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Windsor refuses Housing Accelerator Funds - again · Kvetch & Release

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  You're listening to the Dan McDonald Show with guest host John Lidkey on AM eight
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  hundred. Hey, good morning everyone, John Lydkey here on AM eight hundred
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  CKLW. You know, sometimes it's fun. You have a whole segment planned
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  out and you're ready to go to it, and you're having a conversation with
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  the guests in the commercial break, teeing it up, getting it ready,
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  and then you look at the computer screen and go, oh, no,
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  never mind, we're changing the subject. Dan Jemmis joins me right now.
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  Hey, Dan, you're you're used to live radio. Though this happens from
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  time to time, it happens every show. So we were going to talk
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  about how Windsor saw a massive increase in housing starts five hundred and forty eight
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  percent. We were going to talk about how that's a it's a big percentage,
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  but it's not a huge amount of homes. Well, ultimately, what
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  this is showing us, it's what we've been saying for the last you know,
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  two three years. We're starting to see a larger number of apartment slash
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  condo buildings hitting the market, which is great. It's great news. Now,
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  is it affordable housing? No? Not necessarily, but ultimately we need
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  more units into the marketplace, and the quickest way to do that is to
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  add the larger buildings, you know, to the stock. And so,
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  you know, as opposed to building one hundred and fifty homes, you know,
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  taking up a whole neighborhood and a lot of land, you can build
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  one hundred and fifty units in one single building, right, and so we're
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  seeing that that's been a trend we've been seeing for the last two three years.
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  It's going to continue. We need it to happen. Yes, you
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  know, the the roundtable had it square on today. It's not necessarily affordable
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  housing, but it is opening up, you know, other homes for those
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  who want a single family home and those are retiring. A lot of these
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  buildings are seeing retirees moving to you know, from their their single family homes
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  and they want that easier lifestyle. They don't want to have to worry about
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  a yard. They can go on vacation and travel and not have to worry
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  about those things. So you know, you might spend you know, three
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  closer to four five. I have one hundred thousand dollars for a condo,
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  which again don't get me wrong. I agree with everyone. It is not
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  affordable by any means, but we can't necessarily fix every problem at the same
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  time. Ultimately we need more housing stock and that's the quickest way to get
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  that into the marketplace. So let's talk about that. There is one level
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  of gout, well, two levels of go. You know what, there
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  are three levels of government that are all trying to get more housing built.
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  The province of course has they're they're building better, faster, stronger, act
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  or whatever was past and whatever the name is. The FEDS have the Housing
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  Accelerator Fund. We know that here in Windsor. We rebuffed it. We
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  submitted our own application and we were refused thirty million dollars because we didn't want
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  to go with the four units. As of right the Fed said, you
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  know what, we're going to reopen it, yep, and we're going to
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  give everyone an opportunity to get a little cashier. And we're finding out right
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  now breaking news that Nope, Nick's not not gonna do it. Windsor has
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  said yet again, it's not gonna happen. May Dilkins says, nothing's changed
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  fundamentally here. It's still just the four units at GO to that. I
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  want to talk about the little side that you just it is shameful. I
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  think it's shameful. And you know, I've said this on my show multiple
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  times, what the way I see this is, and it's been said by
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  by many on the show, on the on the various shows on the station
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  throughout the last you know, six months year. By allowing you know,
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  four plexes, by right, we are not going to magically start seeing a
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  whole bunch of four plexes popping up all over the place. That is not
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  going to happen. It's expensive. Building properties are expensive, Renovating properties are
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  expensive. I think that uh, you know, letting these funds go by
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  the wayside, I think it's shameful. Truly. I think it can be
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  used in so many different ways. You know, we talked about many of
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  them during the break. I think that I think it should have been done
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  the first time around, and the fact that it's not going to be done
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  the second time around, I'm saddened. It's a shame. The Feds have
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  said there's another four hundred million dollars that's now going to be eligible for municipalities
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  to tap into now, and this this does to be fair require a little
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  bit of sure additions than just the four units as of right, it would
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  require the city to propose brand new initiatives along with a plan to implement them.
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  And according to our Commissioner of Exdev and Innovation, it's expensive. We're
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  going to have to put resources to it to develop it. You're sitting here
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  shaking your head, though, I mean, you deal with this on the
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  ground. We're never gonna get enough housing built. If we're turning down opportunities
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  for money to get housing built or infrastructure rolled out. It's a lot of
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  money. We're saying. Notes to that money could be used in so many
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  different ways. Now we talk about infill, right, John, I could
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  take this in so many different directions. But we talk about wanting to to
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  find land to you know, to to build various properties. Nobody wants a
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  multi unit next door. Nobody wants that. But at the end of the
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  day, we have to put them somewhere. And you know, the roundtable
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  had it dead on where you want, you want transit close by, you
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  want resources, you do want to put them out in the middle of nowhere.
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  Now that being said, we're seeing a lot of multi unit buildings popping
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  up in Amersburg, in you know, Kingsville, Lasalt. He comes everywhere
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  is seen them, which is great news because we want them out those directions
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  as well. People want to live out in those in those municipalities. But
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  ultimately housing is needed everywhere, including in in the downtown core. And so
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  why not take some funds and clear some area that maybe is not desirable,
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  uh and and make some room for some larger buildings. There's so many different
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  directions you could go. You have to kind of yeah. And what I
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  what I'm very saddened by, uh with with a lot of this situation is
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  that everybody is just throwing the pile in someone else's lap. Nobody wants to
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  really take responsibility. Right. You have the provincial government throwing it onto the
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  Feds. You have the Fed thrown into the municipalities. They have municipalities throwing
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  it back all over the place. Nobody wants to you know, they all
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  want to pass the buck. And I get it. It's expensive. Nobody
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  has money, and I understand that, but this is an example of a
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  lot of money, you know, just being dropped. I think there has
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  to be a way to look at this from a different light. There has
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  to be you know, it's just when we look at the average cost of
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  a home. We talked about this often while you're on You said, five
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  hundred and eighty thousand, that's what you peg it to become September ish and
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  then locked in at that and probably just increasing with you know, cost of
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  with whatever inflation is as we move forward. Yeah, you were talking with
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  me when we were in the break about the cost for mobile homes for trailers,
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  and you just like it was like you took a brazhot through it at
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  my face. Well, people would be surprised. You know, back fifteen
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  years ago, you could buy a mobile home for you know, thirty forty
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  thousand dollars. Now we are selling mobile homes for upwards of the high twos
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  three hundred thousand dollars. Wow, and they're sitting on rented land. And
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  so we know of some parks in Windsor, Essex that you are buying a
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  two hundred and fifty thousand dollars mobile home and you are renting the land for
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  I've seen up to eight hundred dollars a month, eight hundred a month,
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  eight hundred a month to rent the land that is sitting on and that's just
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  the land, just the land, and so that's insane. It's insane.
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  People would be hoping for an apartment for eight hundred dollars. Not uncommon to
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  see five six, seven, eight hundred dollars in monthly rent for a mobile
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  home piece of property, a little tiny mobile home lot. Is is the
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  mobile Is that like the canary in the coal mine? I what is the
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  canary in the coal mine? For? You? Shake your head? Well,
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  so, well, sorry, that's mostly so. Again we go back
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  to many issues like what's the barometer for a healthy housing market? Good?
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  Great question, that's that's a great question. Everyone wants us to go back
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  to, you know, to build wartime homes for example. We you know,
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  Mike says it all the time. I say it all the time.
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  But the problem there is that the cost of land has gone up so high,
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  right, and so you used to be able to buy a neighborhood lot
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  for thirty forty thousand dollars. Now you're looking at a quarter million to three
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  hundred thousand dollars for an average neighborhood lot, a fifty by one hundred and
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  something foot lot. Then you have your development fees, so you could be
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  upwards of fifty thousand dollars for development fees, So before you even put a
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  house on a lot at three hundred three in a grand and so a builder
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  then has to put a house on lots, then you're another two three hundred
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  thousand dollars easy all day long. So now you're six seven hundred thousand dollars
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  before you even do anything nice, before you even you know, upgrade the
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  property, or before you build a good sized house that that's a one thousand
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  square foot house to a fifteen hundred square foot house. So if you're keeping
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  track right now and you're doing the math, it's pretty easy to understand why
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  you're seeing home selling for six seven eight nine a million, one hundred percent.
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  So you're starting to see a lot of townhomes right, town home style
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  homes at a townhouse style homes, which again you're you're less property right,
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  so you're you're squeezing them all, you're you're ataching them together. And so
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  that that's why builders are kind of tending to go that direction. They're trying
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  to find the most affordable way to build housing. And builders do not make
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  a ton of money on a build. Okay, so yes, you have
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  your multimillion dollar houses that builders will make a good chunk on. But your
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  average builder is not making a lot of money on each build, so they
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  have to build a lot of properties. And as the market has slowed down
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  drastically in new construction, those margins are coming down. And so at the
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  peak of COVID, builders were oftentimes losing money on a build because they had
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  signed contracts prior to all the prices going up like crazy, and they had
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  to satisfy those contracts. Meanwhile, the labor and the lumber costs we all
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  heard those during the peak of COVID had gone crazy. So a builder is
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  not making a lot of money on each build. They're having to build a
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  lot of properties to make a good profit on. So it's not like builders
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  can just slast their prices by half to lower the price of construction and the
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  homes that's not doesn't work that way. So this is again I guess,
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  going back to the Housing Accelerator Fund, why it would be smart for us
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  to take the money that's being offered, because we could use the to even
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  I guess, potentially try to reduce development fees if we wanted to. Could
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  It's a device in different ways. Demolish, you know, an old factory
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  somewhere and make the land available, hand it to a developer, and that
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  way the land costs are reduced. I mean, the only things that the
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  government can do one hundred percent, the only way were going to build affordable
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  housing. You know, if you're on YouTube and you're watching me, I'm
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  doing the air quotes. Affordable housing is with government jumping in and helping private
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  industry will not be able to build affordable housing. It's just not financially viable
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  for those builders and developers to do it. So again we're looking here,
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  it is July twenty third, you're still setting that five hundred and eighty thousand
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  dollars. That's the average as of right now. We're seeing our sales slow
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  down drastically over the last few months. The prices have not come down,
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  in fact, they've gone up a little bit over the last couple of months.
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  I anticipate that sales are going to continue to slow down. We're starting
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  to see listings climbing drastically, which is great news for buyers. Over the
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  last few weeks, we've been seeing buyers getting back into the market. I
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  anticipate that tomorrow, we're going to see another rate reduction with the Bank of
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  Canada, which again will only kind of incentivize buyers to get back into the
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  market again. Which my fear is that as these rate reductions keep coming over
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  the next few months, it's going to increase that it's going to increase the
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  price again. So right, I think we're gonna land up. I think
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  we're gonna I think we're gonna stay somewherehere. We're at right now in the
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  five seventy five, you know five, I'm gonna say five fifty to five
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  eighty range by the end of this year. Well average price. You heard
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  it here on AM eight hundred CKLW. You can also hear it on Saturdays
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  and Sundays on the Dan Gemis Show here on amid hundred damn. Really really
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  always a pleasure, as frustrating as it is. Sometimes frustrated with this issue,
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  but you know, thanks for covering them. John. It's important.
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  Yeah, well, I mean listen, it's everyone needs a place to live.
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  You got it. That's what it comes down to. Dan Jemis of
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  the Dan Jemis Real Estate Team, thank you so much for joining me in studio