lautanToronto developers are getting desperate as no one is buying condos anymore
acargitzIn the middle of a housing crisis, this is just good news.
But frankly, the developers themselves don’t deserve too much hate. They are just local optimizers and ultimately if we want to build more housing they are the ones that know how to do it.
If anyone deserves hate and schadenfreude here it is the Canadian banking sector. They are the global optimizers that turbocharged the bubble. They created and made insane amounts of money off of the bubble. And they are in an oligopolistic position and with enough political pull that if this turns into a crunch they would be getting bailed out at the taxpayers’ expense.
they are the ones that know how to do it.
Once upon a time, but most of their work (in Ontario) was put onto the Municipalities to make things cheaper, in exchange there were development charges put in place to offset some of the cost. Now they removed those but kept the municipalities doing the work. Developers serve no purpose anymore
I’m not sure what you mean when you say that developers serve no purpose. Maybe there is a definitional problem here. Maybe you are thinking of planners rather than developers. Developers organize, design, finance, and gain approvals for housing projects. Often they are also the general contractor for the building phase. Planners, on the other hand, ensure that projects meet the requirements of municipal Official Plans and the Planning Act (in Ontario).
It is true, though, that a lot of developers submit shitty plans that municipal planners have to fix. That’s because the average developer doesn’t give a single shit about the public good and only seeks to maximize personal profit. So, they treat the Planning Act as an obstacle to work around rather than making a good faith effort to follow the principles of good city planning.
Governments and banks finance
We have housing blueprints from the governments
Approval from the government
Governments already contract out work, even in construction
Their existence is a legacy component