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The "Kitchen Window Test": Why Modern Housing Fails Kids · The Missing Middle Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Canadian families with young children and families planning to have children are leaving big cities in record numbers and moving to smaller communities, often looking for a family-friendly home that they can afford.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: But what exactly is a family-friendly home?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Does it have to be a large detached home in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a two-car garage?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it any home that has enough bedrooms?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: What types of homes work and don't work for middle-class families with kids?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're going to talk about today.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at the results of a recent poll commissioned by the Homes and Growth Coalition on the types of homes Canadians believe are appropriate for children, as well as the research on what types of homes kids need to thrive.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll also discuss the kitchen window test of child-friendly homes.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Classonomics, hosted by Sabrina Maddow and Mike Moffat.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Mike, you often use the terms family-friendly home and child-friendly home in your reports, but how do you determine what is a family-friendly home?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to admit, uh, what we do uh to date has actually been embarrassingly basic.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: We adopted something that the federal government calls the national occupancy standard.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: What that does is outlines the minimum number of bedrooms a family should have based on the age and gender and their relationships with the people in the family.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that doesn't mean that we assume that every child needs to have their own bedroom.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit more complicated than that.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when we look at any individual family, we use the national occupancy standard as our baseline for what is a family-friendly home.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So really we're just defining it by number of bedrooms.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: But when we're thinking about families with children in general, we use an even more basic definition.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: We define a child-friendly home as one having three bedrooms.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, okay, well, why three?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we chose that number because under the national occupancy standard, uh, any combination of family members that don't involve uh, you know, aunts and uncles or multi-generational families, you know, if you have a parent or single parent with two kids, you know, they will definitely fit within that standard.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So really, we just kind of use it as a synonym for three-bedroom home.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to me, that definition is probably much too basic because there are all kinds of things you're not taking into consideration, including the size of the home, the type of the home, its location, green space, um, even its layout.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many other factors.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I know this um even from just, you know, my rental searches over the years, not that I have kids at the moment, but you see things advertised that might be two-bedroom or three-bedroom, whether they're in a condo, whether they're a townhome or uh detached.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And when you get there, uh what that actually means in terms of how it could even be a quality home for two people, let alone a child or multiple children, can vary greatly.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So there I think there are so many other factors at play.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Any parent or parent to be that I know would also have a longer list of requirements beyond just number of bedrooms.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's funny, every time we issue one of these reports, we get that criticism that like what you're doing, uh defining a child-friendly home is far too basic.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And all I can say is I agree.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I could do is start to, you know, adding add uh different uh layers on top of that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the problem with that is I'm kind of imposing my own biases, you know, as kind of a Gen X white guy of what a uh family-friendly home uh should be.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of me coming up with it, you know, we got the idea of, well, maybe we should ask Canadians what they see, you know, get them to uh define it.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what we did is uh we commissioned a poll, or more specifically, the Missing Middle Initiative where we work, is part of something called the Homes and Growth Coalition.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a group of organizations dedicated to developing solutions to Canada's middle class housing crisis.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the coalition recently had one of the partners of the coalition called Data Sciences Inc., a research firm out of Montreal, pull over 4,000 Canadians and asked them a series of questions related to housing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most of the questions had nothing to do with this family-friendly, child-friendly uh definition.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very big poll.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the questions we asked, we showed a picture of a home and we asked the respondent, how suitable would this kind of home be for a couple with two young children?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the 4,000 Canadians who completed the poll were allowed to say, well, that home would be suitable or it's not suitable.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: But we also gave them a third option that said, well, it's is workable, but not ideal.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can make it work.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, you know, it's not great, but uh it's not horrible either.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, Sabrina, like as far as I'm aware, you weren't one of the 4,000 Canadians that that we called to participate in this.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought it'd be interesting to get your response to each of our homes and see how you would have answered these questions, you know, suitable, workable, but not ideal, or not suitable for a young couple with kids.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm kind of curious how aligned you are with the other Canadians.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this sounds great.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, absolutely.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So our first home here is a new two-story, detached home in the suburb.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's no white picket fence here, but I think it's the kind of thing that a lot of uh families might think of as uh being uh a typical uh family home.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna ask you, is a home like this suitable, workable, but not ideal, or not suitable for this family?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd also like you to kind of walk through your thinking here.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why did you pick the answer that you picked?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I suspect this might be one of the easier options.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna very quickly say suitable.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, new two-story detached homes, especially in the suburbs, uh, tend to have a larger square footage.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: We know that they most likely also have their own private backyard.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in the suburbs, um, you have access to services, schools, um, community centers, uh, often parks as well.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say very suitable.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, this is probably what your average Canadian or young person dreams of when they think about owning a home where they'll raise their children.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you are with the consensus here.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 89% of Canadians said this is a suitable home for this family.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the rest said it was workable, but not ideal, with only a tiny sliver saying it's not suitable.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, unfortunately, our poll didn't ask respondents why they chose what they chose.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: They were just required to kind of answer one of these three categories.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we really can't be sure what the 11% who did not choose suitable were thinking.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, if I think you polled Canadians, 11% of Canadians would say that Elvis is still alive.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, I think you you always have to kind of expect that uh contrarian minority.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I think everybody's kind of agreed here that this is a suitable home.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So let's move on to our next one.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So this one is an older, smaller, uh single story detached home.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, think of those old strawberry box homes from the 1950s, you know, single story, maybe 900,000 square feet or so.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Would you say this is suitable, uh workable, but not ideal, or not suitable?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say suitable with a few caveats.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, certainly if you have a smaller family, you know, one child, maybe two, but if you go beyond that, um, probably it becomes a bit more difficult or even not suitable.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, also it would depend on the number of bedrooms and layout.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: But again, a lot of these homes do have their own uh private outdoor space.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're near a lot of amenities and schools.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a lot of these, even in the city, uh, that are actually very, very expensive still these days, despite all the reports of falling home prices.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so I would lean towards suitable.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, uh, we only gave uh respondents so much information.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, they couldn't see the layouts or or anything like that.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: But just based on the picture, uh, most Canadians agree with you that they see this home as suitable.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: That proportion dropped to 68%, so not quite as overwhelming.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, another 24% chose workable but not ideal.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we didn't ask why.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: My my guess would be that maybe they see it as too small.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, I think we can put this one in the family home category.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next one, it's a modern but small, tall and skinny row home.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, kind of like a town home, but it's a little bit on the smaller side and it's quite narrow and tall.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Would you see this as suitable, uh, workable, but not ideal or not workable?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't put this one in the workable but not ideal category.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've seen quite a few of these, and they are getting sometimes taller, but also very, very skinny with a lot of stairs.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they're not always designed in very child-friendly ways.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So again, a lot depends.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I'll go workable but not ideal.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: You could probably make it work, but it wouldn't be a perfect situation.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and a lot of uh Canadians uh agree with you on that.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I would say that the the most common option was still suitable, but it was only 49%.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: 17% chose not suitable, uh, with the rest, you know, about a third of respondents uh giving the same answer as you, saying, well, you you can you can make it work, but it it might not be ideal.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so let's let's go to the next one.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Also uh a town home, a row home, but more of a kind of traditional one that you might have seen in the 70s and 80s.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh larger, wider, not as tall.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Again, suitable, workable, but not ideal, or not workable.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll go back to suitable for this one uh because of the fact that these older row homes are larger, they're wider, they just have more space.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then the answers are nearly identical to the strawberry box home.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I would imagine people who answered the same way on one, you know, answered on the other.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: 61% chose suitable, 30% chose workable.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So only, you know, less than 10% put it in the not suitable.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we can count this one as a family-friendly home.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now it's gonna get a little bit more challenging.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a unit in a low-rise six-story apartment building, uh, which we're we're seeing a lot of cities want to put on you know arterial roads.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to be clear, we didn't say what kind of road this was on, but you know, this has become a popular housing type.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And in particular, this is one where there's ground floor retail.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's one uh ground floor retail and then five stories of apartments.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Would you put this as suitable, workable, but not ideal, or not workable?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I happen to live in a unit in a low-rise five-story apartment building.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm very familiar with this.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I would go with workable but not ideal.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, leaning towards suitable, like and in between, a lot of that depends on unit type, right?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you're in a building that has older units that are larger, that has better layouts, um, and you can get a two or three bedroom or a two plus done, you can make that work, especially maybe with a very young child in a younger family as you're trying to upgrade to one of the other types of uh homes we talked about.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality also is that a lot of these are still one bedrooms or small two bedrooms.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they do tend to be on busy arteries, and obviously you're not going to have a private backyard or outdoor space, especially with that ground floor retail detail you mentioned.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I think that's important here because they they weren't able to see, you know, the types of road it's on.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: They they don't know the unit size.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so this was, I think of all of them, the most difficult one uh for folks.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it was kind of split down the middle.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: 30% said suitable, 28% said unsuitable, and just over 40% were we're kind of in the middle.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So this one may or may not be a we could classify as family friendly.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's one where all of those other details matter.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, interestingly, we we also asked respondents other family types.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't just asking around uh young couples with two kids.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the other questions we asked was, well, what if it's a young couple with no kids?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, 75% of Canadians uh say that uh this would be suitable for that couple.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So clearly the respondents weren't thinking that the adults couldn't live there.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're they're they're worried about, you know, it does this uh make sense uh for kids.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So Canadians overwhelmingly, yeah, Canadians overwhelmingly think these are good units, but they're kind of going, uh, I don't know if they're for everyone.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I would reflect that in my own experience.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um great building, love it, great as a couple, especially we do have a unit that's a bit on the larger side, especially for working from home sometimes.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but certainly if and when a kid were to come into an equation, that's when I we would have to look elsewhere.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I suspect a lot of Canadians are uh in that boat.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it might be a lot of those kind of drive until you qualify families who leave, uh end up leaving Toronto and moving somewhere else.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now finally, uh our last home, uh an apartment unit in a high-rise tower.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say not suitable for the first time, um, unless it was, you know, a luxury penthouse situation that 1% or less than 1% of the population can afford.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh these apartments tend to be very small, bad layout, uh, really geared at either investors or best case scenario, young single-end users.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're in the most crowded areas, don't have a lot of access to schools a lot of the time, no private outdoor space, getting down on elevators if they're working is a nightmare.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so not ideal for kids.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Canadians are clear on this one.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, again, we didn't give them that many details.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe if it's uh the apartment from different strokes, uh the great Gen X reference there.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe that one's okay.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, some of these smaller ones, I I think Canadians are in agreement with you.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Only 22% state that it's suitable, but also say that only 34% said not suitable.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think everyone's uh you know, the vast majority of people here, or I guess a plurality of people here, are saying, well, you could probably make it work, but it's not great.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think oh, all the housing types we we've gone through, I think the first four, yeah, we could say are are family friendly for the most part.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth one, people are on the fence.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: The sixth one, they can go, uh, maybe not so much.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Overall, you know, kind of through this exercise, you know, you know, what would you then define as the features of uh a family-friendly home?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think space and number of bedrooms are the key factors.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but on top of that, I found myself when I was answering, talking about location, talking about outdoor space, in particular private outdoor space a lot.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that got me thinking that that is something that is maybe even more important than um is traditionally thought about when um we talk about planning or what's ideal for a family.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now your poll tested what average Canadians think is needed in a home.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm also curious, do any of these things actually matter to the well-being of a child or are these just more, you know, like luxury beliefs and preferences?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because, you know, we're we're asking kind of Canadians, everyday Canadians, what do they think uh kids need?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you know, does that line up with the science?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out I think it does, or largely does.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: The science is a little bit tricky here because if you simply test the uh outcomes that kids have based on the type of home they live in, uh, kids who grow up in a in a single-dached home across the board have better outcomes on average in in childhood and adulthood.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're happier kids, they have less aggression, they're less likely to go to prison, they make more money in adulthood, and so on.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, like very little of that actually has to do with the the house itself, the structure of the house, right?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's more of these kind of confounding factors because if you grow up in a single detached home, you're more likely to have parents with stable incomes, uh, you're less likely to miss meals, you're more likely to live with both of your parents, and so on.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's you know, it it more correlates with with things like income um than the type of the home.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, but you can control for the all of those factors.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can go, okay, if we control for income, we control for this, control for that, uh, does the structure of the home matter?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out most of the sort of factors kind of wash away at that point when you when you control for uh income and family type and and so on, but not all of it.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: There are some things that matter.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And in particular, there's one study out of Scotland, and we looked at uh a lot of studies here, including a meta study that was uh, you know, a study that examined uh over 100 studies.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: But there's one in particular out of Scotland that I found interesting that found that young children who have a home next to green space, like a side yard or backyard, have better outcomes than those who do not, even when you control for everything else.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it does turn out that, yeah, there are some things that help kids on average thrive.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them is having a green space that's easily accessible.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that seems to line up with my instinct to talk about whether it's private green space or at least access to green space.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and certainly I think that's become much more limited and much more of a luxury for families, especially over the last decade.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it really is.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and that's a problem.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think part of sometimes um we try and correct for that by you know making sure that there's a a park nearby and so on.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that matters, and that particularly helps older kids.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: But for kids in their formative years, like three, four, five, six-year-olds, having a park nearby is is great, but it's not enough because if the child is dependent on a caregiver to take them there, they're unlikely to get the necessary level of outdoor time, right?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're simply uh parents are too busy, caregivers are too busy.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they end up, you know, spending too much time indoors, too much iPad time, uh, and it's not necessarily good for their well-being.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really interesting and makes sense that outdoor time would need to be much more scheduled, limited, and planned, and really based around the availability of parents who, you know, are often working more than ever as well.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also in today's day and age, there's a lot more social hesitancy to allow.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously very young kids, but even older kids to go out, you know, on the streets or to the park.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like you're a Gen Xer.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: I hear all the Gen X stories about riding their bikes until the sun came down and then they came back in for dinner.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that started to change even when I was growing up.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: But certainly um parents are even less comfortable with that level of um freedom and lack of supervisation now.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um kids who don't have access to that private space where their parents can just see them probably are experiencing a lot more screen time and a lot less outdoors time.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And now you wrote about some of this in a recent Globe and Mail article and called it the quote unquote kitchen window test.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell me more about that?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the kitchen window test is kind of a test of green space.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea behind it is that you're testing whether or not a child can play outside and be seen and ideally communicated with from a kitchen window.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you can, parents are going to uh allow that child to play outside kind of semi-independently.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that level of kind of semi-independence gives a young child the opportunity to play outside either by themselves or with a sibling, with friends, or so on, without requiring a caregiver to take them somewhere.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So they can go out, they can play in the sandbox and what have you.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: They can use their imaginations, get a little bit of sunshine and that kind of thing that doesn't have to be done in a scheduled way.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the parent can still be um, you know, keeping an eye on them, you know, making dinner, that kind of thing.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So is the message then that children need a backyard and a fence, white picket or otherwise, to thrive?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they definitely don't need a white picket uh fence, but no, not exactly that the people kind of interpret uh something like the kitchen window test of going, okay, we we have to uh have a 1950s or even a 1980s type uh suburb.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not true at all.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: That this green space can come in a variety of forms.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, side yards are one, but it could also be like a townhome that backs onto a shared green space.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it could also be apartments, uh, and particularly forms of apartments that are rare in Canada.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a thing called like a European-style courtyard apartment, where it's basically kind of like a town home, uh, but more kind of apartment style.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's kind of shaped uh like a big square with kind of an open section in the middle.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, kids can play in that open section.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: It has green space.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And not only can they just play, uh, but they actually have opportunities to play with other kids, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a little bit less isolating.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that, they pass the kitchen window test because you could be on the second and third floor.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: You see your kid outside, you could be making dinner, making coffee or whatever, keep an eye on them.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if you have a voice like mine, you can you know yell to them.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, hey, put that stick down, but still give them a certain level of independence.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, none of this requires a traditional backyard.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: None of this requires a detached home or a 1950s or 1980s style suburb, but it does require a certain level of green space that is proximate to the home.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because one other thing I was thinking about when you were running through the list earlier, especially when you got to, you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: The low rise apartment buildings and even the high rise apartment buildings is, I would say my answers were very specific to how those exist in Canada.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Had you asked me the same question generally around the world, um, I would have said suitable or at the very least, workable, but not ideal in most cases.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because if you look to examples in Europe or even Asia, there are very suitable and often they're common, they're much more affordable.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, apartments, whether they're low rise or higher rise, even uh to raise kids in that courtyard space is a big deal for sure.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that leads me to ask: is it even possible to build these types of homes in our cities at a price that Canadian families can afford?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: It could be.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, it's a little bit more challenging in Toronto or Vancouver than other cities.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's certainly possible.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the Europeans do it after all.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they do it in countries, you know, oftentimes people go, well, you know, the only reason it works in Europe is because they have high levels of social housing.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not true.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: There are countries in Europe that have lower levels of social housing than Canada, like Germany, Portugal, Luxembourg, Spain, and all of those countries have, you know, affordable or at least attainable uh courtyard apartment homes that are um suitable uh for kids, that kids thrive in them.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that raises an obvious question like why don't we build them here?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the simple answer is because it's illegal to build family-friendly courtyard apartments, at least in the European style.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it violates the building code, it violates elevator standards, you know, it's often not compliant with zoning.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and even if you could build it, things like development charges start to make it prohibitively expensive.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, government has kind of gotten in the way of this.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not greedy developers or this or that.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's we've made it impossible and illegal to build the types of homes that European kids thrive in.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, this is a fixable problem, but it requires our policymakers to look at what's going on and follow the wise words of Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons to please think of the children.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and even the children that aren't being born, because a lot of parents or well, would-be parents who would like to have children, think, oh, well, I don't have a suitable space or I can't afford a suitable space with access to green space and many other factors to have kids.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Canada's uh population numbers have been in the headlines a lot recently, especially with discussions around immigration.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I always have to think, okay, so we want to grow our population.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we could probably do a lot more of that at home, uh, but it would require politicians to make maybe some harder decisions about what they're going to allow in terms of development and family-friendly housing rather than just using immigration numbers.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: That I do think we need to be looking at ways to make it easier for Canadians to have families.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: That, you know, a lot of times, you know, governments are getting in their own way uh and making it more difficult and more expensive for families to have kids.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And these are fixable problems.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: We just need the political will to actually fix them.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you everyone for watching and listening.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: And to our producer, Meredith Martin, and our editor, Sean Foreman.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have any thoughts or questions about different strokes or the career of Gary Coleman, uh please leave us a comment and we'll keep the conversation going on there.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll see you next time.