Comment 62348

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted April 15, 2011 at 13:26:20

The problem with the rules here is that they make it far more expensive and complicated to build housing than it has to be. The "red tape" simply excludes 90+% of the population from even thinking about attempting a project like this. What we're left with is a few large development firms which can afford to start a few high-end condo conversions (since little else will cover the costs), and a bunch of slumlords who disregard all the rules and devote their efforts to dodging them.

The parking rules are particularly offensive, since they're also a means of enforcing car-friendliness, but the bylaw system in general are crushing small-time development, and you need only ask one of the may entrepreneurs on here about how much that actually ends up costing.

I have no problem with developments being responsible to the neighbourhoods they operate in, or paying their fair share. But that's not what's happening here. The massive fees levelled will not be returned "to the community", and neither the by-laws in question nor their enforcement is coming (as far as we can tell) from any grassroots outcry. It's just another petty bureaucratic tyranny flexing their muscles.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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