Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 486

Rooming houses or boarding houses are a divisive topic . Here in Toronto, they are permitted in the older parts of the city, but illegal everywhere else. Since 2021, we have been talking about changing that in attempt to increase the supply of what is typically the most affordable kind of housing. But there are lots of people who want to "protect the integrity of single-family communities", and so a decision on this issue has been, as I understand it, punted until sometime next year. At some point, I suspect a decision will be made (though deferring is also a decision).

While we wait, this recent piece by journalist and photographer Samanta Helou Hernandez tells an interesting story of Los Angeles' last Japanese boarding house. But as you'll see from her article, it's labeled as a boarding house, but it really acted as a kind of community center. Boarding houses in this community have, over the years, served as a place for people to get back on their feet (after returning from internment camps following WWII) and as a place where they could speak their own language and build community.

Looking back on the history of the area, it's hard to fathom being comfortable with some of the exclusionary policies that were in place at that time, which effectively blocked immigrants and people of color from moving to certain areas. Then again, I'm sure posterity will look back on some of decisions being made today and wonder what we were thinking.

Oof .

Let's assume for a second that you penned an article back in April 2020 called, " It's time to build ." And in this article, you argued, among other things, that we're not building nearly enough housing and that home prices are skyrocketing as a result.

Now let's assume that a new multi-family zoning overlay is being proposed for your own neighborhood in an attempt to increase said housing supply and alleviate some of the concerns around home prices. And in response to this proposal, you pen this:

One might call this being hypocritical. But I'm not here to name call. I think the real lesson is what Jerusalem Demsas points out in her recent article, " The Billionaire's Dilemma ."

What we have is a macro-micro disconnect that policy makers need to be more aware of. At the macro level we know what we should be doing in order to achieve our stated objectives. But if we allow people at the micro level to veto these efforts, they often will, and sometimes using ALL CAPS.

https://youtu.be/QDHUlL4lApo

One of the most exciting city building projects going on in Toronto right now is the revitalization of the 715-acre Port Lands area ( here's a map if you'd like to get situated). Despite its massive scale, it doesn't seem to be receiving a lot of attention. And that's probably because, at this stage, it's mostly infrastructure work. It's just a lot of soil being moved around.

But it's of course important work. The mouth of the Don River (where it meets Lake Ontario) was never properly engineered for resiliency, and so the entire area is at risk of flooding. That's why this $1.25 billion effort to re-naturalize its interface is currently underway. The above video does a good job explaining just what that entails.

At the same time, it is creating a wonderful city building opportunity -- new parks for the illegal drinking of craft beers, new wildlife habitat, new meandering rivers for kayaking, and of course new housing and new jobs. But when you look at what's planned , it's hard not to feel like we're missing the mark in terms of density.

The plan for Villiers Island calls for some 4,900 homes (according to this Globe and Mail article ). And the plan for the entire area calls for only about 20,000 homes (according to this recent Bloomberg article ). Surely there's room for at least a few more -- especially if we're hoping to support a new LRT line to the area.