I was raised in an old brick home in Toronto, in the kind of place where kids play road hockey under old, lush trees, watched by lazy neighbourhood cats. We were a short walk from groceries, entertainment, and parks. For anything else, the whole city was in range of three streetcars and a subway. It was the perfect place to live. And, because I’d like to live there again, I will need to destroy that house.
Why? Simple: I can’t afford it. In fact, I can’t afford anything around there. The same skinny, semi-detached houses that my parents’ generation bought for around $150,000 now go for many millions. And because they take up so much damn space, there are no apartments to rent either. And therein lies the solution. Keep the parks. Keep the transit. Keep the main street with bars and corner stores. Tear down the rest. Every old house is a six-storey apartment waiting to happen. Get the wrecking ball: I’ll tell you where to start.
Do I sound callous? Maybe. I can already hear the cries: “The character of the neighbourhood!” But please look at your children. Why are they living in basement apartments while you enjoy your three storeys? Allow me to suggest that these facts are related. In any neighbourhood populated by sturdy old homes with empty nesters, “neighbourhood character” means “pretty much no one under 50 gets to live here.” With that kind of mission statement, something has to give.
Don’t get me wrong — I love those old houses. When I left the nest myself, I immediately sought out the calmest, leafiest neighbourhood I could find. I’d spend hours wandering the streets, gazing longingly at the old bay-and-gables with their stained-glass windows, painted accents, and sunset-red masonry. When I spotted their owners watering the flowers or lounging on the porch, I thought, that could be me one day. Then, I’d retreat underground to the basement apartment I could barely afford.
When I finally escaped subterranean purgatory, I went on to rent one room in a two-bedroom apartment, for which I continue to pay nearly half my income. One summer day, I stumbled upon an old collection of insurance maps from the turn of the 20th century for sale at a street festival, each showing the layout for a Toronto neighbourhood. There was my apartment building, with its crumbling brick facade, erected in 1911. There were all the houses around it. Heck, apart from the horse-racing track (now a mall), nothing else had changed.
Nothing else had changed!
I kept digging through the map pile and soon found one, also from the early 1900s, that showed my parents’ neighbourhood, a stone’s throw to the west. Change the colour scheme, and it could have been Google Maps.
How to solve a housing crisis | Nerds on Politics
If this sounds extreme, consider that, not so long ago, a skinny semi-detached in the city was part and parcel of modest living. Those things used to be affordable for many. But they’re now all worth millions of dollars.
The Ontario government is aiming to build 1.5 million new homes by 2031; its target for Toronto is 285,000. I whole-heartedly support that number. But the province has allowed the status quo to continue, meaning cities make it practically illegal to build anything denser than a subdivision — in March, Premier Doug Ford said that implementing an as-of-right fourplex policy would be a “disaster.”
Homeowners, please take the windfall and downsize. And Premier, please make it easier to knock down homes and replace them with fourplexes. I can even offer you a good place to start — it’s a single detached home, near a ravine, and close to several transit lines.
I have new dreams now: Montreal-style walk-ups on every street, rents in the low thousands, neighbourhood cats (we can still have those) hopping from balcony to balcony between the four-storey towers. I’ll miss the bricks and the family dinners, but you can’t have everything.
Sorry, Mom. Domos delenda est.
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