I'll Take Housing Without the Side of Habitat Destruction, Thanks!

A Commentary on North American Development With Little to no Answers

Is there a more terrifying sight to a non-white middle aged person than the rolling hellscape that is the North American suburbs?

Detached single family homes are the bread and butter of North American housing development. Wherever you go you will see new subdivisions of big 3 bedroom, 1 garage, 2 bathroom, and 100 square foot backyard homes being built. For essentially anyone who does not live with a family equaling 3 or more, these types of homes are unaffordable.  And honestly most people living in a family with 3 or more people cannot afford a home like this. So why the fuck do these wretched hellscapes exist?

(Subdivision being built)

Well nearly every North American born since the 1950’s has grown up with a single understanding of what life should look like when they are older. A big 3 bedroom home with a garage, a nice american made car, and backyard for the dog. This has been the ideal taught to every generation for decades. If everyone wants this dream we have to find a place to put them and that is the suburbs. 

The high infrastructure costs of suburbs and their ever growing distance from city centers has made them an active cancer on society  (plus a myriad of other disadvantages the suburbs offer). Despite this the GTA and other city centers are continuing to expand the surrounding fields of single family homes. 

For many in North American society the widespread inequality and general societal harm that single family housing and suburbanization causes has become clear. This is mostly due to the dramatic effect that single family housing prioritization has had on the housing market. 

(Land Use Map for Toronto, Ontario)

Above is the land use map for the Toronto area. As you may have noticed a very large portion of the map is yellow, meaning neighborhood is the designated land use. In fact 60% of the residential land in Toronto is zoned as a neighborhood. Do you know what that entails? It means only single detached or semi-detached homes can be built on that land. Which essentially means only single family homes can be built on a vast majority of the residential land in Toronto. Any developers who want to stray from this strict ruling must not only have public consultation occur, but must also have an amendment be made in the zoning bylaw. All of which just adds on to the costs of development, making it so single family homes are just easier to build with an easy to attain profit. 

With single family homes primarily being built (that and luxury condos, but that’s a whole other issue) it has obviously limited the amount of people that can be housed in Toronto. With Toronto’s large population the city was quickly filled. This land and housing suddenly became very, very expensive. So naturally all those who did not fall amongst the wealthy had to turn to the rental market or simply not having a home in the city. 

Thus began the move to areas surrounding the city, small to medium sized cities got flooded with those who got squeezed out of the housing market in Toronto. This of course then raised the price of housing in those satellite cities/suburbs until houses in Northern Durham and the Kawartha Lakes were selling at well over half a million regularly. Now people in these satellite cities are now forced to participate in the rental market, subsequently causing the insane rental prices we see today, a problem I discuss further in a past piece. 

With this influx of people, these towns have become hotspots for developers to well, rape the land, I mean develop, I guess. With the development comes the suburb-a-hell we all have been forced to withstand every time we enter a 100 kilometer radius of Toronto. These start off small, with a few new subdivisions on either side of town, but as the population continues to grow and the need for single family homes rise, the fate of suburbia becomes as certain as the sunrise. 

The further growth of suburbia has caused many, many, issues in society, this includes but is not limited to record high home prices, record high rental market, massive carbon footprint per household, exacerbates wealth inequality, gentrification, taking and destroying the land of Indigenous peoples, and a myriad of other problems. Much of these issues could be dampened or even solved if we would just stop fucking building single family home suburbs. 

(Suburbs via fuckcars twitter.)

This skin crawling image will forever be are reality because old white NIMBY (Not in my backyard) fucks, corrupt slime ball regulators, and exploitative fuck wad developers like making money and being isolated from the poor. Oh, there are the car companies too, since this whole bullshit development strategy started because car companies wanted more cars, but that is a whole other pile of shit. This suburbia or bust mentality has unfortunately stretched to the development of the green belt. 

For those unaware of what the green belt is, it is a stretch of protected land that surrounds the GTA. This land is made up of wetlands, forests, rivers, farmland, and general open space. The purpose of this land is to prevent or stop the spread of urban sprawl in Ontario. Of course Doug Ford decided to allow development on some land on the Greenbelt that just so happened to be owned by developers who went to his daughters stag and doe, an event with a purpose of raising money for the couples wedding. Perhaps some cash donations were thrown into that wedding fund as a little thank you for opening up their land for development, but hey that’s just speculation right? 

Nonetheless, the reason given for opening up the greenbelt was of course the housing crisis. Which would be fair if you are not accounting for the obvious precedent set by this decision and the environmental impact of this decision, but hey, we do need more housing. But in true Doug Ford fashion the greenbelt will be developed not for condensed, affordable housing that is along public transport routes, but rather urban sprawl, otherwise known as, you guessed it, the suburbs. The obvious question is how do we stop urban sprawl?

The first solution is for people to stop being such little bitches about shit. When I say  people here I mean NIMBY’s. Your property value going down does not take precedence over having housing for people, simple as that honestly. Sure you bought some property years ago when shit didn’t cost an arm and a leg, but it doesn't mean you have control over every piece of land around you. It just blows my fucking mind that people who are afraid too many “poor” people will move into a town if an apartment building or affordable homes are built can subsequently prevent these much needed homes from being built. Or of course there is the “my view from my home will be terrible if an apartment building is built” people, which is a hilarious perspective considering their view consists of endless suburbs, refer to image 3 for evidence of this. 

Unfortunately NIMBY’s are not the sole factor preventing anything but single family home from being built, city planners, regulators, developers, and government officials all have their sticky fucking fingers on this mess too. Whether it be the fact that these motherfuckers are dumber than a starved chicken or chase money like a fox in a henhouse it quite frankly does not matter. This is because we must fundamentally alter how we approach home building if we want there to a) be any affordable home to buy and b) want any land leftover. 

If I must be honest, I do not have the answer on  how to change the mind of the fucks causing this. But I do have one answer and that is don’t be a NIMBY. Push for affordable housing and non-single family housing in your area. The next time a proposal for a new apartment building is happening in your town or city, go to the public inquiry meeting and express your support. Of course there is the caveat that no matter what we build we will continue to fuck the land, the environment, and the public if we refuse to build public transportation along with new homes and the growing population, but hey, that’s a whole other problem.