April 15, 2024 • 48 mins
Today we are taking a deep dive into housing issues in Mississauga with Alex Beheshti and Kelly Singh from @MoreHomesSauga.
We all agree that we need to build more housing, now we need to figure out how.
We all agree that we need to build more housing, now we need to figure out how.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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The views expressed in the following programare those of the participants and do not
necessarily reflect the views of Saga ninesixty AM or its management from the treaty
and traditional territory of the Mississaugas ofthe Credit First Nation. You're listening to
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Beyond the Ballot with Ryan Gercharn andNoka duck Rue and welcome to Beyond the
Ballot. I am Ryan Gercharn andI'm Noka da Cruz and we are going
to talk about housing this episode.Because of the selection coming up, you
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have a chance to talk to yourthe future mayor of Mississauga. They're going
to be coming knocking on your doorand you get to ask them anything you
want. And I'm hoping that housingis one of those issues you have,
because it's definitely something I've been hearinga lot about, Noka. Have you
heard anybody talk about housing? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. It's a serious
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problem, right, It's a seriousproblem. It's impacting our generation, the
millennial generation, and it's impacting futuregenerations and it's hitting them pretty hard.
It's not fair that we have tolive in a time where people may not
have the opportunities to ever be ableto purchase their own home. But also
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just the supply is not there.We just don't have enough homes for the
population that we are supposed to beable to support. So I don't even
know about that. I would evenquestion. I guess I know a lot
of landlords who are purposely keeping theirplaces vacant because it helps them with in
their taxes or it's cheaper to nothave somebody there right now. For them,
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it is insane the way things areturning out. Yeah, absolutely,
but the vacant homes are an issuealso. But overall, you know,
we just need more housing. Andwe have a mayoral race. What a
great opportunity, what a ryan affordableand I just wanted to add this opportunity.
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I guess my daughter. I gottwo of them now, and I
don't know what they're going to dowhen I eventually kicked them out of the
house. Where are they going togo. I've been investing in like how
to build a tent and how todo outdoor plumbing, so I could figure
something out for them, But otherthan that, I really don't know what
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they're going to do because it ishard to afford a place, especially if
I want to keep and grow andbuild my family. Here in Mississauga,
it is hard to afford a placeunder one person salary or even two people's
salary, Like you're looking at multiplefinancial partners to afford a house, and
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that definitely complicates at home lifestyle.Yeah, absolutely, it's it's a serious
problem and we need serious solutions toaddress it. And we have We have
a lot of candidates who are runningaround trying to tell us why they're going
to be the best mayor and whythey are worthy of that chair and the
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strong mayor powers to you know,get things done in the city in Mississauga.
And and we want to know howare they going to address this big
crisis that's impacting our children, someof our friends and colleagues and family members
and future generations. And today weare going to get into it. We're
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going to give you all these answers. Some experts coming on the show and
a bit and yes, me andme and Ryan are experts, but we're
getting we're getting I'm not absolutely expert, They're getting real I'm an expert at
like spending money I could sure Ithat I could do. I've done a
lot of that, But building housesare making finding more affordable house. I
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don't know, I honestly, asidefrom an actual building like co ops or
four plexus or something, I don'tknow what else we can do. And
that's why I'm saying, Well,we have Kelly Saying from the More Homes
Mississauga. She'll be on later ontoday to talk about some other strategy,
some other things that the mayor cando municipally, what we can do municipally.
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And Alex Baschetti, who is asenior consultant and registered professional planner at
the Altist Group Economics Consulting. He'san urban planner by trade, and I
think he has a lot to contributeto, you know, the way he
sees Mississauga being developed over the nexttwo years, because that's the next term
for sure, the next year,so mayor, and I'm excited that there
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will be here to really frame sortof like where we are right now Mississi
housing and where we need to bein wo Who really what we need to
who we need what we need toask, yeah, you know, to
find out what questions should we askthem, What should we be hearing from
them, What are the things thatthey should be saying, if you know,
if they're if they're a candidate that'ssuper pro housing and wants to get
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things on what are those keywords oror not keywords? Uh? But you
know what, what are the thingsthat they should be saying that we should
be looking out for in order toknow who to support if we if you're
a very if you're a person whois really supportive of housing and wants to
see the city building more housing.To be honest, I don't know,
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and I was just being facetious.I really don't know anybody who is not
like this is not a big issuefor them. Yeah, if a lot
like my parents there own their houseright, but they bought it like way
back when when it was like almostnothing and now it's like, you know,
I can't even find them their matthow much it costs now. But
it's like for them, they don'tcare. They're more just laid off.
They're fine. They're worried about us. They're worried about like their grandkids.
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And they love Mississauga. They've livedhere. They want us to stay around
here so they could visit to seetheir grandkids more often. And it's I
mean not like that, you know, everybody loves Raymond situation but we're right
across the street. But you know, you're in the city and it makes
sense and it's hard. It's hardto build your family in here, I
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think for me personally, yeah,absolutely yeah. But with that, I
want you guys to stick around becausewe will be back with Alex and Kelly
and I think it's gonna be veryinteresting to hear what they have to say.
So stay tuned right here on newsTAKSAGA nine sixty Am. Stream us
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live at SAGA nine sixty am dotCA. You're listening to Beyond the Ballot
with Ryan Gurcharn and Noka Duck RubAnd welcome back to Beyond the Ballot,
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where we are talking about this everythingelection in Mississauga, this by election,
and I'm here my co host isalways a Noka duck Grub. Noka,
are you excited to talk about housing? I am. I'm very excited to
talk about housing. I'm very excitedabout the amazing guests that we have today
who are going to lead us throughthis conversation and help us understand better what
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we should be looking for when itcomes to the candidates, how we should
be a dressing the housing crisis,how Mississauga is doing on housing. So
you know, how have we doneso far? So let's get right to
it. I think I think everybody'swaiting for this episode. I'm waiting for
this episode. So these two expertsI'll introduce. One of them is Alex
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Bashetti and he's a senior consultant andregistered professional planner the Altist Group in Altist
Group Economic Consulting, so he hasa huge amount of insight he's going to
be bringing to the table. Andalso we have Kelly Singh who is the
acting executive director of More Homes Mississauga. Hello Alex, and hello Kelly,
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thanks for having us. Hello welcome. First of all, now that the
housing crisis has been solved in Mississauga, not really, but I wanted to
put it out there. One ofthe biggest issues right now candidates are talking
about, they put it right thereon their platforms is affordable housing. And
it's not just I mean Mississaugu's allacross Ontario. But for this discussion,
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I want to focus a bit moreon Mississauga, just a generic right off
the bad just to get us started. Kelly, if you will, you're
from More Homes Mississauga. What doesmore affordable housing look like in Mississauga.
Great question, So more homes Misissaga. We advocate for housing of all types,
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but obviously a healthy housing market includesnot only for profit, you know,
homes for people to purchase. Itincludes rental, it includes supportive housing,
it includes affordable housing. And inorder for us to have a truly
healthy system in Mississauga, we needto support the development of all of those
types of housing. Of course,our city is made up of people from
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all socioeconomic backgrounds, of all needs, and the housing market needs to address
that. The importance of affordable housingfor us in this particular moment is that
especially and I mean this is notunique to Mississauga, but of course Mississaga
is feeling it like everywhere else,with affordability becoming a loftier goal for everybody
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in our society, regardless of whereyou follow that socioeconomic spectrum, affordable housing
is the path for almost everybody tobe able to live fulfilled, in complete
lives. Your housing affects virtually everyother part of your life. It affects
how much money you have in yourpocket to buy groceries. It affects your
family planning decisions, It affects whereyour parents are going to live as they
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age. It becomes so it isso melted into all the parts of your
life that if we cannot sustain ahealthy, affordable housing market here, then
it becomes Missaga quickly becomes a veryunlivable city for people long term. Alex,
it's Mississauga on the right track.What are we doing right so far?
So Mississauga has quite a lot ofhousing under construction currently. So you
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know, when Mayor Crombie came intopower, the city was averaging about one
thousand to three thousand and homes underconstruction every year. When she left office
in January, you know, thecity had twelve thousand homes under construction,
you know, And so the city. But the thing with I always like
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to tell people is a housing startis not something you can live in.
So you can't live in a homethat has a crane. And so,
you know, while the city hasa lot of housing supply in the works,
it's just on the horizon. Youknow, it's got to push through
to the end. This is constructing, this is housing under construction. So
there's very little the city can do. The city has to figure out development
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patterns that allow for housing that canbe built more quickly in combination to sort
of the apartment buildings that will giveit that sort of base load of housing.
So you know, the next mayoris going to have challenges to both
get the big stuff approved and alsomake sure that the little stuff gets approved
because that little stuff is the stuffthat can react quickly to market demand.
Okay, that's really interesting, andI like the idea of getting the little
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stuff kind of rolling quickly. Wesaw a huge debate on the four plexes,
right, we saw a huge conversationon the four plex motion. I
was tweeting up a storm. Isaw more homes Mississauga tweeting up a storm
how quickly? So they've already passedthe motion. How quickly can we expect
to see that actually starting to pickup? So I would say, like,
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look, you know there is thebroad levels of permissibility. So you're
legally allowing four units, but that'snot where the legality of a building ends.
Right, There's sort of a feasibilitythe length with and height of what
you allow a building, and thatcan really make or break a project.
Right, So you can allow fourplexes, but if you know a home
can only be one story tall andyou know, it can only be so
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wide. You know, you can'treally fit four units in there, right,
So you have to provide sufficient feasibilitywithin what we call the development envelope.
The development envelope is when we addup all the little zoning rules and
like what is that box that youcan kind of build in? And so,
you know, Mississauga has done thefirst challenge, which is to get
the top level legalization right, whichis the four plexes. Now it has
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to go back and has to dothat kind of feasibility the development envelope portion,
because if it doesn't, you know, you're going to see some four
plexes built, but you know you'renot going to see many. Unless the
city really really wants to to makemultiplexes a big part of the housing spot.
It's got to be ambitious, right, Marginal changes will always result in
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marginal outcomes, right, And ifI might, if I may expound on
that just slightly, Noka, you'reone hundred percent correct, more homes.
Mississauga is obviously extremely supportive of thefour plex motion. We are members all
went to City Council to depute infavor of it, and we're very grateful
that not only did it pass thatit has continued to be a story here
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in Mississauga and has clearly caught theattention of the province. Though we are
not happy with what Premiere for Ithas said on the subject, as supportive
as we are, we realize thatthe four plex opportunity in miss Saga is
definitely important, but is in manyways symbolic of the larger problems that we
have here when it comes to housing. It's not that legalizing four plexes alone
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will simply solve the missing middle problemsor the affordability problems that we have in
missus Saga. It is simply onesolution. But for us, the largest
story that came out of that,and the reason we're so glad that the
media has not let go of thestory, is that it is an example
of just how reticent to change thecity and city council can be. Because,
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of course, as we know,the motion didn't actually pass, It
failed in a tie, and ittook Mayor Bonnie Crombie using her strong mayor
powers to push that through. Soeverything that Alex has said is absolutely correct.
We don't expect to see an avalancheof fourplexes suddenly appear everywhere, but
what we have done now is empoweredhomeowners to make a decision for what's best
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for themselves, what's best for theirfamilies. It's a great solution, for
example, if you have aging parents, if you have adult children still living
at home. I'm an adult childwho still lives at home. So all
of these things are great opportunities forour city. But it is merely one
step in a lot of steps thatneed to be taken in order to create
a more healthy and productive housing market. Okay, and you know you mentioned
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the missing middle. There there wasa report. I'm not sure if you're
familiar with it, but the it'sa report by the City of Mississauga.
It's called Making Room for the Middle. It was published in twenty seventeen.
And there's a lot of you know, fancy stuff in there. There's a
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lot of good stuff in there,but nothing's happened. So what's what's this
what's the what's this thing with fancyreports that get past? I'm a former
school board trustee. I know whatit's like and and nothing gets implement Like
where are the houses? What's twentytwenty four? So you know, like
I'm an urban planner by trade,and so you know, I don't I
don't want to hit too hard onmy my colleagues, but you know,
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like far, you know, fartoo often we do reports about doing more
reports, and that's a lot ofwhat it is. It's just you know,
it's city staff doing maybe a littlebit of passion work, saying like,
hey, you know, we'd loveto do this if council gives us
direction, if we if we canget an endorsement from council to do this
stuff. But you know, likepoliticians, they they love to tell you
that they're solving a problem, butthey hate solving problems sometimes because to actually
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solve a problem is very it requiresyou know, it requires upsetting some people.
And so you know, it's easierto say that, hey, I'm
still working on something than to actuallylike hand in your homework. Right,
you know, I will say thislike if like what Bonnie Crombie did was
was very was very important, Itwas kind of a watershed moment. Maybe
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it didn't fix all the problems thatare necessary to get you know, four
plexes or multiplexes to take off,but what will happen is that it does
democrat highs home building. It doesmake home building come down from being this
thing that only like ultra rich youknow, large development companies can do is
to like, you know, itbecomes an option that maybe you know,
some people kick the tires on thatcome from more more modest backgrounds. People
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might start looking at it is away I can live with my kids,
or I can live with my momand dad, and you know, then
they're gonna go through the planning processand realize how frustrating it is, and
then they're gonna be like, Iwant changes right and so that you know,
so you can't fix all the issuesin one day as much as like
it gets really frustrating for me andI, you know, we know how
to solve these problems. You know, it does get the ball rolling.
And I think as more people sortof get exposure to the planning system,
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they're going to demand change, right, Like they're going to say, like
this is I don't care about whatthis does for some large developer. I
care about what it does for meand for my own personal selfish reason reasons.
I want to make this work.And it's no longer about these these
like kind of conversations of you know, this is the right thing to do
for everybody in society because it becomesa conversation of like, it's the right
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thing to do for me, Andyou mentioned council and mayors, and you
know, a big part of theproblem is nimbiism, right, A big
part of the problem is and I'veknocked doors, I've been a representative.
I know that people don't like change. And it's very hard to convince someone
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that, you know, we're justgoing to build a building or a fourplex
or anything on your street. It'svery These are difficult conversations, and you
know, you're right. It's mucheasier to say we're working on it.
We're working on it, rather thanactually explain why something's happening when people get
angry. How much influence and howmuch I guess how much influence do local
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counselors have on the I guess theoutcome of development in their respective wards.
Local counselors have an immense amount ofimpact on the development that goes on in
their wards. In fact, theyhave one of the most important ships.
In that conversation. We see thatin the way that miss Saga is distributed.
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If you drive war to ward,if you drive from the south up
to Central and north, the waythat housing has developed, the types of
projects that are being improved approved,and the speed at which they're being improved
and the opposition that those are gettingvaries. It's interesting. Miss Saga is
a single city, but the culturevaries quite drastically, and as you mentioned,
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nimbiaism noka and that becomes really important. What particularly because we have an
election going on, particularly because weare in this moment of evolution for our
city. We had Hazel Mackallian forso many years. She very much created
this system of sprawl and maintained thatsystem of sprawl that we are now having
to live in today. This isa big change for Mississaga. So whoever
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is elected isn't going to have tolead a council that is very, very
very divided, almost fifty to fiftyas far as is their willingness to approve
new housing and their unwillingness to doso. What we're hoping to see is
the new mayor to take for thatperson to take leadership over city council and
guide them towards a way in whichthey can better communicate to their constituents.
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Because we know the counselors might bewell intentioned, They certainly all talk about
how important housing development is to them. There's not a single one who doesn't.
But when it comes to their actualvoting records, we see that many
of those counselors tend to buy andlarge vote against more development, vote against
more density, vote against the investmentthat's needed. So what we're hoping to
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do is see a mayor that's goingto influence city council to change that culture,
and further for those counselors to startchanging that culture in their own communities.
You're absolutely right, people are reticentto change. But the only way
that we can adequately give people anopportunity is to explain to them on a
human level, engage with them directly, and be willing to have the difficult
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conversation. That's the only way peoplelearn that. Just I just want to
circle back to the four paux thatwe were talking about earlier. I guess
that's just one tool of addressing housingin Mississauga. Housing I would say crisis
right now, Kelly, and thenperhaps Alex if you wanted to add to
it, Let's start with you,Kelly, do you have any what other
tools are there that we could thenMississauga needs right now currently? There's plenty.
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I'm sure we could talk for asolid hour own just all of the
cool things that we could be doingthat other cities are doing extremely successfully.
I think that you know, onekey consideration here. Noka brought up reports
on reports and Alex sort of explainedhow that culture of reports on reports can
happen. Two really great opportunities thatMiss Saga has. We have done excellent
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studies and reports that can help influenceour housing, and we're neighbors with cities
who have also conducted their own comparablestudies and have come out with findings that
we can adopt. So we arewe are a city, but we are
also part of the GTA. Thereare a lot of resources that we can
pull from and examples of how changeshave been implemented successfully elsewhere. For example,
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ending parking minimums not just along emptyessays but across the city would be
a big step towards improving affordability forpeople looking to buy homes, and we
could certainly speak about that for along time. Ending certain design requirements or
building requirements like angular planes, whichare a certain type of building style that
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ensures that sidewalks get a little bitmore light, that cost developers an arm
and a leg. It reduces theamount of housing arbitrarily, and what is
the benefit to the city by forcingthat and reducing the affordability of those buildings.
So there are just two examples.I'm sure Alex and I can pingpong
thousands of them. But these arethe sort of low hanging fruit opportunities that
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cost the city no money to doand immediately offer opportunities for more affordability in
housing. Yeah, I was goingto talk about kind of like circle back
to your first question about affordable housingand what can we do? What are
other tools? And I would saythat you have to do a one two
punch right. One is you know, like when you know we don't put
enough money to affordable housing, likethis is a fact, and but the
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problem is a lot of that moneythat we do put forward to it gets
wasted because you know, as asas difficult as market rate housing has through
the development process, affordable housing hasthe exact same hoops to jump through,
it just has less resources to doit. Often the city is both a
funding partner and they also try towant to use affordable housing to do design
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objectives and do all these other millionthings other than just build the housing right
and so you know, getting thezoning in place for you know, all
forms of housing, including forms ofhousing that that that people of low socioeconomic
means can access. Having that inplace as of right, as we say
in the LINGO, would be ahuge help of making sure we use funds
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efficiently. The second part is decopaffordable housing from market rate housing. And
so a lot of funding for affordablehousing comes from market rate housing, but
that means your source of funding dependson what the market is doing, right,
and so we need more sustainable revenuestreams for affordable housing. And so
you know, if you look overat City of Toronto, you know,
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Olivia Child's been a really good advocatefor getting federal and provincial funds. You
know, she's really found her stridethere. And I think the next mayor
of Mississauga has to start looking atthat model of like, how can I
communicate with the other levels of governmentthat we need funding and we can't just
saddle it all from one place becauseit's just not sustainable. I think that's
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a great place to take a breakas we set up what we should be
looking for in the selection in termsof housing and policies and platforms. We'll
take a quick break rate now andwhen we come back some more Beyond the
Ballot right here on New Stocksaga ninesixty Am, No Radio, No Problem.
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Stream is live on SAGA nine sixtyam Dot c A. You're listening
to Beyond the Ballot with Ryan Gurcharnand Noka Duck Rube and welcome back to
Beyond the Ballot. We are herewith Alex and Kelly, and we are
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When I say we mean Noka andI my co host, and we are
talking about housing. And here's whatyou need to know when you go vote
this coming June tenth. If housingis important to you and it should be
for living in Mississauga or trying tolive in Mississauga or have kids who want
to live in Mississauga, that's true. Yeah, it's really. These are
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the candidates that are running and theyhave some ideas on housing. And I'm
curious to know what are panel here, Alex and Kelly, what you think
about, what do you think aboutwhat needs to be done? I know,
Alex, just before the break,you were talking about, well,
Toronto, the mayor over there hasgood relationships with the provincial and federal government
is able to bring in that moneythat's needed. I guess you're setting up
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this is what we should be lookingfor this around. Someone of those candidates
come knocking at your door, Alex, I sorry, if you want to
continue that idea. What questions shouldyou be asking these candidates on housing?
You know, for number one questionI would ask is, you know,
if you're a parent with an olderchild and they're struggling with housing, I
would say, where do you expectmy kid to live? Right? And
that straight off the bat, thatshould tell you a lot because if they're
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saying that, you know, well, your kids should live in you know,
you know, apartments along major busystreets, and that's sort of the
only housing option. You know.I'll make building big apartments sort of easier
and faster, but that's all I'mgoing to offer, you know, like
I think people should have a rainof housing options. I don't, you
know, there's nothing wrong with that. I live in a big apartment building
on a busy street and I loveit. You know, I live downtown
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Toronto. It's fantastic. But that'snot everybody's cup of tea. You know.
Fun fact about Mississauga. You know, the city shrank in population by
you know, thirty five hundred ishpeople, and you know that made all
the news and all that sort ofstuff. But what if you look under
the hood, the population between theages of twenty and older, like way
older over sixty five, the popularthat portion of the population increased by twelve
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thousand, five hundred people. Sothe number of adults in Mississauga is more
than ever. And you know,like, so where do the population shrink?
The city lost a ton of kids, It lost a ton of kids,
and so you know, another questionI would ask is, you know,
how can we you know, sortof like recapitalize our schools with children,
because there are a ton of neighborhoodsin Mississauga now that are family orientated
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neighborhoods that are missing children. AndI think that's just a travesty waste of
taxpayer dollars of you know, infrastructureand resources. And so I would start
asking those questions of the candidates andtry to see if they have like an
actual answer for you, or theyhave generic things to say, or they
don't have anything to say really atall. And that's a conversation I used
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to have with with with residents.You know, if you don't if we
don't make a housing affordable, ifwe don't build more housing and families don't
have an opportunity to live here,what do you think is going to happen
to your schools? Right? Yes, And to to Alex's point, something
that I try to tell people allthe time is that because unfortunately, there
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are people who think, well,my kids are grown up, I don't
care what happens to those schools isno longer my problem. I'm not thinking
about that, which is unfortunate andnot a great way to think. But
there are people like that out there. What I what I find particularly pressing
to Alex's point about our aging populationhere in Mississauga is we are just a
few years away from this housing crisisgraduating into a senior's crisis. There are
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not a lot of options for seniorsof the city tod to downsize in a
financially viable way. Selling your housethat you bought for two hundred thousand dollars
for a million bucks sounds great onpaper, but when the place that you're
moving into is also about a milliondollars and it's just a smaller place that
doesn't leave you with a lot ofliquid cash to take you through the rest
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of your senior years. We alsoknow long term care facilities are not as
readily available as we might like them. We are actually in the middle of
a senior's home being shuttered here inMississauga, and several seniors are rushing to
find new housing. That's in wardnine. So the stock of housing for
seniors is actually very pitifully small.So whether you have children in school,
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whether you have adult children who liveat home or not, there is a
place for you in this housing crisiswhere you are going to feel that pain.
I would argue that everybody's feeling it. But because of the specific demographics
that we have in Mississaga, agingpopulation is going to feel that pain very
very soon, and if we don'tact quickly, that is going to become
a second crisis piled on the onewe already have. Yeah. Absolutely,
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thank you with that, Kelly.Now let's talk a little bit about the
candidates specifically. We've got a lotof candidates running, but we've got we've
got, you know, four counselorswho are currently sitting counselors, you know,
who are polling quite well. Sowhat has stood out for you,
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what has stood out to you sofar from any of the candidates, not
just the sitting counselors, but anyof the candidates in terms of what they've
been talking about housing. So,you know, I the city of Toronto
just recently went through us losing ourmayor and having a mayoral election, having
a new mayor, and you know, I'm starting to see very similar patterns
where you know, Steve Pakin,he has us kind of saying where you
(30:52):
sit is where you stand kind ofthing or what you view the world.
I think I'm butchering is or paraphrasinghere. So in the Toronto election,
you have, you know, someof the some of the candidates with frankly
some of the worst records on house. Like we're all of a sudden,
I'm pro housing, I'm pro housing, I'm pro housing. And you know
the thing is, you know theyou know you don't you don't vote for
the mayor or, so you don'tvote for the prime minister, you don't
(31:14):
vote for the premier. Uh.You know, so mayors in in are
some of our elected officials that getthe most votes, and they have the
whitest geographic area from which they representand so you know you're gonna see a
lot of people all of a suddenkind of you know, shift their their
tone a little bit, and youknow how much of that is coming to
religion and how much of that isbeing an opportunist. You know, I'll
(31:37):
let everybody decide for themselves on onthat. So you know what I did
see when I was looking over allthe candidate's website. You know, they
all have like this kind of likegeneral I want to promote myself as being
you know, pro housing, butyou know, like some candidates who can
kind of see a lot of hedgingin their pro housing kind of marketing.
You know, they're like they starttalking about character, you know, they
(32:00):
start talking about if and or butts. So you know, there's still clearly
like there's still clearly a scale.And I would say, like, you
know, looking at like the topfour candidates, I can't endorse anyone,
so I can't speak to anyone specifically, But if he asked me to break
up the top four candidates, I'dsay there are two that are very pro
housing, one that is very statusquo, and one that is you know,
I think you know, is nota is not a real pro housing
(32:22):
voice, not even status quo.I think they would just actually just take
the city backwards. So you know, like people have options, they have
some good options, and you know, I hope they exercise that. Yeah,
absolutely, What are you hoping becauseyou know, they've kind of released
a little bit of what they're about, but as I understand, there might
be more information coming, there's goingto be you know, full platforms coming.
(32:46):
It's still early early stages. Whatare you hoping to see highlighted in
platforms, like specific things that they'reactually going to promise that they're going to
accomplish. From my from my perspective, I my warning to voters is beware
platitudes. Every mayoral candidate, asAlex explained, is going to tell you
(33:07):
that they are pro housing. Everycandidate is going to tell you that they
believe more housing is needed in Mississauga. Ask the second question, how what
are the problems that you see thatyou need to tackle in your seat?
Is mayor? The number one issuefor us as an organization that focuses on
housing advocacy and is often very muchin the fray on those issues that prevent
(33:30):
housing. And as we just said, you know, counselors have a lot
of power here is all of thered tape that has been created by the
city that create an unbelievable amount ofburdensome hoops that anybody, whether they're building
a women's shelter or building a luxuryquote unquote luxury condos, they all have
to jump through those same hoops andthat has to change. So what we
(33:51):
would love to see is more commitmenton exactly which parts of those which parts
of that mess of red tape thatthey are prepared to cut. Limiting public
consultations so that we can have moreproductive discussions where we can quickly and efficiently
collect community feedback, make decisions,and give members of the public more certainty.
That's a big one. Reducing waittimes is number one that requires investments
(34:15):
from the city in more city staff. And again as we talked about adjusting
some of those building requirements that makeit arbitrarily difficult for anybody to build anything
in our city. Yeah, youknow, like it's always a question of
like how much support does more housinghave out there? And if you kind
of look at general polling in theprovince, you know there's not really good
(34:37):
pulling at the city level, butat the provincial level is quite a bit.
Now, if you ask the questiondo you support more housing, and
you give people a strongly agree,agree in neutral, a a strongly disagree,
or a disagree and strongly disagree,you get you get about a third
a third of third right, soa third in the agree, a third
in the you know, I'm onthe fence, and a third in the
(34:59):
disagree. If you ask people doyou agree or disagree? You get seventy
five percent of people agreeing and youknow twenty five percent of people really disagreeing.
And you know what that kind oftells me is there's you know,
for that group in the middle,you know, more times than not,
if they're on the fence and youask them to actually take a side,
they're going to take the side ofmore housing. So you know, there
(35:21):
there is I think a path forwardfor UH, you know, winning a
coalition UH to to promote more housingand get those policies in. But the
question is always going to be onturnout, right, Like municipal elections have
got awful turnout, and you knowwhen you have elections in between election years
where you know it's just like onecouncilor one council seat and one mayoral seat.
(35:45):
You know, turnout is going tobe pretty abysmal, but that means
like that shouldn't discourage people from votingthat. If anything, if you are
a pro housing voter, you havemore power than ever. And so if
you can get out, if youcan get two friends out, and if
those two friends can get two friendsout and so on, and so you
actually have a pretty winning, likepretty strong, winning coalition out there to
(36:05):
get it done. So you know, like like you know, democracy is
not in a great state at themunicipal level in this province, but that
doesn't mean we can't fix it.Yeah, absolutely, and I completely agree
with you. I think this isa great opportunity for people who really care
about housing to show up and uh, you know, get us away from
(36:25):
that idea that young people don't voteand you know nobody is paying attention and
you know, and that counselors haveto make the nimbi's happy because that's who
they hear from, right realistically,that's who calls, that's who sends the
emails. People who are happy withwhat's going on don't usually call you.
So you have to as a representative. You have to be aware that you
(36:49):
know you're not hearing everybody's voice.You're just hearing you know, whoever is
upset about what's happening or what's goingon. Exactly, as I was going
through the platforms for each of thecandidates, I only really saw one person
talk about renting and rental houses.I'm wondering how big a problem would that
be the selection? Do you thinkdo you think that's on anybody's minds?
(37:12):
Is one candidate? I think outof the top four or five have actually
even mentioned renting, like tackling sharprice and rental rates. Yeah, and
I'm really glad that you brought thatup. That is incredibly important. I
think Noka's right that we do hearfrom a certain demographic in the city often
when they're fighting on housing. Butas we know, there are a lot
(37:34):
of renters in Mississaga, and inorder again for you to have a healthy
housing market, you need rental asan option. There are people for whom
rental is just better. We allknow people for whom rental is just better.
We might be people for whom rentalis better. So it is important
to see the candidates tackle it.We expect and we will be encouraging the
candidates who have not mentioned rental tostart discussing it, because renters in Mississauga,
(37:59):
as across Ontario are feeling the uncertaintythat has come with certain rental policies
that are not necessarily favorable to tenants. So we want to see those people
show up in the polls, andwe want to start encouraging the candidates to
discuss it. Because renters tenants,they are voters just as much as homeowners
(38:22):
are voters. Their weight in thecity is just as important, but they
are subject to different expectations as tenantsas compared to homeowners, so their voices
need to be represented. It isa bit disturbing, to be quite frank,
that so many candidates have chosen tosimply not acknowledge them. I think
that in an election in Toronto,for example, and certainly there are bigger
(38:45):
conversations about this in Brampton for differentreasons, but other cities have at least
done a better job of acknowledging theirrental population. It is frightening to see
that, I guess a better wayto put it is you can see the
bias and the culture of in theway that many of these platforms are phrased.
You can see the mythology, youcan see the certain perceptions that they
(39:07):
carry. And part of that isin the fact that they there's a certain
myopia around tenants. Yeah, forsure. And last question, if somebody
knocks on my door, I don'tknow if they will, But if somebody
knocks on my door and they're runningfor mayor in this election and they have
two years, they only have twoyears. It's a two year term,
(39:29):
what questions should I ask them andwhat should I be looking for if there's
anything specific? As I said before, my urge, my question I ask
for all voters is do not acceptthe platitude to ask how. It's easy
to say you're pro housing. It'seasy to say you're going to build more
housing. Tell me where, tellme how you're going to get it done,
(39:50):
and tell me how quick how you'regoing to speed that up? Because
Alex said it perfectly of housing startis not a thing you can live in.
How can you get more shovels inthe grid around sooner? And listen
to their answers, you will findthat a lot of these candidates are going
to tell you, well, youknow, we don't build housing, so
you got to talk to the developersabout that. You will hear a lot
of candidates give you the usual oh, you know, it's so important to
(40:13):
me and I want to build itand missing middle, and they'll saal the
buzzwords. Ask how you don't needto know a lot about housing development,
about how housing development works. Youdon't need to know what Alex and I
know about housing policy. It's notnecessary. You can tell when you're being
told a platative versus when you're beinggiven an achievable solution. So push the
candidates that will influence their decision making. I would say, like, you
(40:37):
know, before revealing whether you're forfour housing or against housing, I would
say, like, you know,tell me what your last three votes on
housing were and see what they say, right like, and you know,
just have a dead said face sothey can't tell which side of the fence
you are in, and let themsee what they want, what part of
their record they wish to highlight,right you know. For those who who
(40:58):
want to promote, like, youknow, neighborhood defenses, they're going to
say, like, I took thesevotes and you know, hope you agree
with that. And those who wantto promote that they are pro actually a
pro housing voice. They will pointto specific votes that they have taken and
substantive votes. Right, so youmight hear from a counselor oh I took
a vote on some apartment building downthe street, Like that's easy. But
what were the three big housing votesand what were there? And tell me
(41:21):
I had you vote? Okay,pretty, I think you don't need to
be an expert in housing, butthat will put them on the spot.
I think that's brilliant. Thank you, that's some really great advice. Yeah,
good ways to think about how totalk to those foks when they come
knocking on our doors. Thank youAlex for everything you've suggested. Thank you
Kelly again for your insight. We'regoing to take a quick break and when
(41:43):
we come back, nokan I will, I guess summarize what's going on and
give you some good advice based onyou know, we're just gonna take what
Alex said and Kelly said and puta bow on it. So stay tuned
right here on New stock sac Anine sixty am. Beyond the Ballot stream
(42:16):
us live at SAGA nine sixty amdot CA. You're listening to Beyond the
Ballot with Ryan Gurcharn and Noka DuckRube and welcome back to the final segment
(42:42):
of the show, Beyond the Ballothere on New Stock Saga A night sixty
Am. Noka, what do youthink? What are your thoughts? You
heard, Alex, you heard Kelly, you heard what they're thinking about this
new election where housing is right now? How does that make you feel?
That was great, wasn't it?Ryan? Was really good conversation. We
got a lot of information, reallyreally good stuff about what to be what
(43:07):
we should be looking out for whenit comes to UH, the s mayrial
race and the selection. Some ofthe tangible things they talked about four plex
motions. For those of you whohave been very supportive of the four plex
motion, you were very excited aboutit, like I was. There are
some feasibility issues that the City ofMassaga needs to figure out in order for
(43:29):
us to actually see four plexus UHcome to real life and become an actual
and actual place for people to live. Some of the other things that Yeah
on that with Ford recently coming outagainst four plexes, Yeah, I'm curious
to see how that will play outin this UH next coming Like had the
(43:51):
provincial issue, because you know,Bonnie users, supremer powers, abracadabra boom.
Four plexus are now allowed, andnow he's like, no, no,
no, no, we don't wantthat anymore. This is not good.
I'm curious to see how that playson this election for the folks who
actually will be voting on June tenth, are they going to be the you
know, oh no, I don'twant to four plex next next door and
(44:15):
monstrosity and all the you know,the way forward's really painting it versus what
we heard today, like you know, explaining how the need for density and
building smarter. Well, I'm goingto take this opportunity to really speak to
the individuals and our neighbors who mightbe concerned about, you know, the
four plexes that are going to goup. And you know, I am
(44:39):
I really want to Okay, thisisn't about destroying the character of a neighborhood.
This isn't about you know, achange that's not something that you're going
to be able to live with.If you even look at some of the
models of these four plexes, theyare so beautiful, it's you know,
(45:00):
so some of these things are areyou know, driven by fear of the
unknown and fear of change. Thinkabout your grandchildren, Think about your children,
think about their peers, their colleagues, think about you know, what
kind of society would we have ifpeople didn't have a place to live,
Because it is so important. Itit really, like as Kelly said earlier
(45:23):
in the show, it really makesa huge difference. You know, when
you have a home, everything inyour life is impacted by that. You
know, whether you know you're ableto pursue higher education or get a good
job or all these different things.You know, having a home is really
really important. So think about theimpact it's having on society. Think about
(45:45):
the stress it's causing to a lotof people. Think about your children,
think about your grandchildren, think aboutthe generations after them, And and please
don't be afraid of more housing.I don't know if that's going to convince
anybody, but I had to trybecause I had the opportunity. We're talking
about, you know, things weheard and I think Kelly like mentioned this,
(46:06):
and I don't think we really pickedup on it. I really wanted
to highlight that we're here talking aboutbuilding more homes, having people get more
housing in Mississauga. And I thinkshe even meant highlighted recently that in the
long term care home that they're youknow, evictim residents. Just recently this
came out and I'm like, inAsaga, where we're trying to the goal
(46:28):
is to get more people in homes, they're getting people out of them at
a chart well what was it called? I think Chartwell Heritage and Glenn in
Glen Sorry, Chartwell Heritage and GlennResident. Yeah, it's terrible what's happening
there. Absolutely, and you knowwhat you know, back to what Kelly
said, you know, this housingcrisis will eventually turn into a senior's crisis,
(46:52):
right, Yeah, I was justkidding. Yeah. Absolutely. You
know, you've bought this beautiful home. Now you're going to be able to
sell it for a million dollars orjust over a million. But what does
that mean if you have to downsizeto an apartment that's you know, you're
paying eight hundred thousand dollars for Whatdoes that mean for your retirement savings?
(47:13):
What does that mean for how longthat's going to be able to last you?
So that was a really really importantpoint I think that Kelly made.
One of the other things we talka lot about is schools, right,
if there's no if there's no kidsmoving into the neighborhood, what are we
going to do? What's going tohappen to the schools that we all love
and we cherish? So so importantthat we build housing, really really important?
(47:35):
Is it important? Right? It'simportant. It's not just it's affordable
house, and it's right just forbuilding too. I think that's the one
thing I think that we're too focusedon. It's not just building housing,
it's making me sure housing that existsto is affordable renting for renters, for
folks who can. I guess there'sa huge renting population here in Mississauga,
(47:57):
and that's something I'll be looking fortoo, as the candidates come knocking on
my door. But I I thoughtthat was a great show. I thought
I learned a lot, and Ithink it's I'm going to let's just percolate
until our next week show where Idon't want to give it away what we're
going to talk about. I wantedto, Uh, it'll be a surprise
(48:17):
like this was. So on tilnext week. Stay safe and get involved.
(48:38):
No Radio, No Problem stream islive on SAGO nine sixty am dot C A
The views expressed in the following programare those of the participants and do not
necessarily reflect the views of Saga ninesixty AM or its management from the treaty
and traditional territory of the Mississaugas ofthe Credit First Nation. You're listening to
(00:25):
Beyond the Ballot with Ryan Gercharn andNoka duck Rue and welcome to Beyond the
Ballot. I am Ryan Gercharn andI'm Noka da Cruz and we are going
to talk about housing this episode.Because of the selection coming up, you
(00:49):
have a chance to talk to yourthe future mayor of Mississauga. They're going
to be coming knocking on your doorand you get to ask them anything you
want. And I'm hoping that housingis one of those issues you have,
because it's definitely something I've been hearinga lot about, Noka. Have you
heard anybody talk about housing? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. It's a serious
(01:11):
problem, right, It's a seriousproblem. It's impacting our generation, the
millennial generation, and it's impacting futuregenerations and it's hitting them pretty hard.
It's not fair that we have tolive in a time where people may not
have the opportunities to ever be ableto purchase their own home. But also
(01:36):
just the supply is not there.We just don't have enough homes for the
population that we are supposed to beable to support. So I don't even
know about that. I would evenquestion. I guess I know a lot
of landlords who are purposely keeping theirplaces vacant because it helps them with in
their taxes or it's cheaper to nothave somebody there right now. For them,
(01:57):
it is insane the way things areturning out. Yeah, absolutely,
but the vacant homes are an issuealso. But overall, you know,
we just need more housing. Andwe have a mayoral race. What a
great opportunity, what a ryan affordableand I just wanted to add this opportunity.
(02:17):
I guess my daughter. I gottwo of them now, and I
don't know what they're going to dowhen I eventually kicked them out of the
house. Where are they going togo. I've been investing in like how
to build a tent and how todo outdoor plumbing, so I could figure
something out for them, But otherthan that, I really don't know what
(02:38):
they're going to do because it ishard to afford a place, especially if
I want to keep and grow andbuild my family. Here in Mississauga,
it is hard to afford a placeunder one person salary or even two people's
salary, Like you're looking at multiplefinancial partners to afford a house, and
(03:01):
that definitely complicates at home lifestyle.Yeah, absolutely, it's it's a serious
problem and we need serious solutions toaddress it. And we have We have
a lot of candidates who are runningaround trying to tell us why they're going
to be the best mayor and whythey are worthy of that chair and the
(03:24):
strong mayor powers to you know,get things done in the city in Mississauga.
And and we want to know howare they going to address this big
crisis that's impacting our children, someof our friends and colleagues and family members
and future generations. And today weare going to get into it. We're
(03:46):
going to give you all these answers. Some experts coming on the show and
a bit and yes, me andme and Ryan are experts, but we're
getting we're getting I'm not absolutely expert, They're getting real I'm an expert at
like spending money I could sure Ithat I could do. I've done a
lot of that, But building housesare making finding more affordable house. I
(04:10):
don't know, I honestly, asidefrom an actual building like co ops or
four plexus or something, I don'tknow what else we can do. And
that's why I'm saying, Well,we have Kelly Saying from the More Homes
Mississauga. She'll be on later ontoday to talk about some other strategy,
some other things that the mayor cando municipally, what we can do municipally.
(04:32):
And Alex Baschetti, who is asenior consultant and registered professional planner at
the Altist Group Economics Consulting. He'san urban planner by trade, and I
think he has a lot to contributeto, you know, the way he
sees Mississauga being developed over the nexttwo years, because that's the next term
for sure, the next year,so mayor, and I'm excited that there
(04:55):
will be here to really frame sortof like where we are right now Mississi
housing and where we need to bein wo Who really what we need to
who we need what we need toask, yeah, you know, to
find out what questions should we askthem, What should we be hearing from
them, What are the things thatthey should be saying, if you know,
if they're if they're a candidate that'ssuper pro housing and wants to get
(05:18):
things on what are those keywords oror not keywords? Uh? But you
know what, what are the thingsthat they should be saying that we should
be looking out for in order toknow who to support if we if you're
a very if you're a person whois really supportive of housing and wants to
see the city building more housing.To be honest, I don't know,
(05:42):
and I was just being facetious.I really don't know anybody who is not
like this is not a big issuefor them. Yeah, if a lot
like my parents there own their houseright, but they bought it like way
back when when it was like almostnothing and now it's like, you know,
I can't even find them their matthow much it costs now. But
it's like for them, they don'tcare. They're more just laid off.
They're fine. They're worried about us. They're worried about like their grandkids.
(06:06):
And they love Mississauga. They've livedhere. They want us to stay around
here so they could visit to seetheir grandkids more often. And it's I
mean not like that, you know, everybody loves Raymond situation but we're right
across the street. But you know, you're in the city and it makes
sense and it's hard. It's hardto build your family in here, I
(06:30):
think for me personally, yeah,absolutely yeah. But with that, I
want you guys to stick around becausewe will be back with Alex and Kelly
and I think it's gonna be veryinteresting to hear what they have to say.
So stay tuned right here on newsTAKSAGA nine sixty Am. Stream us
(07:03):
live at SAGA nine sixty am dotCA. You're listening to Beyond the Ballot
with Ryan Gurcharn and Noka Duck RubAnd welcome back to Beyond the Ballot,
(07:32):
where we are talking about this everythingelection in Mississauga, this by election,
and I'm here my co host isalways a Noka duck Grub. Noka,
are you excited to talk about housing? I am. I'm very excited to
talk about housing. I'm very excitedabout the amazing guests that we have today
who are going to lead us throughthis conversation and help us understand better what
(07:55):
we should be looking for when itcomes to the candidates, how we should
be a dressing the housing crisis,how Mississauga is doing on housing. So
you know, how have we doneso far? So let's get right to
it. I think I think everybody'swaiting for this episode. I'm waiting for
this episode. So these two expertsI'll introduce. One of them is Alex
(08:16):
Bashetti and he's a senior consultant andregistered professional planner the Altist Group in Altist
Group Economic Consulting, so he hasa huge amount of insight he's going to
be bringing to the table. Andalso we have Kelly Singh who is the
acting executive director of More Homes Mississauga. Hello Alex, and hello Kelly,
(08:39):
thanks for having us. Hello welcome. First of all, now that the
housing crisis has been solved in Mississauga, not really, but I wanted to
put it out there. One ofthe biggest issues right now candidates are talking
about, they put it right thereon their platforms is affordable housing. And
it's not just I mean Mississaugu's allacross Ontario. But for this discussion,
(09:01):
I want to focus a bit moreon Mississauga, just a generic right off
the bad just to get us started. Kelly, if you will, you're
from More Homes Mississauga. What doesmore affordable housing look like in Mississauga.
Great question, So more homes Misissaga. We advocate for housing of all types,
(09:22):
but obviously a healthy housing market includesnot only for profit, you know,
homes for people to purchase. Itincludes rental, it includes supportive housing,
it includes affordable housing. And inorder for us to have a truly
healthy system in Mississauga, we needto support the development of all of those
types of housing. Of course,our city is made up of people from
(09:43):
all socioeconomic backgrounds, of all needs, and the housing market needs to address
that. The importance of affordable housingfor us in this particular moment is that
especially and I mean this is notunique to Mississauga, but of course Mississaga
is feeling it like everywhere else,with affordability becoming a loftier goal for everybody
(10:05):
in our society, regardless of whereyou follow that socioeconomic spectrum, affordable housing
is the path for almost everybody tobe able to live fulfilled, in complete
lives. Your housing affects virtually everyother part of your life. It affects
how much money you have in yourpocket to buy groceries. It affects your
family planning decisions, It affects whereyour parents are going to live as they
(10:28):
age. It becomes so it isso melted into all the parts of your
life that if we cannot sustain ahealthy, affordable housing market here, then
it becomes Missaga quickly becomes a veryunlivable city for people long term. Alex,
it's Mississauga on the right track.What are we doing right so far?
So Mississauga has quite a lot ofhousing under construction currently. So you
(10:52):
know, when Mayor Crombie came intopower, the city was averaging about one
thousand to three thousand and homes underconstruction every year. When she left office
in January, you know, thecity had twelve thousand homes under construction,
you know, And so the city. But the thing with I always like
(11:13):
to tell people is a housing startis not something you can live in.
So you can't live in a homethat has a crane. And so,
you know, while the city hasa lot of housing supply in the works,
it's just on the horizon. Youknow, it's got to push through
to the end. This is constructing, this is housing under construction. So
there's very little the city can do. The city has to figure out development
(11:35):
patterns that allow for housing that canbe built more quickly in combination to sort
of the apartment buildings that will giveit that sort of base load of housing.
So you know, the next mayoris going to have challenges to both
get the big stuff approved and alsomake sure that the little stuff gets approved
because that little stuff is the stuffthat can react quickly to market demand.
Okay, that's really interesting, andI like the idea of getting the little
(12:00):
stuff kind of rolling quickly. Wesaw a huge debate on the four plexes,
right, we saw a huge conversationon the four plex motion. I
was tweeting up a storm. Isaw more homes Mississauga tweeting up a storm
how quickly? So they've already passedthe motion. How quickly can we expect
to see that actually starting to pickup? So I would say, like,
(12:24):
look, you know there is thebroad levels of permissibility. So you're
legally allowing four units, but that'snot where the legality of a building ends.
Right, There's sort of a feasibilitythe length with and height of what
you allow a building, and thatcan really make or break a project.
Right, So you can allow fourplexes, but if you know a home
can only be one story tall andyou know, it can only be so
(12:46):
wide. You know, you can'treally fit four units in there, right,
So you have to provide sufficient feasibilitywithin what we call the development envelope.
The development envelope is when we addup all the little zoning rules and
like what is that box that youcan kind of build in? And so,
you know, Mississauga has done thefirst challenge, which is to get
the top level legalization right, whichis the four plexes. Now it has
(13:09):
to go back and has to dothat kind of feasibility the development envelope portion,
because if it doesn't, you know, you're going to see some four
plexes built, but you know you'renot going to see many. Unless the
city really really wants to to makemultiplexes a big part of the housing spot.
It's got to be ambitious, right, Marginal changes will always result in
(13:30):
marginal outcomes, right, And ifI might, if I may expound on
that just slightly, Noka, you'reone hundred percent correct, more homes.
Mississauga is obviously extremely supportive of thefour plex motion. We are members all
went to City Council to depute infavor of it, and we're very grateful
that not only did it pass thatit has continued to be a story here
(13:50):
in Mississauga and has clearly caught theattention of the province. Though we are
not happy with what Premiere for Ithas said on the subject, as supportive
as we are, we realize thatthe four plex opportunity in miss Saga is
definitely important, but is in manyways symbolic of the larger problems that we
have here when it comes to housing. It's not that legalizing four plexes alone
(14:13):
will simply solve the missing middle problemsor the affordability problems that we have in
missus Saga. It is simply onesolution. But for us, the largest
story that came out of that,and the reason we're so glad that the
media has not let go of thestory, is that it is an example
of just how reticent to change thecity and city council can be. Because,
(14:37):
of course, as we know,the motion didn't actually pass, It
failed in a tie, and ittook Mayor Bonnie Crombie using her strong mayor
powers to push that through. Soeverything that Alex has said is absolutely correct.
We don't expect to see an avalancheof fourplexes suddenly appear everywhere, but
what we have done now is empoweredhomeowners to make a decision for what's best
(15:01):
for themselves, what's best for theirfamilies. It's a great solution, for
example, if you have aging parents, if you have adult children still living
at home. I'm an adult childwho still lives at home. So all
of these things are great opportunities forour city. But it is merely one
step in a lot of steps thatneed to be taken in order to create
a more healthy and productive housing market. Okay, and you know you mentioned
(15:26):
the missing middle. There there wasa report. I'm not sure if you're
familiar with it, but the it'sa report by the City of Mississauga.
It's called Making Room for the Middle. It was published in twenty seventeen.
And there's a lot of you know, fancy stuff in there. There's a
(15:46):
lot of good stuff in there,but nothing's happened. So what's what's this
what's the what's this thing with fancyreports that get past? I'm a former
school board trustee. I know whatit's like and and nothing gets implement Like
where are the houses? What's twentytwenty four? So you know, like
I'm an urban planner by trade,and so you know, I don't I
don't want to hit too hard onmy my colleagues, but you know,
(16:07):
like far, you know, fartoo often we do reports about doing more
reports, and that's a lot ofwhat it is. It's just you know,
it's city staff doing maybe a littlebit of passion work, saying like,
hey, you know, we'd loveto do this if council gives us
direction, if we if we canget an endorsement from council to do this
stuff. But you know, likepoliticians, they they love to tell you
that they're solving a problem, butthey hate solving problems sometimes because to actually
(16:30):
solve a problem is very it requiresyou know, it requires upsetting some people.
And so you know, it's easierto say that, hey, I'm
still working on something than to actuallylike hand in your homework. Right,
you know, I will say thislike if like what Bonnie Crombie did was
was very was very important, Itwas kind of a watershed moment. Maybe
(16:51):
it didn't fix all the problems thatare necessary to get you know, four
plexes or multiplexes to take off,but what will happen is that it does
democrat highs home building. It doesmake home building come down from being this
thing that only like ultra rich youknow, large development companies can do is
to like, you know, itbecomes an option that maybe you know,
some people kick the tires on thatcome from more more modest backgrounds. People
(17:14):
might start looking at it is away I can live with my kids,
or I can live with my momand dad, and you know, then
they're gonna go through the planning processand realize how frustrating it is, and
then they're gonna be like, Iwant changes right and so that you know,
so you can't fix all the issuesin one day as much as like
it gets really frustrating for me andI, you know, we know how
to solve these problems. You know, it does get the ball rolling.
And I think as more people sortof get exposure to the planning system,
(17:38):
they're going to demand change, right, Like they're going to say, like
this is I don't care about whatthis does for some large developer. I
care about what it does for meand for my own personal selfish reason reasons.
I want to make this work.And it's no longer about these these
like kind of conversations of you know, this is the right thing to do
for everybody in society because it becomesa conversation of like, it's the right
(18:00):
thing to do for me, Andyou mentioned council and mayors, and you
know, a big part of theproblem is nimbiism, right, A big
part of the problem is and I'veknocked doors, I've been a representative.
I know that people don't like change. And it's very hard to convince someone
(18:21):
that, you know, we're justgoing to build a building or a fourplex
or anything on your street. It'svery These are difficult conversations, and you
know, you're right. It's mucheasier to say we're working on it.
We're working on it, rather thanactually explain why something's happening when people get
angry. How much influence and howmuch I guess how much influence do local
(18:45):
counselors have on the I guess theoutcome of development in their respective wards.
Local counselors have an immense amount ofimpact on the development that goes on in
their wards. In fact, theyhave one of the most important ships.
In that conversation. We see thatin the way that miss Saga is distributed.
(19:08):
If you drive war to ward,if you drive from the south up
to Central and north, the waythat housing has developed, the types of
projects that are being improved approved,and the speed at which they're being improved
and the opposition that those are gettingvaries. It's interesting. Miss Saga is
a single city, but the culturevaries quite drastically, and as you mentioned,
(19:30):
nimbiaism noka and that becomes really important. What particularly because we have an
election going on, particularly because weare in this moment of evolution for our
city. We had Hazel Mackallian forso many years. She very much created
this system of sprawl and maintained thatsystem of sprawl that we are now having
to live in today. This isa big change for Mississaga. So whoever
(19:51):
is elected isn't going to have tolead a council that is very, very
very divided, almost fifty to fiftyas far as is their willingness to approve
new housing and their unwillingness to doso. What we're hoping to see is
the new mayor to take for thatperson to take leadership over city council and
guide them towards a way in whichthey can better communicate to their constituents.
(20:12):
Because we know the counselors might bewell intentioned, They certainly all talk about
how important housing development is to them. There's not a single one who doesn't.
But when it comes to their actualvoting records, we see that many
of those counselors tend to buy andlarge vote against more development, vote against
more density, vote against the investmentthat's needed. So what we're hoping to
(20:34):
do is see a mayor that's goingto influence city council to change that culture,
and further for those counselors to startchanging that culture in their own communities.
You're absolutely right, people are reticentto change. But the only way
that we can adequately give people anopportunity is to explain to them on a
human level, engage with them directly, and be willing to have the difficult
(20:56):
conversation. That's the only way peoplelearn that. Just I just want to
circle back to the four paux thatwe were talking about earlier. I guess
that's just one tool of addressing housingin Mississauga. Housing I would say crisis
right now, Kelly, and thenperhaps Alex if you wanted to add to
it, Let's start with you,Kelly, do you have any what other
tools are there that we could thenMississauga needs right now currently? There's plenty.
(21:22):
I'm sure we could talk for asolid hour own just all of the
cool things that we could be doingthat other cities are doing extremely successfully.
I think that you know, onekey consideration here. Noka brought up reports
on reports and Alex sort of explainedhow that culture of reports on reports can
happen. Two really great opportunities thatMiss Saga has. We have done excellent
(21:42):
studies and reports that can help influenceour housing, and we're neighbors with cities
who have also conducted their own comparablestudies and have come out with findings that
we can adopt. So we arewe are a city, but we are
also part of the GTA. Thereare a lot of resources that we can
pull from and examples of how changeshave been implemented successfully elsewhere. For example,
(22:03):
ending parking minimums not just along emptyessays but across the city would be
a big step towards improving affordability forpeople looking to buy homes, and we
could certainly speak about that for along time. Ending certain design requirements or
building requirements like angular planes, whichare a certain type of building style that
(22:23):
ensures that sidewalks get a little bitmore light, that cost developers an arm
and a leg. It reduces theamount of housing arbitrarily, and what is
the benefit to the city by forcingthat and reducing the affordability of those buildings.
So there are just two examples.I'm sure Alex and I can pingpong
thousands of them. But these arethe sort of low hanging fruit opportunities that
(22:47):
cost the city no money to doand immediately offer opportunities for more affordability in
housing. Yeah, I was goingto talk about kind of like circle back
to your first question about affordable housingand what can we do? What are
other tools? And I would saythat you have to do a one two
punch right. One is you know, like when you know we don't put
enough money to affordable housing, likethis is a fact, and but the
(23:07):
problem is a lot of that moneythat we do put forward to it gets
wasted because you know, as asas difficult as market rate housing has through
the development process, affordable housing hasthe exact same hoops to jump through,
it just has less resources to doit. Often the city is both a
funding partner and they also try towant to use affordable housing to do design
(23:33):
objectives and do all these other millionthings other than just build the housing right
and so you know, getting thezoning in place for you know, all
forms of housing, including forms ofhousing that that that people of low socioeconomic
means can access. Having that inplace as of right, as we say
in the LINGO, would be ahuge help of making sure we use funds
(23:56):
efficiently. The second part is decopaffordable housing from market rate housing. And
so a lot of funding for affordablehousing comes from market rate housing, but
that means your source of funding dependson what the market is doing, right,
and so we need more sustainable revenuestreams for affordable housing. And so
you know, if you look overat City of Toronto, you know,
(24:18):
Olivia Child's been a really good advocatefor getting federal and provincial funds. You
know, she's really found her stridethere. And I think the next mayor
of Mississauga has to start looking atthat model of like, how can I
communicate with the other levels of governmentthat we need funding and we can't just
saddle it all from one place becauseit's just not sustainable. I think that's
(24:38):
a great place to take a breakas we set up what we should be
looking for in the selection in termsof housing and policies and platforms. We'll
take a quick break rate now andwhen we come back some more Beyond the
Ballot right here on New Stocksaga ninesixty Am, No Radio, No Problem.
(25:10):
Stream is live on SAGA nine sixtyam Dot c A. You're listening
to Beyond the Ballot with Ryan Gurcharnand Noka Duck Rube and welcome back to
Beyond the Ballot. We are herewith Alex and Kelly, and we are
(25:37):
When I say we mean Noka andI my co host, and we are
talking about housing. And here's whatyou need to know when you go vote
this coming June tenth. If housingis important to you and it should be
for living in Mississauga or trying tolive in Mississauga or have kids who want
to live in Mississauga, that's true. Yeah, it's really. These are
(26:00):
the candidates that are running and theyhave some ideas on housing. And I'm
curious to know what are panel here, Alex and Kelly, what you think
about, what do you think aboutwhat needs to be done? I know,
Alex, just before the break,you were talking about, well,
Toronto, the mayor over there hasgood relationships with the provincial and federal government
is able to bring in that moneythat's needed. I guess you're setting up
(26:22):
this is what we should be lookingfor this around. Someone of those candidates
come knocking at your door, Alex, I sorry, if you want to
continue that idea. What questions shouldyou be asking these candidates on housing?
You know, for number one questionI would ask is, you know,
if you're a parent with an olderchild and they're struggling with housing, I
would say, where do you expectmy kid to live? Right? And
that straight off the bat, thatshould tell you a lot because if they're
(26:45):
saying that, you know, well, your kids should live in you know,
you know, apartments along major busystreets, and that's sort of the
only housing option. You know.I'll make building big apartments sort of easier
and faster, but that's all I'mgoing to offer, you know, like
I think people should have a rainof housing options. I don't, you
know, there's nothing wrong with that. I live in a big apartment building
on a busy street and I loveit. You know, I live downtown
(27:06):
Toronto. It's fantastic. But that'snot everybody's cup of tea. You know.
Fun fact about Mississauga. You know, the city shrank in population by
you know, thirty five hundred ishpeople, and you know that made all
the news and all that sort ofstuff. But what if you look under
the hood, the population between theages of twenty and older, like way
older over sixty five, the popularthat portion of the population increased by twelve
(27:30):
thousand, five hundred people. Sothe number of adults in Mississauga is more
than ever. And you know,like, so where do the population shrink?
The city lost a ton of kids, It lost a ton of kids,
and so you know, another questionI would ask is, you know,
how can we you know, sortof like recapitalize our schools with children,
because there are a ton of neighborhoodsin Mississauga now that are family orientated
(27:53):
neighborhoods that are missing children. AndI think that's just a travesty waste of
taxpayer dollars of you know, infrastructureand resources. And so I would start
asking those questions of the candidates andtry to see if they have like an
actual answer for you, or theyhave generic things to say, or they
don't have anything to say really atall. And that's a conversation I used
(28:14):
to have with with with residents.You know, if you don't if we
don't make a housing affordable, ifwe don't build more housing and families don't
have an opportunity to live here,what do you think is going to happen
to your schools? Right? Yes, And to to Alex's point, something
that I try to tell people allthe time is that because unfortunately, there
(28:37):
are people who think, well,my kids are grown up, I don't
care what happens to those schools isno longer my problem. I'm not thinking
about that, which is unfortunate andnot a great way to think. But
there are people like that out there. What I what I find particularly pressing
to Alex's point about our aging populationhere in Mississauga is we are just a
few years away from this housing crisisgraduating into a senior's crisis. There are
(29:00):
not a lot of options for seniorsof the city tod to downsize in a
financially viable way. Selling your housethat you bought for two hundred thousand dollars
for a million bucks sounds great onpaper, but when the place that you're
moving into is also about a milliondollars and it's just a smaller place that
doesn't leave you with a lot ofliquid cash to take you through the rest
(29:22):
of your senior years. We alsoknow long term care facilities are not as
readily available as we might like them. We are actually in the middle of
a senior's home being shuttered here inMississauga, and several seniors are rushing to
find new housing. That's in wardnine. So the stock of housing for
seniors is actually very pitifully small.So whether you have children in school,
(29:48):
whether you have adult children who liveat home or not, there is a
place for you in this housing crisiswhere you are going to feel that pain.
I would argue that everybody's feeling it. But because of the specific demographics
that we have in Mississaga, agingpopulation is going to feel that pain very
very soon, and if we don'tact quickly, that is going to become
a second crisis piled on the onewe already have. Yeah. Absolutely,
(30:08):
thank you with that, Kelly.Now let's talk a little bit about the
candidates specifically. We've got a lotof candidates running, but we've got we've
got, you know, four counselorswho are currently sitting counselors, you know,
who are polling quite well. Sowhat has stood out for you,
(30:29):
what has stood out to you sofar from any of the candidates, not
just the sitting counselors, but anyof the candidates in terms of what they've
been talking about housing. So,you know, I the city of Toronto
just recently went through us losing ourmayor and having a mayoral election, having
a new mayor, and you know, I'm starting to see very similar patterns
where you know, Steve Pakin,he has us kind of saying where you
(30:52):
sit is where you stand kind ofthing or what you view the world.
I think I'm butchering is or paraphrasinghere. So in the Toronto election,
you have, you know, someof the some of the candidates with frankly
some of the worst records on house. Like we're all of a sudden,
I'm pro housing, I'm pro housing, I'm pro housing. And you know
the thing is, you know theyou know you don't you don't vote for
the mayor or, so you don'tvote for the prime minister, you don't
(31:14):
vote for the premier. Uh.You know, so mayors in in are
some of our elected officials that getthe most votes, and they have the
whitest geographic area from which they representand so you know you're gonna see a
lot of people all of a suddenkind of you know, shift their their
tone a little bit, and youknow how much of that is coming to
religion and how much of that isbeing an opportunist. You know, I'll
(31:37):
let everybody decide for themselves on onthat. So you know what I did
see when I was looking over allthe candidate's website. You know, they
all have like this kind of likegeneral I want to promote myself as being
you know, pro housing, butyou know, like some candidates who can
kind of see a lot of hedgingin their pro housing kind of marketing.
You know, they're like they starttalking about character, you know, they
(32:00):
start talking about if and or butts. So you know, there's still clearly
like there's still clearly a scale.And I would say, like, you
know, looking at like the topfour candidates, I can't endorse anyone,
so I can't speak to anyone specifically, But if he asked me to break
up the top four candidates, I'dsay there are two that are very pro
housing, one that is very statusquo, and one that is you know,
I think you know, is nota is not a real pro housing
(32:22):
voice, not even status quo.I think they would just actually just take
the city backwards. So you know, like people have options, they have
some good options, and you know, I hope they exercise that. Yeah,
absolutely, What are you hoping becauseyou know, they've kind of released
a little bit of what they're about, but as I understand, there might
be more information coming, there's goingto be you know, full platforms coming.
(32:46):
It's still early early stages. Whatare you hoping to see highlighted in
platforms, like specific things that they'reactually going to promise that they're going to
accomplish. From my from my perspective, I my warning to voters is beware
platitudes. Every mayoral candidate, asAlex explained, is going to tell you
(33:07):
that they are pro housing. Everycandidate is going to tell you that they
believe more housing is needed in Mississauga. Ask the second question, how what
are the problems that you see thatyou need to tackle in your seat?
Is mayor? The number one issuefor us as an organization that focuses on
housing advocacy and is often very muchin the fray on those issues that prevent
(33:30):
housing. And as we just said, you know, counselors have a lot
of power here is all of thered tape that has been created by the
city that create an unbelievable amount ofburdensome hoops that anybody, whether they're building
a women's shelter or building a luxuryquote unquote luxury condos, they all have
to jump through those same hoops andthat has to change. So what we
(33:51):
would love to see is more commitmenton exactly which parts of those which parts
of that mess of red tape thatthey are prepared to cut. Limiting public
consultations so that we can have moreproductive discussions where we can quickly and efficiently
collect community feedback, make decisions,and give members of the public more certainty.
That's a big one. Reducing waittimes is number one that requires investments
(34:15):
from the city in more city staff. And again as we talked about adjusting
some of those building requirements that makeit arbitrarily difficult for anybody to build anything
in our city. Yeah, youknow, like it's always a question of
like how much support does more housinghave out there? And if you kind
of look at general polling in theprovince, you know there's not really good
(34:37):
pulling at the city level, butat the provincial level is quite a bit.
Now, if you ask the questiondo you support more housing, and
you give people a strongly agree,agree in neutral, a a strongly disagree,
or a disagree and strongly disagree,you get you get about a third
a third of third right, soa third in the agree, a third
in the you know, I'm onthe fence, and a third in the
(34:59):
disagree. If you ask people doyou agree or disagree? You get seventy
five percent of people agreeing and youknow twenty five percent of people really disagreeing.
And you know what that kind oftells me is there's you know,
for that group in the middle,you know, more times than not,
if they're on the fence and youask them to actually take a side,
they're going to take the side ofmore housing. So you know, there
(35:21):
there is I think a path forwardfor UH, you know, winning a
coalition UH to to promote more housingand get those policies in. But the
question is always going to be onturnout, right, Like municipal elections have
got awful turnout, and you knowwhen you have elections in between election years
where you know it's just like onecouncilor one council seat and one mayoral seat.
(35:45):
You know, turnout is going tobe pretty abysmal, but that means
like that shouldn't discourage people from votingthat. If anything, if you are
a pro housing voter, you havemore power than ever. And so if
you can get out, if youcan get two friends out, and if
those two friends can get two friendsout and so on, and so you
actually have a pretty winning, likepretty strong, winning coalition out there to
(36:05):
get it done. So you know, like like you know, democracy is
not in a great state at themunicipal level in this province, but that
doesn't mean we can't fix it.Yeah, absolutely, and I completely agree
with you. I think this isa great opportunity for people who really care
about housing to show up and uh, you know, get us away from
(36:25):
that idea that young people don't voteand you know nobody is paying attention and
you know, and that counselors haveto make the nimbi's happy because that's who
they hear from, right realistically,that's who calls, that's who sends the
emails. People who are happy withwhat's going on don't usually call you.
So you have to as a representative. You have to be aware that you
(36:49):
know you're not hearing everybody's voice.You're just hearing you know, whoever is
upset about what's happening or what's goingon. Exactly, as I was going
through the platforms for each of thecandidates, I only really saw one person
talk about renting and rental houses.I'm wondering how big a problem would that
be the selection? Do you thinkdo you think that's on anybody's minds?
(37:12):
Is one candidate? I think outof the top four or five have actually
even mentioned renting, like tackling sharprice and rental rates. Yeah, and
I'm really glad that you brought thatup. That is incredibly important. I
think Noka's right that we do hearfrom a certain demographic in the city often
when they're fighting on housing. Butas we know, there are a lot
(37:34):
of renters in Mississaga, and inorder again for you to have a healthy
housing market, you need rental asan option. There are people for whom
rental is just better. We allknow people for whom rental is just better.
We might be people for whom rentalis better. So it is important
to see the candidates tackle it.We expect and we will be encouraging the
candidates who have not mentioned rental tostart discussing it, because renters in Mississauga,
(37:59):
as across Ontario are feeling the uncertaintythat has come with certain rental policies
that are not necessarily favorable to tenants. So we want to see those people
show up in the polls, andwe want to start encouraging the candidates to
discuss it. Because renters tenants,they are voters just as much as homeowners
(38:22):
are voters. Their weight in thecity is just as important, but they
are subject to different expectations as tenantsas compared to homeowners, so their voices
need to be represented. It isa bit disturbing, to be quite frank,
that so many candidates have chosen tosimply not acknowledge them. I think
that in an election in Toronto,for example, and certainly there are bigger
(38:45):
conversations about this in Brampton for differentreasons, but other cities have at least
done a better job of acknowledging theirrental population. It is frightening to see
that, I guess a better wayto put it is you can see the
bias and the culture of in theway that many of these platforms are phrased.
You can see the mythology, youcan see the certain perceptions that they
(39:07):
carry. And part of that isin the fact that they there's a certain
myopia around tenants. Yeah, forsure. And last question, if somebody
knocks on my door, I don'tknow if they will, But if somebody
knocks on my door and they're runningfor mayor in this election and they have
two years, they only have twoyears. It's a two year term,
(39:29):
what questions should I ask them andwhat should I be looking for if there's
anything specific? As I said before, my urge, my question I ask
for all voters is do not acceptthe platitude to ask how. It's easy
to say you're pro housing. It'seasy to say you're going to build more
housing. Tell me where, tellme how you're going to get it done,
(39:50):
and tell me how quick how you'regoing to speed that up? Because
Alex said it perfectly of housing startis not a thing you can live in.
How can you get more shovels inthe grid around sooner? And listen
to their answers, you will findthat a lot of these candidates are going
to tell you, well, youknow, we don't build housing, so
you got to talk to the developersabout that. You will hear a lot
of candidates give you the usual oh, you know, it's so important to
(40:13):
me and I want to build itand missing middle, and they'll saal the
buzzwords. Ask how you don't needto know a lot about housing development,
about how housing development works. Youdon't need to know what Alex and I
know about housing policy. It's notnecessary. You can tell when you're being
told a platative versus when you're beinggiven an achievable solution. So push the
candidates that will influence their decision making. I would say, like, you
(40:37):
know, before revealing whether you're forfour housing or against housing, I would
say, like, you know,tell me what your last three votes on
housing were and see what they say, right like, and you know,
just have a dead said face sothey can't tell which side of the fence
you are in, and let themsee what they want, what part of
their record they wish to highlight,right you know. For those who who
(40:58):
want to promote, like, youknow, neighborhood defenses, they're going to
say, like, I took thesevotes and you know, hope you agree
with that. And those who wantto promote that they are pro actually a
pro housing voice. They will pointto specific votes that they have taken and
substantive votes. Right, so youmight hear from a counselor oh I took
a vote on some apartment building downthe street, Like that's easy. But
what were the three big housing votesand what were there? And tell me
(41:21):
I had you vote? Okay,pretty, I think you don't need to
be an expert in housing, butthat will put them on the spot.
I think that's brilliant. Thank you, that's some really great advice. Yeah,
good ways to think about how totalk to those foks when they come
knocking on our doors. Thank youAlex for everything you've suggested. Thank you
Kelly again for your insight. We'regoing to take a quick break and when
(41:43):
we come back, nokan I will, I guess summarize what's going on and
give you some good advice based onyou know, we're just gonna take what
Alex said and Kelly said and puta bow on it. So stay tuned
right here on New stock sac Anine sixty am. Beyond the Ballot stream
(42:16):
us live at SAGA nine sixty amdot CA. You're listening to Beyond the
Ballot with Ryan Gurcharn and Noka DuckRube and welcome back to the final segment
(42:42):
of the show, Beyond the Ballothere on New Stock Saga A night sixty
Am. Noka, what do youthink? What are your thoughts? You
heard, Alex, you heard Kelly, you heard what they're thinking about this
new election where housing is right now? How does that make you feel?
That was great, wasn't it?Ryan? Was really good conversation. We
got a lot of information, reallyreally good stuff about what to be what
(43:07):
we should be looking out for whenit comes to UH, the s mayrial
race and the selection. Some ofthe tangible things they talked about four plex
motions. For those of you whohave been very supportive of the four plex
motion, you were very excited aboutit, like I was. There are
some feasibility issues that the City ofMassaga needs to figure out in order for
(43:29):
us to actually see four plexus UHcome to real life and become an actual
and actual place for people to live. Some of the other things that Yeah
on that with Ford recently coming outagainst four plexes, Yeah, I'm curious
to see how that will play outin this UH next coming Like had the
(43:51):
provincial issue, because you know,Bonnie users, supremer powers, abracadabra boom.
Four plexus are now allowed, andnow he's like, no, no,
no, no, we don't wantthat anymore. This is not good.
I'm curious to see how that playson this election for the folks who
actually will be voting on June tenth, are they going to be the you
know, oh no, I don'twant to four plex next next door and
(44:15):
monstrosity and all the you know,the way forward's really painting it versus what
we heard today, like you know, explaining how the need for density and
building smarter. Well, I'm goingto take this opportunity to really speak to
the individuals and our neighbors who mightbe concerned about, you know, the
four plexes that are going to goup. And you know, I am
(44:39):
I really want to Okay, thisisn't about destroying the character of a neighborhood.
This isn't about you know, achange that's not something that you're going
to be able to live with.If you even look at some of the
models of these four plexes, theyare so beautiful, it's you know,
(45:00):
so some of these things are areyou know, driven by fear of the
unknown and fear of change. Thinkabout your grandchildren, Think about your children,
think about their peers, their colleagues, think about you know, what
kind of society would we have ifpeople didn't have a place to live,
Because it is so important. Itit really, like as Kelly said earlier
(45:23):
in the show, it really makesa huge difference. You know, when
you have a home, everything inyour life is impacted by that. You
know, whether you know you're ableto pursue higher education or get a good
job or all these different things.You know, having a home is really
really important. So think about theimpact it's having on society. Think about
(45:45):
the stress it's causing to a lotof people. Think about your children,
think about your grandchildren, think aboutthe generations after them, And and please
don't be afraid of more housing.I don't know if that's going to convince
anybody, but I had to trybecause I had the opportunity. We're talking
about, you know, things weheard and I think Kelly like mentioned this,
(46:06):
and I don't think we really pickedup on it. I really wanted
to highlight that we're here talking aboutbuilding more homes, having people get more
housing in Mississauga. And I thinkshe even meant highlighted recently that in the
long term care home that they're youknow, evictim residents. Just recently this
came out and I'm like, inAsaga, where we're trying to the goal
(46:28):
is to get more people in homes, they're getting people out of them at
a chart well what was it called? I think Chartwell Heritage and Glenn in
Glen Sorry, Chartwell Heritage and GlennResident. Yeah, it's terrible what's happening
there. Absolutely, and you knowwhat you know, back to what Kelly
said, you know, this housingcrisis will eventually turn into a senior's crisis,
(46:52):
right, Yeah, I was justkidding. Yeah. Absolutely. You
know, you've bought this beautiful home. Now you're going to be able to
sell it for a million dollars orjust over a million. But what does
that mean if you have to downsizeto an apartment that's you know, you're
paying eight hundred thousand dollars for Whatdoes that mean for your retirement savings?
(47:13):
What does that mean for how longthat's going to be able to last you?
So that was a really really importantpoint I think that Kelly made.
One of the other things we talka lot about is schools, right,
if there's no if there's no kidsmoving into the neighborhood, what are we
going to do? What's going tohappen to the schools that we all love
and we cherish? So so importantthat we build housing, really really important?
(47:35):
Is it important? Right? It'simportant. It's not just it's affordable
house, and it's right just forbuilding too. I think that's the one
thing I think that we're too focusedon. It's not just building housing,
it's making me sure housing that existsto is affordable renting for renters, for
folks who can. I guess there'sa huge renting population here in Mississauga,
(47:57):
and that's something I'll be looking fortoo, as the candidates come knocking on
my door. But I I thoughtthat was a great show. I thought
I learned a lot, and Ithink it's I'm going to let's just percolate
until our next week show where Idon't want to give it away what we're
going to talk about. I wantedto, Uh, it'll be a surprise
(48:17):
like this was. So on tilnext week. Stay safe and get involved.
(48:38):
No Radio, No Problem stream islive on SAGO nine sixty am dot C A
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