Good, good, very good
Counting cars, raising the flag, packing the ballot, and getting Viennese.
And so we’re back! Have I finished my manuscript? No! But I’m getting there. Some of the editions over the next few weeks might be a tad shorter because of it, but they’ll still come out on Thursdays as usual. Thanks for your patience while I pretend to be an adult with a job.
OH! And I have a custom domain! Say hello to sewersocialists.ca! Now, if you’re ever saying to someone “wow, would you like to know about a fun weekly newsletter about the politics of Hamilton and the surrounding area from a leftist point of view that incorporates equal parts history, political analysis, and humour?”, you can direct them to sewersocialists.ca!
Okay, on with the show!
The social scientists and their bikes
Data collection is good!
I’m a social scientist. Every single time I say that, the quote from Starship Troopers pops into my mind.
The book by Robert A. Heinlein and the 1997 movie from which the above screenshot is derived are works of anti-fascist satire that are just…very well done. The positioning of social scientists (and those who believe in democracy) as the instigators of instability is something we regularly hear from the furthest fringes of the far-right. And that’s often because, as social scientists, we sometimes tell truths that people don’t want to hear. What’s worse, we try and back them up with data. Real data, not “my friend’s dogsitter’s massage therapist’s daughter’s psychic told me this, so like and share if you agree!”
I will jump on any chance I get to participate in data collection or the advancement of social science because more data means more chances to understand our world!
This past Tuesday, I participated in the Canada Bikes annual Pedal Poll. Citizen scientists go out into the field and collect data on transportation methods at given spots to provide city officials and advocacy groups with tangible numbers to consider when planning or advocating for different kinds of transportation infrastructure.
I selected a spot that I pass by regularly: the King St. West/403 onramp crossing. I dislike this crossing immensely because of how frustrating it can be as a cyclist or pedestrian to cross over a very busy highway onramp, particularly during times of high traffic. The feeling at that spot is like if you’re an hour into a three hour hike and then, suddenly, the trail stops at the edge of a raging river filled with leeches and fish that will actively nibble on you if you try and cross at the wrong time. This crucial break in the city’s pedestrian and cycling network can discourage those who are not confident or those who have had bad experiences with aggressive or distracted motorists in the past from using active transportation to get around.
But I wanted data. So I camped out under a tree for a couple of hours and logged data on the CounterPoint app.
The app is very easy to use and the Pedal Poll instructions asked me to do an “easy count”, meaning I would count the number of cyclists, pedestrians, personal vehicles, and oversized vehicles.
For the purposes of this data collection session, I classified anyone on an e-bike or motorized bike (smaller than a motorcycle) as being on a personal vehicle, anyone on a Bird scooter or personal e-scooter as a pedestrian (there were only 4 instances), and any school busses or GO/HSR busses as “oversized vehicles”. Delivery vans were also classified as personal vehicles, as there was almost always only one person in them.
I started at 2:00 pm, which, I thought, would be a nice quiet time. But the first 20 minutes already gave me some startling data.
Within 20 minutes, 706 personal vehicles had passed, 23 busses and large trucks went by (more GO busses than HSR), 10 pedestrians had walked by, and 6 cyclists had passed, almost all going westbound. 95% of trips in a 20 minute span were in personal vehicles.
After an hour, we were up to 2,076 personal vehicles passing. A 194% increase from just 40 minutes earlier. Up to 30 cyclists, 51 pedestrians, and 69 oversized vehicles.
The traffic happened in notable waves. The red light at Dundurn created breaks which were sometimes filled by cars leaving the gas station or Fortinos parking lot to the east of my location, and an occasional semi truck would back into the Fortinos loading bays, blocking traffic for a few seconds. Periods of intense activity would be punctuated by moments of relative peace.
The air quality was deteriorating rapidly and my breathing was getting a little bit more difficult (asthma for the win!). But I stuck it out for a while longer for this final count:
In the 105 minutes I was at the location, I counted 3,357 personal vehicles. 94% of trips that passed me were in cars and personal trucks. If traffic was flowing consistently, that would have been 1 car every 2 seconds.
A couple of observations:
The inefficiency of it all
Well over half of all cars that passed had only one passenger. Holy wow that’s an inefficient way of moving humans.
According to a recent consumer survey by American insurance provider The Zebra, the average size of a car in North America right now is 4.5 metres long (14.7 feet) and 1.8 metres (5.8 feet) wide. Contrast that with the HSR’s new Nova busses. At 12.2 metres (40 feet) long by 2.6 metres (8.5 feet) wide, these busses can transport 75 people at a time. Just over three times the size, but 75 times more capacity. Hell, even if we pack all those cars full of folks (max seating of 5), the bus still carries 15 times more people.
It can sometimes be helpful to visualize things, so this is the comparison between 100 people driving alone through downtown and 100 people on busses, all to scale:
Now we have an answer for when people like Spec columnist Scott Radley ask “where will all the cars go!?” when Main and King are converted to two-way and are slimmed down from being the multilane highways they are now: their drivers can stop being so elitist and hop on the bus. Yes, yes, I know not everyone who drives is elitist. But columns like that pander to people who make driving a part of their identity and opt to be willfully ignorant of other ways to get around. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you probably aren’t one of those people. And, if you are, like…come on, folks.
Chris’s hot take: the personal vehicle is inefficient and selfish, taking up massive amounts of space to move you from Point A to Point B using antiquated technology and in complete isolation from those around you. The car is a device that strips people from their communities, and funnels them onto massive, unpredictable roads and highways that are prone to complete failure if even just one motorist makes a mistake. They consume far too much space, make our air less breathable, and keep us from experiencing our community in a meaningful way.
Consider Hamilton’s downtown core. The photo on the left is from 1955, when there were 0.8 cars per family in Canada (and 1 car for every 5 Hamiltonians). Notice the relative abundance of people around the intersection of King and James. Now take a look at the photo on the right, in a time when we’re up to 1.5 cars per family nationally and climbing. In the 69 years between these photos, we’ve dramatically remade our urban environments to better facilitate the easy movement of the personal automobile. The result has been a change to our urban landscape in such a way that it becomes unpleasant and, at times, even dangerous to walk or use active transportation because we’ve given so much space over to the car.
Truckin’
Of the hundreds of trucks I observed, only three were carrying anything in their beds. And that’s counting the one truck carrying nothing but two propane tanks.
More trucks were towing trailers than had anything in their beds. Again, holy inefficient method of transportation, Batman!
It reminded me of this tweet that went viral recently:
In this photo from the Danforth, we see two trucks: a Mitsubishi Minicab and a Chevy Silverado. Granted, a Silverado’s bed can carry over double the volume of a Minicab (the increased weight of the truck allows for more weight in the bed), but that doesn’t really matter when there’s nothing in the got dang bed, Bobby! Just rolling with the King of the Hill thing now, I guess.
When 32% of truck owners say they rarely or never actually haul anything and 87% say they just use their truck to run basic errands, then we have a massive, Silverado-sized problem on our hands, don’t we? Car companies market these vehicles as a rugged, masculine way to show the world you’re a working dude who can take care of his family, bounce along mountain-top roads, and pull a massive boat up to the lake for cottage weekend with your bros. In reality, you spend all your time driving your truck from your home in the suburbs to an office park in Burlington and then to the Costco for bulk toilet paper. We’re letting car companies and dealers sell us a vision of a world that doesn’t exist and people are eating it up. And, what’s worse, we’re actually building our cities around this fake ass dream! We build massive highways and ugly multilane roads and huge parking lots to accommodate products that people have bought despite not needing them.
Oh, and they’re absurdly expensive products! A Minicab goes for about $8,000, while the base price of a new Silverado is about $70,000.
The bike lane complainers
Okay, so I’ve tweeted about this in the past, but one of the most irritating things to see when you open up the Spec’s letters to the editor is some old crank saying that we need to rip out all the bike lanes because no one uses them “and I should know because I drove down Cannon Street for 2 minutes last night and only saw one cyclist”.
Your personal observations and anecdotes do not constitute data collection, Brenda. Your lived experience is valid, but if we built public policy around it, we’d have a city that’s nothing but cul-de-sacs, Swiss Chalets, Michael’s craft stores, and public art murals of your grandkids. We’re building a city for everyone here. Theoretically.
While I only observed 44 cyclists, that doesn’t mean the bike lanes on King West aren’t working. That’s 44 trips made using a sustainable, human-centric method of transportation, and that’s amazing. The age ranges of the people cycling varied, as did the kinds of bikes and the directions from which they came. It is also important to acknowledge: my observations reflect a point-in-time in the middle of a very hot day during which we were under an air quality warning because Canada is on fire.
We need to provide cycling infrastructure that is safe, convenient, and connected. We’re getting better with that. The Breadalbane Bike Boulevard is a great new addition that feeds directly into the bike lanes I was observing. But we can, and must, do more.
Montreal just announced 53 new cycling infrastructure projects worth $30,000,000 that will help the city build 200 kilometres of new bike lanes and paths by 2027. As De Lorimier district city councillor Marianne Giguère (who has the responsibility for sustainable development and active transit on the Montreal Executive Committee…yeah, they have a cabinet that tasks councillors with portfolios because they have a normal government that works) told Global News:
…providing safe infrastructure is key to getting more people to choose active transit.
“We need to provide the (option) and people will use it.”1
If you build it, they will come.
Honestly. We need to build the infrastructure, ensure people know it is safe and accessible, and then wait for capacity to build from there. We can’t simply rely on those few, brave cyclists willing to endure riding in traffic for years to show us there is a desire for new infrastructure. Only by building the infrastructure can we encourage people to consider cycling as a real method of transportation.
So, all in all, this was a fun way to collect some data and spend some time in a space I am usually only passing through. And it is not somewhere I’d want to spend a lot of time. The green fence along the Cathedral grounds is weathered beyond repair in some places, the sidewalk is so small that many people, including the elderly, had to step down and into the bike lane to pass someone else, and the flow of one-way traffic onto an ugly, busy highway doesn’t exactly make for a super picnic spot.
But it did give me a chance to observe things that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen and collect data for a cool project. I’d definitely encourage folks to sign up for next year’s edition!
“Advocate for people the same way you do for roads”
In late May, Norwich Township councillor Alisha Stubbs resigned mid-meeting.
Good!
Stubbs was in a rough spot. The township council passed a motion that originally stated it would not fly the Pride flag on city flagpoles, but was later amended (to get around that pesky Charter of Rights and Freedoms) to say that no “special interest group” flags would be flown, leaving the Canadian, Ontarian, and township flags as the only ones to grace city-owned flagpoles.
There wasn’t really an effort to hide that this was a motion rooted in homophobia. Oxford County Pride (Oxford borders Norwich to the north) has launched a human rights complaint on behalf of the queer community in Norwich, highlighting that, in preventing the Pride flag from being raised (and refusing to recognize Pride Month), they are acting in a discriminatory way.
Stubbs did not want to be part of a body that would discriminate against an entire population. In a rather dramatic turn of events, she resigned mid-meeting and later posted the text of her council break up speech on Facebook:
“I refuse to participate in this any longer.
To the dog whistles and the blatant discrimination … I refuse to participate in this
To the hypocrisy of decisions made for “peace”, while many citizens feel fear…I refuse to participate in this.
To the negative talk and slander about me after council meetings or at committee meetings… I refuse to participate in this
To the lack of leadership, by this council, that panders to religious groups…I refuse to participate in this.
In conclusion, I have some advice: Have the same concern for people as you do for roads. Check in with them. Reach out to them and ask them their experiences. when conditions change, adapt your follow up. Know that sometimes different roads need different work to keep them up to par. Remember that pot holes that cause damage and unsafe conditions aren’t at the fault of the road itself, but of the conditions of the environment. Advocate for people the same way you do for roads.
Use your power for good. When you hear of people in our community that feel unsafe. Believe them. Just like you believe people who say their roads are a mess.
Be the helpers. Use your power in these positions to instill change. Be courageous to challenge the status quo of hate. Kindness, and compassion and knowledge can save lives. Read more. Learn more. And then do better.
Please accept this as my resignation effective immediately.”2
The really interesting phrase there is “by this council, that panders to religious groups”.
See, Norwich’s local government has fallen under the influence of the Netherlands Reformed Congregation, a hard right-wing Calvinist sect with some extreme beliefs. The Norwich branch of the church outlines its beliefs pretty clearly, stating on its website that it is enthusiastically anti-queer, anti-abortion, and patriarchal (to the point where they state “Office bearers shall only be males”). Some fun points they also include in their beliefs is the idea that “Men and women are to dress modestly and in accordance with their biological sex,” and that “God disapproves of and forbids any attempt to alter one’s gender by surgery or appearance.”3 For Biblical literalists, they sure are going off book on that one.
This tiny Protestant denomination seems to have found a way to wield outsized influence in Norwich. A report by the Canadian Press spoke to local residents who said business owners attempting to open on Sunday had been harassed and intimidated by the church, became the only high school provider in the area when the Thames Valley District School Board closed a local 9-12 school, and, according to an area resident, the church has become “embedded in all facets of decision-making of the town”.4
And, what’s worse, the township actually paid a conservative Christian law firm to help write the by-law for them. The township’s Clerk and CAO confirmed that the Acacia Group, based out of Ottawa, helped them draft what would eventually become legislation.5
The debate has divided the community, with many in Norwich choosing to fly the Pride flag to express solidarity with the queer community and express their disapproval of the Christian nationalist direction their municipality has taken. At the same time, Netherlands Reformed Congregation-backed businesses have begun saying they do not need the support of non-believers, further dividing the rural municipality.
The only silver lining here relates to my post about Jonker over in West Lincoln. These hard-right Christian nationalists can get elected locally by mobilizing their church and by appealing to unaffiliated conservatives by doing the whole “low taxes, more jobs” thing. Particularly when there’s low voter turnout, it can be easy for otherwise fringe candidates to win. But when they show their hand and bring bad press to their communities, voters can quickly turn on them.
Now, Norwich’s turnout was relatively high at 51%. But, as we saw in West Lincoln, voter turnout jumped 5% in 2022, bucking the provincial trend and sending Jonker and Mayor David Bylsma packing for their participation in the Convoy and their general COVID-19 denial nonsense. The same increase in turnout in Norwich could unseat their mayor and some of the anti-Pride councillors in 2026.
In short, by caving to the demands of the extremist Netherlands Reformed Congregation, the Norwich Township Council might have just handed their opponents the 2026 election (Alisha Stubbs for Mayor?). One can only hope.
Happy Pride!
Ballot brimming, billions bemused
The Longest Ballot Committee is attempting to “flood” the upcoming Winnipeg South Centre byelection with candidates to protest the Liberal government’s failure to implement electoral reform.
Good!
If you haven’t heard of these folks, the Longest Ballot Committee is a group of political activists angry at the Liberals for bailing on electoral reform. They’ve been targeting ridings across the country to create a “long ballot” to protest the PM’s backtracking on a key campaign promise from 2015.
There will be a by-election in Winnipeg South Centre after the MP there, Jim Carr, died back in December. The Longest Ballot Committee sprang into action before the writ was issued, hoping to fill the by-election ballot with as many candidates as possible.
And, boy oh boy, did they make it happen. With 46 candidates on the ballot, the Winnipeg South Centre by-election will have the most candidates for a single parliamentary seat in Canadian history.
And, what’s more, on Tuesday, the Committee announced that the ballot will be the largest ever in terms of physical size as well at over 50 centimetres long! Take a gander at this doozy of a sample!
This is a clever way to protest the very bad decision to walk back a promise on electoral reform. We desperately need a way of selecting elected representatives that more accurately reflects the will of the Canadian people, not just a system that’s easy for the big players to game. And, until we get it, may as well make the whole thing as chaotic as possible!
Also, Elections Canada issued that sample ballot to show what 46 candidates on a single ballot will look like, and used filler names for show. But do Hamilton political watchers maybe recognize one of the names on there? Bonus points for anyone who spots it!
Vienna waits for you
Dr. Mike Moffatt sees folks advocating for the Vienna Model in Ontario.
Good!
This tweet popped up in my feed a while back and I need to talk about just how bad this take from Moffatt truly is.
As an (*pushes glasses up his nose*) academic, I can confidently say that some of my fellow academics are…simply too online. It seems that, in the words of the famed philosopher Damon Albarn, “trending on Twitter's what some of us live for”.6 There are certain academics that try to become part of the viral conversation to boost their profile. But academic work can take years to come to fruition. We have to develop a theory, do background research, conduct field work and/or experiments, replicate our findings, document the process, write that up, and submit it to our peers for examination. It takes time. But viral conversation is all about speed. There isn’t really time to do the work necessary to make a new and coherent point, so you either have to rest on your past work or go from your gut.
Moffatt appears to have caught on to some of the chatter among housing advocates about the “Vienna Model”. There was this interesting piece in Policy Options about housing affordability in early May and this cool piece from the ever-poignant Gavin Armitage-Ackerman in Canadian Dimension a few weeks later.
But let’s just do a crash course in what the “Vienna Model” really means.
Vienna, once a capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was in bad shape at the dawn of the 20th century. The city was run by landlords, who restricted suffrage and controlled all the property in the city with an iron fist. The situation was so bad that, on the eve of the First World War, a quarter of the city’s population lived in “asylums” (what they called their version of homeless shelters at the time).7
After the collapse of the Empire following their defeat in the war, Austria became an independent country with universal suffrage. In Vienna’s first truly free elections in 1919, the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (the SPÖ) gained control of the city’s local government. They ushered in an era that would be called the “Red Vienna” period, which only ended with a fascist take-over of the country in 1934.
With the time they had, the SPÖ began an ambitious program of fixing the problems faced by the capital. And there were a lot of problems. Soldiers from the war flooded into the city, the Flu Pandemic ravaged the population, displaced Jewish people and socialist intellectuals quickly migrated into the capital, and hyperinflation pushed even the previously stable middle classes into poverty. The SPÖ’s plans focused on addressing these issues while drawing on the expertise of the new migrants living in Vienna.
But, as Patrick Condon from UBC notes,
[the SPÖ] never set out to remove or even cripple capitalism by nationalizing property. Instead, they used a taxing strategy to meet their social ends and their most important achievement was providing decent housing for every resident.8
The City of Vienna became a developer. They knew they needed to build housing, so they just built it. The imposed rent controls, they dedicated 1/5 of all new housing to those in abject poverty or those living with disabilities, they ensured the housing they built was run by non-profits or cooperatives.
But they also did unique and interesting things that kept non-profits from languishing and to ensure new housing was always being built. Again, from Condon:
Vienna also developed a system for working with non-profit development corporations that compete with each other for city sponsored projects. The city acquires the land for a project, establishes the housing goals and project pro forma and publishes the amount of financial subsidy to be supplied. Stakeholder groups judge the proposals submitted in response and decide which project team of architect, builder, developer and management entity has the most intelligent response.9
Today, 60% of the Viennese live in subsidized housing and over half of the city’s housing stock is state-owned. People clamor for spots in these buildings, because, as of 2022, rents for a one-bedroom apartment 20 minutes from the city centre go for €330.10
That’s about $470 a month for a one-bedroom. Four hundred, seventy Canadian dollars. A month. FOR RENT.
So what in the world does Mike Moffatt have against the Vienna Model?
His whole thread (which you can read here) has some issues. It makes points about Austria having less of a population increase than Canada, points out that Austria’s government is pretty right wing now, and then says “building social housing will be too expensive!” It isn’t very well argued and rests on that oh, so Ontarian assumption that nothing will ever change, can ever change, or should ever change.
I hear this all the time. “But how will we pay for it?”, “No one will go for that”, “All of that is too hard”, “What about taxes?”, “Wahhh wahhh wahhhhhhhh”, etc.
The SPÖ’s control of Vienna’s municipal government during the period of Red Vienna saw them tap into the incredible expertise and abounding optimism of the people who realized they had no choice but to fix the situation they faced. They were literally rebuilding their country after the monarchs and the ruling classes dragged them into a pointless war for their own vanity.
They simply made different decisions, breaking out of the form that was established and created a better city for it.
The city government built housing, using tax revenue to fund the initial development and then using the revenue from running affordable housing to maintain that housing. Their investments in providing people a place to live allowed for other investment, which bolstered the city’s tax rolls, which allowed them to build new housing. It was a cycle of investing in the city and using the proceeds to reinvest in the city.
Moffatt pulls some fake number ($3 trillion) to build all the housing the CMHC calls for over the next few years to try and scare the dreamers into not reaching for their goals. But that’s nonsense. And that number overinflates what the CMHC is calling for, which is 3.5 million new affordable units.
We have ways of generating the revenue needed to build housing. Massive tax increases on property speculation and additional taxes on those who own more than X number of properties, as well as actually taxing Real Estate Investment Trusts (yeah, REITs, some of the largest property owners in Canada, don’t pay corporate taxes and usually do a little shell game to avoid paying most, if not all, of their taxes), and increasing taxes on things like capital gains can help generate a significant portion of the revenue needed to build housing. Plus, since we’re talking about a state, they can just build the damn housing and pay for it later.
And it isn’t like there won’t be revenue raised through these projects. When we’re talking about social housing or any other form of housing (a long-term state-owned-to-cooperative agreement comes to mind), the investment will eventually pay for itself. It is an investment, after all. Even if the units themselves don’t generate all the revenue, as we’ve learned from Vienna, by actually housing people at an affordable rate (thereby giving those tenants more disposable income and less worry), they’re more inclined to participate in the local economy, providing more tax revenue. Plus, they have more time for volunteering and community engagement, meaning they can step into fill the gaps that presently exist in our society, reducing the need for things like extra policing, hiring more city staff because of burnout, and all the money that goes into fixing people when they break because of stress!
Moffatt, and other centrist and centre-right economists, as well as many of this country’s real estate and developer professionals, keep shaking their heads and saying “the big, bad, nasty government and all those shrill NIMBYs are the ones causing this crisis” and then slag off anyone who dares to question that narrative. This dominant “supply side” push will not solve the crisis because, in typical Canadian fashion, we have not built in any safeguards to prevent the ultrawealthy from gobbling up all the new housing supply that is put out there. We had our one little fling with Red Toryism back in the 1950s and we’ve stayed put ever since. Slight regulation, a paper thin health care system, and a pittance for pensions? All done!
I say this a lot, but it never seems to sink in:
JOHN DIEFENBAKER IS DEAD AND HE’S NEVER COMING BACK.
We have to try new things, implement new policies, and take risks if we want to create affordable housing for all. We can’t listen to talking heads on Twitter who tell us we just need to believe in the market and, one day, we, too, will have our own little suburban sidesplit with a shiny new Studebaker in the driveway, a wife holding a martini when we get home from the office, and two precocious kids climbing the trees in our overly large backyard. Don’t fall, Timmy! You don’t want to be stuck on the Chesterfield all summer while your pals get go get 5 cent soft serve after their little league games.
We can’t stay stuck in the past (the irony here being that Moffatt’s thread falters precisely because it didn’t consider history). We have to try new things and stop believing that the market will solve all of our problems.
If by “Vienna Model”, we mean the state takes on the role of being the largest housing developer in our communities and works with non-profits and cooperatives to transfer land and housing units to the people to be used as affordable housing in perpetuity, then that’s something we should consider. No matter what snarky tweet threads are posted by chronically-online academics.
Slag the Hammer
Brad Bradford, current Toronto city councillor, former Hamiltonian, urban planner with biceps, and candidate presently polling at around 5% in the TO mayoral by-election, has been putting up campaign signs aimed at his target demographic: upper middle-class elder millennials in high skills/knowledge economy jobs who ask questions in the r/Hamilton subreddit like “Hey, moving to Hamilton soon, does anyone know where I can buy locally-sourced wood for the funky horizontal slat fence I’m putting up around the charming little bungalow I’m flipping moving into at Vansitmart and Cope?” No, Ashleigh and Dayton, I don’t know! And stop talking about Trinity Bellwoods. Nobody cares about Trinity Bellwoods! Its a park, not the Ark of the Covenant. Though it would be cathartic to see your faces melt off.
Listen, a lot of folks move from Toronto to Hamilton. And so many of them are cool people! Just because you move here from somewhere else doesn’t make you a bad person. I’m happy to have been born here, but that doesn’t mean I get to be some kind of Hamilton gatekeeper. People moving to Hamilton and bringing their unique sense of place, community, and identity can only make this city better.
Sure, some people point to the influx of folks from Toronto and say they’re only making Hamilton less affordable. But I don’t buy that. I’m not sold on the arguments about “gentrification” because they all lean into the market and end in some variation of “and that’s why working class and low income people don’t deserve nice things!” The problem is corporate capitalism, not the art supply store on the corner. People coming from Toronto aren’t causing the problem alone. This is just another way to individualize a systemic problem.
But that’s only somewhat adjacent to the point. Just needed to make up for my cheap dig at Ashleigh and Dayton, who I’m sure are nice people whose faces definitely don’t need to melt off.
Bradford’s throwing shade at the Hammer is weird, but also signals how out-of-touch he is with the present reality of the housing market. His platform on housing is just a couple of bullet points that are all variations of “increase supply by making life easier for developers!” That’s not going to fix the problem. More homes on the market as it currently is will just mean more homes sold for more than anyone can afford. The whole “increased supply means lower prices” line comes from people who think the principles in first year econ textbooks apply to reality. They don’t. Because capitalism is irrational. (Please see above post, which was written after this one…)
Bradford’s plan leans into that irrationality, making that dumb line about moving to Hamilton pointless. If Bradford, by some miracle, wins the mayoral race, more and more Torontonians will still have to look elsewhere to find housing because of his policy agenda. They’ll move to Hamilton, Hamiltonians will move to Brantford, Brantfordians (Brantfordgonians?) will move to Norfolk, and people in Norfolk will be quietly pushed into Lake Erie in the night. Or turned into those footlong hotdogs in Port Dover. And hundreds of units in glittering new condo towers in Toronto will be bought up by investors who watched one too many YouTube videos about “passive income” and will either sit empty or be rented out to folks for over $2,500 a month. But we’re all moving because everything is unaffordable, and that is not the fault of individuals. It is the fault of a deeply broken system. We’re all just being pushed out of spaces to make way for the interests of capital.
Which, honestly, is pretty understandable. I mean, “displacing people to make way for corporate interests” is how you can sum up all of Canadian history.
Without meaningful investment in housing that is outside the corporate market, the problem won’t get better. But Bradford’s whole schtick is “I’m the millennial John Tory #yolo #random #relevant”, so anything that doesn’t involve a full-throated endorsement of the market isn’t on his radar.
Damn. Bradford Bradford (his actual name) made me break the “good” theme. I’d say I hope he loses, but, that’s pretty much a given at this point. Anyway, I look forward to being just as frustrated with him when he steps up to replace Nathaniel Erskine-Smith as Liberal MP for Beaches—East York.
#LessBradfordMoreHamilton
Cool facts for cool people
The Toronto Star has a fun article from May 25th about home prices in Toronto compared to elsewhere in the world. And by “fun” I mean “deeply frustrating and silly to the point of causing undirected, hysterical laughter”. The first quarter median home price in TO is $1,270,000. So the Star found nine properties around the world that will cost you less. They include a beach resort unit in Cape Verde for $219,000, an energy-efficient villa in Greece with “panoramic views of the Aegean Sea” for $263,000, an entire self-sufficient island off the coast of Nicaragua for $645,000, and part of a god damn honest to Bastet part of an actual castle in Monaco for $950,000. Okay, can we all agree right here and right now that the housing market in Canada is warped beyond belief if you can buy part of a castle in Monaco for the same price as a house off Upper Paradise and Stone Church?
Hamilton’s developers and real estate folks are hitting the PR circuit! This past weekend, the President of the West End Home Builders’ Association had a piece in the Spec about how we need more housing supply to fix the current crisis (that won’t fix it, Chris said for the billionth time). And on Wednesday, we got another article from the President of the Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington. This one includes the quotes: “We need to build more homes…We are in a crisis, and we can no longer give in to a few vocal residents resistant to change when we need every type of housing along the continuum.” So, then you’re okay with housing outside the market, right? This supply side logic is going to sprawl us into oblivion, I swear.
It is good to be back! I wrote this week’s newsletter in chunks, so sorry if it seems disjointed. Lots to cover from my time away. And I had a piece published in The Spec pointing out the flaws in Matt Francis’s “Advocate Registry”, a proposed list of those who are “sympathetic” to those experiencing homelessness who may want to house someone in their yard. Take a look if you’re keen! Anyway, see you next week!
Any spelling or grammar mistakes in this newsletter are totally, absolutely, definitely on purpose.
Haines, Brayden Jagger (2023) “Montreal to invest $30M to upgrade and expand cycling network”, Global News Montreal, May 30th, 2023 - Link
Smith, Jessica (2023). “Local church holds 'big influence' over Ontario township that voted down Pride flags” CP24/Canadian Press, May 10, 2023 - Link
Lupton Andrew; Kate Dubinski (2023) “Norwich Township paid Christian-focused law firm to draft flag bylaw” CBC News, May 31st, 2023 - Link
Damon Albarn, aka Gorillaz.
Condon, Patrick (2018) “How Vienna Cracked the Case of Housing Affordability” The Tyee, June 6th, 2018 - Link
Ibid.
Ibid again, sissy! Sorry, Pride Month.
And re "Vienna Model" you've hit on exactly Moffatt's point: people cite the concept approvingly because they want the state to be the largest housing provider. As do I! Its success in Vienna is connected PRECISELY to Vienna's population being less (yes, LESS) than it was in 1914.
Buddy, re people moving here from elsewhere: if you have to explain the joke it's not fucking funny.