We had some family business to attend to in the city today. Our journey took us to the northern reaches of North York, in the vicinity of the aptly-named Pleasant Avenue.
Pleasant Avenue was developed as a middle class subdivision, mostly in the sixties and into the seventies, when the middle class still had pleasant prospects. What's been happening in the neighbourhood, as in many other established Toronto neighbourhoods, is that whenever one of those 70's era middle class houses comes up for sale, it's marketed as a building lot.
Hey Mr. Builder! Buy this perfectly viable four bed two bath home for a million five and rip 'er down. Put up four thousand feet of vinyl siding and particle board, (with quartz counters and Miele appliances, of course!) and turn it over for three million!
Don't laugh. It's happening all over town.
But it's all affordable housing, because as my dear Daddy used to remind me, and he was in the business for fifty years; if somebody bought it, it must have been affordable.
What's even more amazing is that as we're negotiating our way into the city, we pass one "townhouse" development after another that isn't anywhere near anything that could be considered a town. There's million dollar plus "towns" for sale off King Road, where you're half-way between Newmarket and Richmond Hill, each of which is at least 15 kilometres distant.
How is that a town home?
But I digress.
Point is, there's no housing shortage for folks who can arrange the financing on a million dollar townhouse in rural King township, or a three million McMansion on Pleasant Ave.
There is, however, a growing housing crisis for those who can't.
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