicles (SOVs). But for many business owners, the cheaper land and lower taxes in fringe areas are too good to pass up. Many municipalities favour office and business park construction in their fringe areas because the new employers add to their tax base and also provide local jobs. This trend still seems to be alive and well in Metro Vancouver, despite policies supporting mixed-use centres throughout the region, but in some American cities the tide seems to be turning.

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Ania Wieckowski writes that “suburbs have lost their sheen” as both younger and older worker are increasingly choosing to live in denser, mixed-use communities with better transportation options. In the last US Census, 64% of 25- to 34-year olds said they looked for a job after choosing a city in which to live. Businesses like United Airlines and Quicken Loans recently announced that they would be moving their headquarters from suburban to urban locations: United will locate in downtown Chicago and Quicken Loans in Detroit. Many CEOs are realizing that if they want to remain competitive, they need to contribute to more vibrant central cities.

Walgreens at Madison Avenue and 41st Street in the 1930s. Image from the NYPL Digital Gallery.

New Orleans Canal Street location

Such a shift means that there would have to be all kinds of changes in the ways national retail chains locate and design their stores: the big-box and strip mall architectural styles will need to evolve to fit more urban settings…or evolve back to the city, as Wieckowski puts it. Walgreens, which recently acquired the Duane Reed chain, used to be a staple on small town main streets. We have seen this trend in Canadian cities, with some big box stores choosing to locate in inner city areas: Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Future Shop, and the like. Vancouver actually has some great examples of these, like the Shoppers Drug Mart/Future Shop on West Broadway near Burrard Street. But we certainly don’t have any examples of major employers relocating to the city: as Tom Hutton frequently writes, Vancouver is still reeling from the losses of the major forestry headquarters during its transition from a resource-based economy to a finance- and service-based economy.

As the American shift back to the city is happening at a time when housing choices are also skewing urban, it’s again time to reflect on the differences between their cities and ours: while we certainly have urban sprawl and suburbanized employment, the level of disinvestment in our cities is still not the same as it is in the US. In particular, without the high levels of segregation and massive public housing projects located in many American cities back in the 1950s and 1960s, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and even smaller cities like London and Kelowna have been able to maintain competitive housing prices in inner city neighbourhoods. Too competitive, in fact: housing affordability is a major problem in our the first three cities, and even in smaller cities like Kelowna and Vernon, BC. Whereas in the US, the recent shift back to cities as a place for business location may be tied to the recent trend to live in urban centres, which I discussed in a previous post. The current housing crisis means that in many American cities, housing is affordable even in inner city neighbourhoods, and with the new emphasis on rental housing there are more options available for those wanting to live urban lifestyles. These types of choices are less available in Canadian cities because the demand for urban housing never decreased, even during the US mortgage crisis: witness Marcelle Czerny’s recent article in the Globe and Mail on the quest for an affordable home in Toronto and her unwillingness to leave the city for the suburbs.

The end of suburbia?

As many of you know, there have been some very interesting developments in American cities over the past couple of years. Some cities have experienced decreased car ownership, there was a decrease in Vehicle Miles Travelled in 2008, and even the American Dream of homeownership has taken a left turn. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that the proportion of homes being built in central cities has doubled since 2006.

The EPA report Residential Construction Trends in America’s Metropolitan Regions summarizes a study that examined residential permit data over 19 years (1990-2008) in 50 metropolitan regions. In roughly half of the regions, there has been a dramatic increase in the share of new residential permits built in inner cities and older suburbs.

Among the cities that saw a substantial increase are New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Seattle, and Fort Worth. But even smaller centres like Birmingham, Milwaukee, and Kansas City saw substantial increases in the share of residential permits in their inner cities. Cities with low increases include St. Louis, Detroit, and Salt Lake City, while Cincinnati, Cleveland, Hartford, Providence, and Buffalo all had slight decreases. Particularly interesting are the graphs which show detailed trends for specific metropolitan regions, contrasting urban fringe, 1st tier suburb, and city permits. In many cases, we can see the beginning the mortgage crisis on these graphs: between 2004 and 2006, urban fringe areas began their decline and cities began their ascent.

A lot of this has to do with housing type: national data confirms that the proportion of single detached housing permits decreased from 71% in 2000 to 59% in 2008. Townhouses remained relatively stable, while condos increased from 4% to 7%, rented condos from 16% to 24% and large multifamily buildings from 11% to 23%. I find these numbers surprising: little by little, the American Dream seems to be crumbling before our eyes. We have to remember that not all of this change can be pinned on the dismal housing market, since the trends persist over 19 years.

The EPA cautions that, while the data reveals a substantial shift in residential patterns, a large percentage of construction still takes place on previously undeveloped land. While the share of residential permits increased in many regions, in some these still account for less than half the overall share at the regional level. They would like to do further research on what is driving the shift: real estate market fundamentals or public sector policies? What type of residential units are being built on previously-developed land, and what percentage of these are transit-accessible? However, they did feel safe in saying that, ”This acceleration of residential construction in urban neighborhoods reflects a fundamental shift in the real estate market,” citing lower crime rates in urban areas and increased demand for homes in walkable neighbourhoods close to jobs.

Save Transit City

I’m getting pretty tired of writing about great policies and projects that we’ve proposed in Canada, only to have to write later that the government has decided not to fund them. Toronto’s Transit City project, an ambitious attempt to link the suburban parts of the region to reliable rapid transit through the construction of eight LRT lines, is under threat. Despite being approved by the federal and provincial governments, the province is threatening to cut Transit City funding by half, decreasing the viability of the project considerably.

A map showing the proposed LRTs

I’ve written before about how complex governance is when it comes to public transit in our municipalities. Vancouver’s struggles to build the UBC rapid transit line and many Canadian municipalities’ policies to better link transit and housing are detailed in several other posts. Even when projects are approved, it’s no guarantee they will be built because we have no stable source of funding for public transit and no consistent governance structure that enables the transfer of federal or provincial funds to municipalities. Transit City originally proposed eight lines: Sheppard (14 km), Finch West (17 km), Eglington Crosstown (33km), Scarborough, Don Mills, Jane, Scarborough Malvern, and Waterfront West. The province agreed to fund the first four back in 2007: of these, three are new lines (Sheppard, Finch West, and Eglinton) and the fourth is a retrofit of the existing Scarborough RT with four new stations. The province’s proposal to cut funding in half will put the Eglinton LRT, Scarborough RT, and Finch LRT at risk: the Sheppard line is already under construction while Eglington and Finch were to break ground this year and Scarborough in 2012.

As U of T Social Work professor David Hulchanski illustrated a couple of years ago, increased incomes in the areas around the existing two subway lines make it all but impossible for lower- and middle-income people to live close to rapid transit.

Hulchanski's map showing the need for rapid transit

Hulchanski’s most recent map shows the areas which have decreased in income in the past forty years against the proposed lines: the new LRT lines would be making transit much more accessible to the rapidly-growing areas of the region (read his plea for action on ttcriders.ca). My own work with immigrants in Toronto shows that they are willing to travel long distances on infrequent public transit buses only for a short time; eventually they succumb to buying one, two, and three cars. They live further and further out because that’s where affordable housing is…little realizing their transportation costs will eat away considerably at their savings.

Last week mayor David Miller recorded a public service announcement on the subway PA system telling people to call the Premier’s office and their MPPs to oppose the Transit City cuts. Many of the local mayors are also urging their citizens to do the same. All sorts of organizations, from Toronto Environmental Alliance to the Public Transit Coalition have links to the appropriate politicians, and there is a Save Transit City site. I urge you all to call, email, write the MPPs and Premier McGuinty and if you’re in the Toronto area, pack the Council chambers this Wednesday April 21st.

Ren Thomas

M.A., Ph.D. Candidate (Planning, UBC)