The problem is that every single thing a Conservative does is designed to look like is helping the common man when its actually helping the wealthy and corporations. Dig for us going to make land available for 50,000 units of urban sprawl? Million dollar houses that only the upper middle class can afford and 8 billion dollars of benefit to his wealthy friends. They weave a good story that the least of us believe while the entire time funneling billions and billions of dollars of the tax money paid by the least of us to the wealthiest of us and corporations. What we need is good management and good social programs. We're not going to get that combination from either party so I would rather have social programs while they try to figure it out.

[–] Pxtl@lemmy.ca -4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The problem is, as I said, this is one of the few times where "letting dead-eyed mobbed up property developers make a goddamned mountain of money" will actually help everyone. I mean, even the abominable and corrupt crap Ford is doing to the greenbelt will help - every house, even million-dollar mcmansions, helps fight the crisis.

It's a game of musical chairs where the chairs are allocated by money instead of by speed. Adding more chairs to the game helps more people win regardless. Even if you're adding more thrones, that means there's more milking-stools left-over for the poor instead of those milking-stools getting flipped and upgraded into artisanal urban kneeling seats to sell to the people who have the money for thrones.

And not only that, but PP's stated plan: kick municipal asses until they start hitting housing targets? That would force municipalities to allow more housing. And assuming greenbelts remain in place (fingers-crossed), that would mean that cities would by necessity have to upzone and implement better, more urbanist, more intesification-friendly planning policies. That's way better than Ford's greenbelt crap, but then Ford didn't campaign on the greenbelt crap.

But yes, assuming PP is being honest about his plan: It's sneaky and yet still far better than not doing it and I'm mostly angry at his opponents for getting us to this point.

[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We have a limited number of builders and resources. It's not helping by having them build a ton of mcmansions when they could be building high density condos instead.

[–] Pxtl@lemmy.ca -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We don't really know what they'd build given the choice since one of those options is generally illegal (you can get special executive permission that makes it legal, but you could say the same about murdering people in countries that have a pardoning system).

[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If they can change the rules to allow building in the greenbelt, they can change the rules to allow higher density residence.

[–] Pxtl@lemmy.ca -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Right but I'm talking about federal and that's provincial. In fact, Ford put together a Housing Affordability Task Force a few years back and that's exactly what they recommended! He just... y'know.... didn't do any of it. Not sure why he even asked them in the first place.