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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

trtcttc said:
Is this supposed to have detailed schematics and specifications of each pipe/part? Curious how many will be built using this catalogue. I'd think in Calgary, the design and construction is not the source of the construction risk, but in a small town where external expertise is less readily available.
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I'm surprised multi-family developers always seem to reinvent the wheel. I would think a developer like Sarina, who has done multiple similar size buildings on 33rd Ave SW wouldn't reuse a similar design with some exterior (non-engineering changes).
 
CalgaryTiger said:
I'm surprised multi-family developers always seem to reinvent the wheel. I would think a developer like Sarina, who has done multiple similar size buildings on 33rd Ave SW wouldn't reuse a similar design with some exterior (non-engineering changes).
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Isn't that what most of them do? Especially the 5+1 apartments. And for rowhouses, they usually just have a different exterior design but it's basically the same.
 
At the R-CG level, design is not even close to being a bottleneck, and most developers are already essentially pulling from a catalogue anyway. Which is in fact better for efficiency than some federal government catalogue, in that it's a product they've already worked through and are ready to replicate. The feds think it's 1965 and we can just grab a house plans magazine off the rack and send it to a truss supplier and build baby build.

The problem is trade availability and it's not trade availability by way of lack of trades, it's the skill degradation epidemic.
 
haltcatchfire said:
At the R-CG level, design is not even close to being a bottleneck, and most developers are already essentially pulling from a catalogue anyway. Which is in fact better for efficiency than some federal government catalogue, in that it's a product they've already worked through and are ready to replicate. The feds think it's 1965 and we can just grab a house plans magazine off the rack and send it to a truss supplier and build baby build.

The problem is trade availability and it's not trade availability by way of lack of trades, it's the skill degradation epidemic.
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The feds don't want to have to hire a boat load of experts to check whether municipalities are lying to them about being open to building new housing. Because plenty have said they have opened up to more density, but the results are mixed. In BC, Victoria's changes they highlighted as leading moves for affordability have contradictory components that make it almost impossible to comply with. Or you set the minimum lot width as wider than the standard lot size for your municipality, and one that doesn't divide right, so you would always have waste even if you assembled lets say 3 lots to build 4. Which also, doesn't provide enough lift to make the economics work.

So, the feds come and say 'show me how your density plan would allow one of these 8 types of densification on 80% of your single family lots'.

It is a lot easier for the feds to ask the municipalities to show their work, than for the feds to prove that an individual municipality undermined housing development. The local Mayors will always claim market conditions, demand, blah blah.

The context of these is a decade of municipalities asking for more and more housing resources and the federal government getting more and more frustrated as the municipalities fail to spend the money they are given, and reject housing left, right and centre.

And yeah, you go back in clippings from the 40s, there are stories about the city, whether they should provide zoning for the new federal led group of cookie cutter housing, countering with, if they don't, the money just goes elsewhere. It was always this fight!

Now, out of politeness, the federal government doesn't go out and flamethrower municipalities over this. In the end, the municipalities have to deliver all the stuff, and the provinces have to help them along. Last thing you need is the provinces somehow allying with the municipalities to prevent housing being built, even more than today.
 
darwink said:
The feds don't want to have to hire a boat load of experts to check whether municipalities are lying to them about being open to building new housing. Because plenty have said they have opened up to more density, but the results are mixed. In BC, Victoria's changes they highlighted as leading moves for affordability have contradictory components that make it almost impossible to comply with. Or you set the minimum lot width as wider than the standard lot size for your municipality, and one that doesn't divide right, so you would always have waste even if you assembled lets say 3 lots to build 4. Which also, doesn't provide enough lift to make the economics work.

So, the feds come and say 'show me how your density plan would allow one of these 8 types of densification on 80% of your single family lots'.

It is a lot easier for the feds to ask the municipalities to show their work, than for the feds to prove that an individual municipality undermined housing development. The local Mayors will always claim market conditions, demand, blah blah.

The context of these is a decade of municipalities asking for more and more housing resources and the federal government getting more and more frustrated as the municipalities fail to spend the money they are given, and reject housing left, right and centre.

And yeah, you go back in clippings from the 40s, there are stories about the city, whether they should provide zoning for the new federal led group of cookie cutter housing, countering with, if they don't, the money just goes elsewhere. It was always this fight!

Now, out of politeness, the federal government doesn't go out and flamethrower municipalities over this. In the end, the municipalities have to deliver all the stuff, and the provinces have to help them along. Last thing you need is the provinces somehow allying with the municipalities to prevent housing being built, even more than today.
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I'm not sure why you quoted me as municipal policy is a totally separate issue to my comment.
 
darwink said:
The feds don't want to have to hire a boat load of experts to check whether municipalities are lying to them about being open to building new housing. Because plenty have said they have opened up to more density, but the results are mixed. In BC, Victoria's changes they highlighted as leading moves for affordability have contradictory components that make it almost impossible to comply with. Or you set the minimum lot width as wider than the standard lot size for your municipality, and one that doesn't divide right, so you would always have waste even if you assembled lets say 3 lots to build 4. Which also, doesn't provide enough lift to make the economics work.

So, the feds come and say 'show me how your density plan would allow one of these 8 types of densification on 80% of your single family lots'.

It is a lot easier for the feds to ask the municipalities to show their work, than for the feds to prove that an individual municipality undermined housing development. The local Mayors will always claim market conditions, demand, blah blah.

The context of these is a decade of municipalities asking for more and more housing resources and the federal government getting more and more frustrated as the municipalities fail to spend the money they are given, and reject housing left, right and centre.

And yeah, you go back in clippings from the 40s, there are stories about the city, whether they should provide zoning for the new federal led group of cookie cutter housing, countering with, if they don't, the money just goes elsewhere. It was always this fight!

Now, out of politeness, the federal government doesn't go out and flamethrower municipalities over this. In the end, the municipalities have to deliver all the stuff, and the provinces have to help them along. Last thing you need is the provinces somehow allying with the municipalities to prevent housing being built, even more than today.
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Housing is so hyper-local that the Feds should have exactly zero involvement and provide zero funding
 
darwink said:
And yet people blame the feds, so, thems the breaks.
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People blame the Feds for pumping up population growth. They should blame the Feds for enabling excessive capital to flow into housing:
  • allowing high LTV mortgages
  • extending amortizations
  • allowing unrealized real estate gains to be used as down payments on additional real estate purchases
  • allowing CHMC to grow
  • not cracking down on money laundered through real estate
Evading their own jurisdiction by interfering in that of others is classic Canadian government policy
 
DougB said:
People blame the Feds for pumping up population growth. They should blame the Feds for enabling excessive capital to flow into housing:
  • allowing high LTV mortgages
  • extending amortizations
  • allowing unrealized real estate gains to be used as down payments on additional real estate purchases
  • allowing CHMC to grow
  • not cracking down on money laundered through real estate
Evading their own jurisdiction by interfering in that of others is classic Canadian government policy
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I'm not supportive of the current federal government but people definitely blame them for housing costs, irrespective of the immigration issue. You could say the things you've listed is to help people buy houses without interfering in zoning or other policies that allow the supply side to increase. Clearly that was bad policy and instead of changing financial rules to help people meet the increased prices, they should've worked on increasing supply to maintain prices that correlated to income.
 
trtcttc said:
they should've worked on increasing supply to maintain prices that correlated to income.
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The issue is, unless they're building housing I don't see how else the feds, staying in their jurisdiction, help supply. They are doing some stuff on federal lands? They could throw a bunch of money at non-profits?
 
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