The ghetto people are back! Articles popped up in the Record and Chronicle again this week about those horrible students and how nothing’s being done.
Old news, and I think I adequately covered my distaste for the local media being irresponsible and deliberately misleading in order to sell newspapers by validating readers’ fears and offering lurid visions young couples having sex on local sidewalks when I first wrote about this stuff a year ago. Ellen, who lives in the area, has written her response to the “ghetto” thing. Hint: the picture on the right featured in this week’s Record article is of a house recently bought by a young, professional couple who actually wants to live there.
(Full disclosure: you could probably call Ellen my “significant other”).
What’s changed this time is there’s been a plan put forward by a few Northdale residents called “Help Urbanize the Ghetto” or HUG Waterloo.
We missed November’s neighbourhood meeting where this was all presented, but I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while now. HUG Waterloo irritates me for reasons it’s taken a while for me to figure out how to articulate without flying into a vitriolic rant.
The whole HUG Waterloo plan is riding on premises that I think are demonstrably false. Namely, that Northdale is an irredeemable ghetto; that the city somehow doesn’t like high density urban neighbourhoods and isn’t doing enough to foster them; that high tech people are clamouring for more and more condos; and, most importantly, that the real estate bubble we’re sitting on right now is going to keep growing and growing forever.
That last one scares me. A lot.
On Urbanization and Sustainable Development
This is the one thing the HUG Waterloo people have hit on something that’s struck a chord with a lot of people. They present a vision of “quiet, safe streets and tree lined cycle paths, bustling shopping areas with outdoor cafes” and “attractive, low-rise condos with green roof elements.”
Waterlooians.ca (the save the moraine people) love this. Michael from psystenance agrees. Great allies to have! I certainly like and respect these guys.
Waterloo loves this stuff. I love this stuff! Green roofs are awesome! I think it all sounds great!
Trouble is you can’t just will a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban neighbourhood into existence. All the zoning in the world won’t help you.
Waterloo region has urbanization plans. They even include Northdale! The chunk of Northdale close to the planned King & University “hub” will eventually be upzoned and redeveloped. Coincidentally, that’s one of the more run down parts of the neighbourhood.
They’ve also rezoned along King, University, Lester and Spruce for higher density, to draw out the demand for student housing from the interior neighbourhood. That seems to be working very well. The west side of Lester street has been almost completely leveled and rebuilt in only a handful of years. The south side of Columbia too. A friend at WCRI says their forecasts all show rental demand dropping (unfortunately for them). Great! The plan’s working! Accusations that the city is doing nothing to use its zoning powers to address student housing are patently, obviously false.
I kind of wish Columbia wasn’t so stark now, but I’m not sure what they could have done to prevent that.
These things take time. Decades, even. Possibly generations. If you zoned Northdale for condos now, as the HUG Waterloo plan suggest, you’ll get more student apartments, because that’s what the market in that neighbourhood wants. And I’m not sure how much more of that it actually wants.
Vibrant, urban neighbourhoods have a mix of people, uses and densities. Nothing in the HUG Waterloo plan that I’ve seen will guarantee that will happen. And by painting their own neighbourhood as a ghetto, they’re doing quite a bit to ensure that it won’t happen.
Waterloo is firmly committed to “building up, not out.” Mostly because it doesn’t have any more “out” to build on. Economic pressures may put pressure on the provincial government to change that, but I think the municipal government is committed to use what limited powers it has to prevent sprawl. I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary.
Northdale will be built up as the market demands it. I would hate to be accused of NIMBYism because my girlfriend lives there and wants to stay. I told her when she bought the house that the future of her neighbourhood was up in the air. I don’t have a problem with development. I just want it to be smart. I think the HUG Waterloo plan has more buzzwords than smarts.
Could Northdale use some improvements to cycling and pedestrian amenities? Sure. It’s already a pedestrian and cycling neighbourhood, so you’d think the city would be all over this. Students don’t clear their sidewalks, so sidewalk clearing would help. I also think it would be nice if they talked to WCRI and the Lester Street developers to get a pathway between Phillip and Lester at Hickory, so I’m not forced to ride through a 60 zone on Columbia when I bike to Ellen’s house. Hickory would make for a great on-road cycleway connecting King & University to the Laurel trail. Please do that, City of Waterloo! I hate biking on University or Columbia.
On Condos for High Tech People
I’m guessing that people who keep pushing the idea of condos for high tech professionals haven’t met a lot of high tech professionals. I’m a high tech professional. I work with quite a few of them. I don’t think the market for condos for these people is quite as rampant as some people are speculating.
Simple reason: This is Waterloo, not Toronto. If you want to be a high tech professional living in an apartment condo in a vibrant urban neighbourhood, you are probably already living in downtown Toronto. Most of my R&T Park co-workers are living in the Laurelwood or RIM Park neighbourhoods. They seem to like suburbal sprawl, bless them. If it wasn’t so expensive (and people didn’t keep telling them it was a horrible slum full of crime and sidewalk sex), they might consider bringing their kids and/or dogs to Northdale, where they could get a bigger yard and mature trees and possibly some rental income from students.
For people who do want to live in an urban condo neighbourhood, there are tonnes of condos being built in Uptown. The plans are for 5000 people to be living in the Barrel Yards just a quick walk through Waterloo Park from UW. There are condos going up in Northdale, even! The sign for 45 Degrees has been up at Columbia and Spruce for quite a while now, close to Chapters and Starbucks. I would note that construction hasn’t started yet.
Let’s see how well these do before zoning more condos. If they’re a huge, runaway success, fantastic! Build more. But I think some caution is warranted. Over-supply puts the whole thing at risk.
On Real Estate Speculators
I firmly believe that the source of all of Northdale’s problems is not the students—it’s the real estate speculators. Students are a force of nature. If you live near a river, expect the occasional flood. If you live in a student neighbourhood, expect parties and anti-social behaviour. Northdale is now and will always be a student neighbourhood. There are ways to mitigate the problems, but the real estate speculators have been digging trenches in those levees for over a decade.
When I was a student at UW 10-15 years ago, even I could see how crazy the speculative market had gotten in that neighbourhood. Crappy little post-war bungalows were going for half a million dollars or more. Landlords were expecting they’d be able to build additions and cram those lots full of revenue-generating students. It didn’t help that changes to mortgage rules and low interest rates colluded with the double-cohort to drive investors into a frenzy. No wonder all the sensible people up and left.
The city saw what was happening and tried to cracked down on lodging houses. They’ve been having problems enforcing those rules due to a court case that gave landlords a loophole, but they’ve been working with the province to fix that. Neither the city, the universities, nor the remaining residents in Northdale who actually want to live there want to see that neighbourhood full of the sort of crappy, sub-standard lodging houses that the speculators want to build.
The city is under no obligation to validate the dreams of real estate speculators. I would personally prefer they actively fought against them. We’ve seen the damage that rampant speculation can do to communities in the United States. The Canadian real estate bubble hasn’t burst yet.
As my favourite economics professor is fond of saying: WARNING WARNING, DANGER DANGER!
Interest rates are going to go up, probably before the end of the year. You can bet I’ll be locking in my mortgage soon. The sort of speculative real estate boom we’ve been seeing for the last couple decades will come to an end when that happens. Condo developments will be put on hold. Lots will sit empty for a while.
Before committing to a grand scheme to bulldoze Northdale, I’d like to see the city do a detailed market study. And do it again for interest rates of 5%. And then do it again for 10%. I really hope it doesn’t get higher than that, but we’re in uncharted waters here. I’m not an economist, but I’ve got a bad feeling about where things might end up going.
If you’re holding onto a house you hate hoping for some future windfall, I would strongly suggest you consider selling now, or you might be stuck there for a while. Prices are still pretty good. Take the money and run. Sell to someone who wants to live there. Buy a nice Uptown condo and hunker down for a long winter.
There’s a lot of optimism in this town and I think that’s great, but there are forces at work here bigger than Waterloo. There’s a chance it’ll all turn out okay. But there’s also a chance that it won’t. I don’t want to see my city full of condemned houses and vacant lots. If we get that, we’ll discover what a ghetto is really like.
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I’m going to try to go through your post in order and address a number of points. No coherent narrative is promised.
The main premise of HUG Waterloo isn’t that Northdale is an irredeemable ghetto, but rather that it’s no longer a family-oriented suburban neighbourhood. This doesn’t need to come with any value judgments, it’s just the reality, and only wishful thinking can bring back what was before. That’s what the neighbourhood group has come around to.
The city of Waterloo certainly likes to talk about growing up and not out, but they only really do it when developers come to them with condo proposals. The upzoning in some portions of the university area has resulted in only horrendous looking five-bedroom student housing, so I’m not sure I want to be patting them on the back for a planning job well done. Just a few weeks ago Council approved another subdivision, out beyond RIM Park; the vote was unanimous. I do not share your faith that Waterloo understands building up and not out.
I’m not sure that talk of housing bubbles is really relevant in the context of housing demand here. There’s hardly even any rental apartments in Waterloo, for crying out loud. UW is growing, WLU is growing, the R&T Park is expanding rapidly; the Region and the city of Waterloo are both growing at a fair clip. So it’s not really a matter of whether to provide for more housing, but where.
HUG Waterloo’s plan isn’t a technical one, it’s a vision. It’s up to planners to come up with ways of doing it. However, your point that any developments that would go up there would end up as “student housing” is by no means assured. A particular kind of zoning could limit apartments to, say, three bedrooms each, with a minimum proportion of 1- and 2-bedroom units. What you think is due entirely to the market demands has much to do with the restrictions on how that land can be used. If the only question asked is: “Does anyone want student housing?” and the answer is a resounding yes, that doesn’t mean it’s the only question that would get a yes.
As for a mix of people and uses, that’s exactly what there isn’t in Northdale right now. There’s only residential, and it’s predominantly attractive to undergraduate students. There’s not even a grocery store. No two-bedroom apartments, no condos, no professional offices, no functional diversity.
“Northdale will be built up as the market demands it.” — No, it will not. That can only happen if the zoning is changed. If Waterloo sets up a mixed-use zoning not unlike Kitchener is doing along a number of corridors, then it will be built up as the market demands it. But developers will only build the most profitable of the possibilities — which is high-bedroom-count student housing if allowed — or nothing if none are profitable.
Agreed about Hickory needing a pedestrian/cycling connection to Phillip. Actually, the only expropriation I would like to see is the several properties needed to make the cul-de-sacs into through streets.
Your point about condos and high-tech workers is rather strange. If they want urban condos, then they are probably living in Toronto, but if they are here then they like suburban sprawl? If you don’t build it, they won’t come. And if instead you build sprawl for them, that’s where they will go. RIM and plenty of other companies are here and not in Toronto. Condo-wise — Seagram, Kaufman, and Bauer Lofts are doing well for themselves; the42 is fully sold, I believe. As for those that haven’t started construction, who knows what is holding them up — bad marketing, bad units, high price — or maybe nothing, and the sales are going fine. But there is by no means any excess supply of apartments or condos in Waterloo.
You talk about “zoning more condos”, but that’s not what any rezoning would be. It would be a change in the possibility of what can be built. This isn’t the kind of place where the city has any business buying up land, so if no developer wants to buy it and build something on it, it’ll stay as is. Developers are not going to be falling over each other to build something the market doesn’t want.
I’m not really sure why you think it’s crazy for a house to go for half a million dollars in that area. If you can rent it to 7 students at $400 each, that could probably cover the mortgage, utilities, and leave enough to make the effort worthwhile.
Again, there’s no scheme to bulldoze Northdale. This isn’t the slum clearance of Robert Moses. It is, however, the city’s business to set the framework for any growth that private enterprise wants to take on. No green roofs would be forced on anyone, but there could be a lower development charge for LEED-certified buildings.
Phew! For good measure, here’s a link to my “Urbanize Northdale!” Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=218696477000