Actually, they did not get subsidized by prior generations of owners - unless you’re talking about people in their 90s.
That’s what the development fees and taxes were put in place for - especially in places where extending services out across greenbelts into suburbs was incredibly costly.
Having crumbling roads and community infrastructure in the core and polished, higher quality infrastructure in the burbs was an equity issue that was taken on in the 1970s, long before my generation was anywhere near buying homes.
I do think it’s fair to have lower development fees where there’s densification - that bringing more people to use and support existing infrastructure.
But subsidizing sprawl remains as problematic as it was in the 1960s.
Last thought, Intergenerational Inequity wa ma first recognized and discussed in the 1990s regarding GenX.
GenX remains the most ignored generation but the fact is that the generation suffered two very deep recessions in 1983 and 1987-1991 plus faced incredibly high (18%) interest rates and inflation in the 1980s. This meant that none of them were buying homes before their 40s without the help of parents. While Canadian GenX ducked the US mortgage-backed securities disaster in 2008, it’s really a false narrative to suggest they are or have been in the ‘I’m all right Jack, devil take the hindmost’ frame of mind. If anything, they know the social safety nets and equity provisions were the only thing that made things possible for them.
So let’s not subsidize sprawl. Let’s make it so all Canadian cities look like Montreal: dense, walkable, pretty, and transit and cycling oriented. But the idea that existing owners should be given a pass is antisocial.
My point is that the principle of existing homeowners funding infrastructure for new homes is only tenable when
developers are not creating huge externalities by creating ever larger suburbs with infrastructure funded by the core (take Ottawa as an example for that dynamic)
when the base of established homeowners is large enough to support the rate of growth.
In the first case, development fees based on lot size for new sprawling burbs are a reasonable way to push the market towards density.
In the second case, with a high rate of growth in a specific market, other means of redistribution such as government subsidies may be a better way to redistribute.
Because those “existing owners” benefited from subsidies before them.
Fuck this “I got mine” mentality
Actually, they did not get subsidized by prior generations of owners - unless you’re talking about people in their 90s.
That’s what the development fees and taxes were put in place for - especially in places where extending services out across greenbelts into suburbs was incredibly costly.
Having crumbling roads and community infrastructure in the core and polished, higher quality infrastructure in the burbs was an equity issue that was taken on in the 1970s, long before my generation was anywhere near buying homes.
I do think it’s fair to have lower development fees where there’s densification - that bringing more people to use and support existing infrastructure.
But subsidizing sprawl remains as problematic as it was in the 1960s.
Last thought, Intergenerational Inequity wa ma first recognized and discussed in the 1990s regarding GenX.
GenX remains the most ignored generation but the fact is that the generation suffered two very deep recessions in 1983 and 1987-1991 plus faced incredibly high (18%) interest rates and inflation in the 1980s. This meant that none of them were buying homes before their 40s without the help of parents. While Canadian GenX ducked the US mortgage-backed securities disaster in 2008, it’s really a false narrative to suggest they are or have been in the ‘I’m all right Jack, devil take the hindmost’ frame of mind. If anything, they know the social safety nets and equity provisions were the only thing that made things possible for them.
So let’s not subsidize sprawl. Let’s make it so all Canadian cities look like Montreal: dense, walkable, pretty, and transit and cycling oriented. But the idea that existing owners should be given a pass is antisocial.
My point is that the principle of existing homeowners funding infrastructure for new homes is only tenable when
In the first case, development fees based on lot size for new sprawling burbs are a reasonable way to push the market towards density.
In the second case, with a high rate of growth in a specific market, other means of redistribution such as government subsidies may be a better way to redistribute.
Yes that makes sense.
I’d be fine with a free market approach. Let developers build density where it is in demand, and sprawl where it is not.
But you’re not in agreement with charging the full economic cost of the sprawl to the homeowners who choose to live there?