# Unpacking Windsor Housing Data with Frazier Fathers

An episode of [Rose City Politics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247337855), 19 Nov 2023, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/57717005/frazier_rcp.mp3

Longtime friend of the show and new panelist Frazier Fathers joins Don, Jon and Doug to talk about housing statistics in Windsor / Essex. Rose City Politics is brought to you with the kind support of LiUNA Local 625: Building Better Communities. Support the show at Patreon.com/RoseCityPolitics. Read our stuff in Biz X Magazine or online at BizXMagazine.com.

## Transcript

[0:00] Hey, everyone walking to ROAs City Politics. It's November the eighteenth. Head
[0:04] over to patreon dot com slash ROAs City Politics and give us your cash.
[0:07] We're in Bizeck's magazine, online everywhere and banned somewhere. Roasty Politics is able
[0:12] to broadcast live on tape thanks to the kind support of Lena six two five
[0:16] building Better Communities. We've got a really, really great show. I'm here,
[0:21] John Letkee, you got Doug start, Tory, Don Meryville Junior,
[0:23] and hey, look at uh not only just added into the thread, but
[0:28] also sitting around the table. Praise your father. How you doing good?
[0:32] Great to have you, Thanks for having me here, handchreck. Okay,
[0:35] you hear that that happened. Graduation from friend to the show to panelists,
[0:41] this is like a dream come true. You are now you are now unemployable
[0:45] in Windsor. We might as well start looking for a house somewhere out of
[0:49] the city. My grand vision of destroying mean media and fat phase one is
[0:58] now done. Moving on, John, and a private thread throws over there.
[1:03] We need Doug's full attention, and the only way to do that is
[1:07] to destroy what else is taking it Next after this parallel forty two. Go
[1:11] fuck yourself. We're taking down motherfucker. Sorry, it's just the only way
[1:17] we get full dedication on the pod. Boy's got to make a living though,
[1:19] So well, that's why we need more Patreon subscribers. Dot com slash
[1:23] Roast City Politics. Yeah, hey, we've got a really big show.
[1:26] We're gonna have Fraser to talk about a lot of stuff here, primarily to
[1:30] show up and talk. He showed up this morning and decided I want to
[1:34] be in the show. He walked in the door, banging on the door,
[1:37] bank, bank, bank, and he says, what's the hazing?
[1:40] So, I guess our reputation precedes us. But the hazing is that we
[1:45] want you to talk at length about your own ship. Okay, I assumed
[1:48] that's why I was here. It's like I'm creating content. No, no,
[1:51] we mean personal matter. You don't care? Yeah, so like like
[1:53] hot goss, like what's going on with you? Nothing? How's the dog?
[1:56] That was great? How's the house fine? And how's the operty itself?
[2:00] And taxes? Okay, okay, what about your hobbies? Don't know
[2:05] it? This this is my hobby, sports, movies, TV bucks,
[2:10] there you go. Okay, Well, so we wanted to do a little
[2:15] bit of a backstory with our guests. Do you ever go on a family
[2:19] trip when you were a kid? Okay? This is like better get to
[2:23] know a Fraser. This is like toss Saladin scrambled eggs, but without the
[2:28] toss solid This is just like, eh, all right, So what's Fraser
[2:31] got to speak about that? At you? You posted a blog on ginger
[2:37] politics at dot com. Right, ginger politics dot com. Okay, one
[2:40] of the many domain names of our CP. Also, don't forget don at
[2:44] Meryfield dot com. But on ginger politics. On ginger politics dot com,
[2:49] you made a post about the latest and most updated housing stats for Windsor,
[2:53] Essex. Why are you doing this, fra? Sure? Yeah, well
[3:00] so obviously take a step back. We're in a housing crisis, which I
[3:01] think no one would disagree with, and I think there have been targets set
[3:07] for every community in Ontario about how many units they need to build. And
[3:10] one of the things that I've been interested in is just watching how those numbers
[3:15] are playing out and what and one of one of the so and the nice
[3:21] thing is Windsor And how CMAHC tracks this data is they track it on a
[3:24] monthly basis, but they also track it at a city level and like at
[3:29] a regional level, but they actually break it down a little bit to a
[3:31] subregion which they call CMHC zones, And so like you have the west Windsor
[3:36] area, which is like kind of like word three, two and one.
[3:38] You have sort of a central area which is sort of the downtown core,
[3:42] and you have sort of two eastern areas for the city of Windsor. So
[3:44] you can actually visualize and see within the City of Windsor, well, where
[3:50] is stuff getting built? And we hear a lot about, you know,
[3:53] stuff at council, Oh, new tower near you know for test track,
[3:57] new tower along the waterfront, your announcements, like the race site was announced
[4:00] in what twenty eighteen, I think or twenty nineteen, they talked about the
[4:03] redevelopment of that, But where is construction actually happening, where stuff starting,
[4:09] Where's stuff actually being completed? And then going on to the actual housing market,
[4:13] because we hear a lot about there's a lot of excitement sometimes about a
[4:15] big announcement in our community about hundreds of units coming downtown, and then five
[4:19] years later there's still no hole in the ground. It's still an empty lot
[4:24] or something like that. So I started pulling this data on a monthly basis,
[4:28] and the MHD does a regular monthly survey. They pulled the data from
[4:31] municipalities and it lags by one month. So October's data just came out,
[4:35] and really I just sort of summarized Windsor and then the county gets broken up
[4:42] into three sort of areas. La sal Amisburg sort of the rest of the
[4:45] CMA, which is to come see Lake Shore, and then Essex as they
[4:48] call it, which is Essex, Kingsville, Lea, Meaton. I didn't
[4:51] name them, that's just the names that they use. So can I ask
[4:56] you about And I'm a real estated and't so you think I would know with
[4:58] this, but I don't. But when CMHA is pulling that data, are
[5:01] they just pulling it from municipality's basically based off of permits and occupates pretty sure?
[5:08] Yeah, So it's basically someone pulled a permit for this, whether they
[5:11] built or not to another story and then it would be occupancy permits, which
[5:14] is the final per Yeah, and they again they have like yeah, so
[5:17] initial building permit is usually when they classified as a start and then they have
[5:21] a completion permit, which I would you know ocupan see, and then they
[5:26] do track some other things, like they have and data around what they're called
[5:29] they call absorption, which is the price at which that new unit that just
[5:33] got built. So they tracked the sales of those new units separately from regular
[5:38] market market sales so that they can track like, oh, how much is
[5:42] a new home or a new unit that's coming online show up there, And
[5:46] they do a lot of tracking around things like average construction time, so like
[5:49] when time between when that start and finished permit ends and all those things.
[5:54] And there's a lot of gray area in some of those but it's the only
[5:57] data that's available. Yeah, I was looking at your data as obviously I
[6:00] do this for a living, so I kind of know what the new home
[6:02] market look like right now. And I guess one thing where would be that
[6:06] gray area when they say it's when they pull permits. A lot of times
[6:09] the builders will pull permits are not build for a year because they just pull
[6:12] permits usually because every year the price goes up, so they'll pull a lot
[6:15] of permits like in December, with no intention of actually building those houses till
[6:18] you know, six eight nine months out later. So I was just I
[6:21] was curious about the way they got that data. They do aug I assumed
[6:26] it was pulled permits. It's permits, but then they do augment with there
[6:29] is a survey element where they are like they connecting with are you actually building
[6:32] these houses? There's some stuff in there too, Okay, So getting into
[6:39] the actual numbers here looking at housing starts in October and focusing on windsor Frazer,
[6:46] not a lot happening in windsor a nine units I think started in October.
[6:54] That makes sense based on most of those were just single detached homes and
[6:58] it's a handful of units. So I assume it's tiny infill like a lot
[7:00] here got something built on it, or a lot there could be you know,
[7:04] sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I'm gonna interrupt a lot
[7:06] in this segment out buy for people who know by lows On or the old
[7:12] Leer Point is where the hockey arena is, there was a lot of new
[7:14] homes being built out there where they had pulled permits like years ago. So
[7:17] I'll let you in on a little inside real estate thing. Something that happened
[7:20] a lot during when things were very busy up until twenty early twenty twenty two,
[7:26] is something called assignment sales. So if you had a new home subdivision,
[7:29] there were agents from like Toronto who had packs of investors. They would
[7:33] come down and they would put offers on say ten units, we're going to
[7:36] spend ten twelve million dollars. We're gonna buy twelve of your houses, and
[7:41] we're gonna do them on assignment. Because what was happening is everybody knows prices
[7:45] were going up very quickly every year, so prices were accelerating twenty percent a
[7:49] year. If you could buy a new unit at a million with no intention
[7:54] of the because of the lags, they weren't closing for like a year and
[7:57] a half, and then you sell it on assignment six months later and each
[8:01] one is now one hundred and fifty thousand dollars more. All you had to
[8:03] put down was the deposit, which would be eighty thousand dollars, which would
[8:07] be eight hundred thousand dollars. You sell them six months later and you just
[8:09] made a million dollars. This sounds familiar, isn't This something like what happened
[8:13] with the library, the Central library. Yeah, they just did it poorly.
[8:18] Yeah, that's I don't think that was the I don't know. Maybe
[8:20] that was the original intention, but the city screwed that up. But that's
[8:24] a lot of topic. So that was happening a lot. So a lot
[8:26] of those permits would get pulled that they had no intention of actually building those
[8:30] That was for a year and a half and they would flip them over.
[8:31] So that that's why a lot of that stuff happened. What are you saying
[8:35] using permits as investment vehicles, Yeah, you're not. It's this used to
[8:39] happen in Toronto a lot. They would they would have a big condo development
[8:43] go up and it wouldn't be to get built for like three years because Toronto's
[8:46] a shit show for building anything. But what you do is you basically get
[8:48] in line. Okay, you put your deposit down, you secure a unit
[8:50] at X number of dollars, and then by the time it actually gets built,
[8:54] it may have went up forty percent the price for the new ones that
[8:58] are being sold. So what you do is you sell your place in line.
[9:01] Basically it's called an assignment. You assign it to a new buyer.
[9:03] They pay you an extra two hundred grand. You didn't do anything and you
[9:07] made two hundred grand business. But that's what was happening down here quite a
[9:11] bit. So I think that was skewing the numbers a little bit. And
[9:13] some of those assignment sales they may not be closing, but now they have
[9:18] to build them because they can't delay any longer. So I think some of
[9:20] the numbers like nine may have been sold a year and a half ago,
[9:24] and those pull those permits may have showed up last year, is what I'm
[9:26] saying. It's not talking about sales, right, it's talking about starts and
[9:30] completions the day. So it's like it's not even the completion of you get
[9:33] a model done. Those models they could have pulled those permits two years ago,
[9:37] so the numbers may if you go, if you, I know,
[9:39] it's hard, it's almost impossible, but some of those houses that you're getting
[9:43] numbers for now would also have showed up in the data two years ago.
[9:45] So I didn't go. But but would that be a constant effect, So
[9:50] like, could you just discount it because it's a constant effect. That No,
[9:52] because it's changed dramatically now now they're just not pulling permits because I think
[9:56] they have a lot of permits pulled already. So they're just finishing up units
[9:58] because they have to do something to keep their guys working if they're not selling
[10:01] it. So is that what it is? Because when Fraser said nine units,
[10:05] you were like, oh, not surprising, And so is it just
[10:07] primarily that all of the construction that's being done is just final one? Well,
[10:11] yeah and there. So before I came here, just that curiosity,
[10:13] I pulled up on our data through the MLS system, through our local mL
[10:18] system, how many new homes, how many new properties sold this year?
[10:20] It was like one hundred and fifteen through all the windsor Ass County. But
[10:24] there's a lot of model homes that are sitting there that were built last year
[10:28] that I just haven't sold, because you know, there are a million and
[10:30] a half a lot of very expensive dub divisions up by Seven Lakes where they're
[10:33] building town homes that are you know, one point two million dollars. They
[10:37] pulled all those permits a year and a half ago. Two years people are
[10:39] still they're still selling homes from two years ago exactly. Okay, but let's
[10:43] let's put a pin there, because you you said a number one hundred and
[10:46] fifty, one hundred and fifteen, one hundred and fifteen, one hundred and
[10:50] fifteen new homes sold this year. That's data that's not in your in your
[10:54] blog phraser. But what you do have is year to date housing starts and
[11:00] the same data for completions. What does that look like for the whole city?
[11:03] For completions, again, it's for the year. The city has about
[11:09] four hundred and fifty or so units that have been completed, four hundred and
[11:13] thirty three in contrast the county. And again this is not just single family
[11:18] homes. This single family sent me detached rowhouses, and they even count apartment
[11:22] units in that year. Well, apartment units will not show up on my
[11:24] data because we don't deal with those and so like. Yeah, so for
[11:26] example, three hundred and nineteen apartment units showed up in the East outer area,
[11:31] which is almost which would be like the new builds probably out by like
[11:35] WFCU that one of those buildings probably came online this year and got like captured
[11:39] as a completion outdown. It's probably good that we're seeing then, quite frankly,
[11:43] a lower number of single detached homes and which you can't see, Don,
[11:50] But from what Frasier is saying, we're seeing a higher number of apartments.
[11:54] Yeah, we know there's a lot of rental buildings that have been built
[11:56] in the last three or four years. Just because of math that made sense.
[12:00] Single attached though in Windsor. The conversation you flip out to the county
[12:03] is then they've built twelve They've had over twelve hundred units completed this year and
[12:09] about four hundred over so Windsor had I'm just doing the math right now,
[12:13] about fifty single detached this year today the counties had about four hundred and twenty,
[12:20] So that would be closings or starts. Those would be completion completion.
[12:24] Okay, now I want to I'm sorry, John, I know I'm interrupting
[12:28] you, but I want to do something. You can't interrupt before I say
[12:31] something. Well, you just grabbed the spot I was put. Fraser.
[12:39] Now that we got all these numbers on the table, including Don's numbers,
[12:41] which I think are salient, there's and and most of the activity, the
[12:48] vast majority of the activity is happening outside of Windsor, Yes, and the
[12:52] and the overwhelming majority of activity is happening outside the core of the city.
[12:58] Yes, there's a paragraph here in your blog. I'm going to read it
[13:03] to you. Completions come from units started in some cases a long time ago.
[13:07] Totals make pretty good sense, and for urbanness, the lack of inner
[13:11] city units coming online points to the fact that a ship has sailed in many
[13:16] ways. I think this is a really important deep point that we want to
[13:20] talk about. I think it deserves more than the twenty words or so that
[13:26] you gave it in the blog. So I want to offer a bit of
[13:31] an interpretation of your words, and then you can tell me how far off
[13:35] the mark I am. But like what I'm seeing here, and then what
[13:41] your comment triggers to me is that the idea of a denser, more compact,
[13:50] less costly per square kilometer city of Windsor is gone at least for a
[13:56] generation. Yeah, can I I just want to clarify one thing. When
[14:01] you say the core, what is that? Well, I was traditional or
[14:05] urban city center. So based on this data, it would be you know,
[14:09] what would be sort of the center east, inner and west catchments,
[14:13] so like north, Yeah, generally like or ec row in some cases,
[14:18] but like the really developed core. You know, we're two, three,
[14:22] four, five or six probably north of ec Row being considered part of the
[14:28] core is well I'm saying I'm saying being considered youth. No, I'm saying,
[14:33] I'm saying that's where the CNC draws a line. And for the purposes
[14:35] of this data which CMHC or we see. I think that's I think that's
[14:39] fair. North of vc Row is is there is traditional there isn't There is
[14:43] a boundary of urban is ag. Yeah, it's fair. I think that's
[14:46] a I think that that's a it's it's a fair thing if you argue,
[14:50] like what the traditional the like your downtown core is versus your core of like
[14:54] either county, well, if you look south of them or south of the
[15:00] expressway, even the older homes which would be you know, traditional South windsor
[15:03] like those homes were all nineteen fifty sixty seventies, where the traditional core quote
[15:07] unquote would be houses like mine that are built early nineteen hundreds Wakerville like,
[15:11] so you would have construction up to about probably wartime homes late forties that would
[15:18] be core. And then I think you started to run out of land at
[15:20] that point, so they expanded south of the expressway. Yeah, So what
[15:26] I take from this phraser, and what is what I take you to mean,
[15:28] is that it's very unlikely at this point, given the sort of the
[15:33] economic and political winds, how they've been blowing for so long, and how
[15:39] limited the successes of advocates of intensification have like how limited those successes have been,
[15:46] and the fact that Sandwich South is now a done deal, that this
[15:52] is this is the future for the city, and what I fear and it
[15:56] just let me give indulge me for one more minute before you comment, But
[16:00] what I fear is that what these numbers may also indicate is that the grand
[16:07] vision for windsor that I think Sandwich South represents is a larger a larger boundary
[16:15] and a way for us to compete with the county in terms of the future
[16:19] of housing and today's And we're skating to where the puck was in nineteen ninety
[16:26] five, and the county is skating to where the puck needs to be in
[16:29] twenty twenty five. So I think there's a bunch of stuff to pull apart
[16:32] here that is probably going to be a much longer blog post at a future
[16:36] date. Maybe over the holidays, like thirty words. Yeah, at least
[16:38] at least you know, at least half a page, right, you know.
[16:42] But so I think a couple things are important there to really unpack.
[16:48] First is the county is building much two to one three to one ratios,
[16:53] and that's been consistent for the last several years, right, And so they've
[16:56] been outbuilding the city in many way. And what the data is starting to
[17:00] show is they are starting to build apartments. They are starting to build more
[17:03] dense styles of building, which creates that, you know, more opportunity for
[17:10] that urban lifestyle in that counting community, you know, because there they just
[17:14] have a smaller footprint, and so they're able to you know, they have
[17:18] the and I've already done this data analysis semi blog a while ago. If
[17:21] you just look at pure population densities and you remove the farmland from the county
[17:25] municipalities, they're all denser population wise, they're built up urban areas than the
[17:30] city of Windsor is. So you know, for them, adding an apartment
[17:34] building of one hundred units is a transformative investment in Bell River or in Amasburg.
[17:40] And suddenly it justifies, oh well, now there's bike lanes, and
[17:44] there's all these other amenities through the seawat and their local community plans that allow
[17:48] them to then benefit that lifestyle at a much lower cost. Because they don't
[17:53] have to run a bike lane from one end to the Coumcy Road to the
[17:56] other end of the Company Road in order to connect their town. They have
[18:00] a just much shorter sort of bandwidth. Now they are gonna lose out on
[18:03] some things, like they don't have certain amenities, and this means that either
[18:07] they're gonna build those amenities at great costs or they're just gonna use Windsor's amenities.
[18:12] I think for the City of Windsor, we've also seen and heard a
[18:15] lot about there's been a lot of excitement about planned projects in the downtown core,
[18:19] and to date, very few of them have moved forward in any measurable
[18:23] way. Pulled University, but we just pulled the University Avenue for a while,
[18:29] right, well, I mean like development projects, I mean like the
[18:30] Gray Side redevelopment of Fari Lands on Riverside Drive. There's been talk of,
[18:34] you know, the Shoppers drug Mart was supposed to become like a twenty five
[18:37] story tower or something like that. Those projects may still happen, and if
[18:41] they do, it'd be great for when you think we get the green ones,
[18:44] the big green towers at Elliott and Dolette that are gonna be like wrapped
[18:48] in trees the room again, I don't know what that is, but no,
[18:55] but like right now, but like those projects still could move forward,
[18:59] right But like the issue is that housing to a degree is a zero sum
[19:03] game, and that if a unit gets built somewhere else first and gets filled,
[19:07] that is it doesn't necessarily mean that the second unit downtown here is going
[19:11] to be able to offset the sort of center of gravity if more people are
[19:15] already out here like they're so, you know, five hundred apartments go up
[19:21] in the county, you need to build a thousand apartments in Windsor to sort
[19:25] of offset that center of gravity because the benefit is you're five hundred down and
[19:29] so, you know, the Sandwich South is largely I agree with you,
[19:33] a done deal. That's from what my understanding is the Housing Accelerator Fund.
[19:37] If Sean Fraser were to show up and give US forty million dollars, that's
[19:41] really to pay for a chunk of that infrastructure for phase one of Sandwich South.
[19:45] That's my understanding of it. There's probably projects also across the city for
[19:49] other things, but like, and I could be wrong on that press so
[19:55] it's like, well, this is great, I'm watching the John Live react,
[20:00] but like this is the dye has been cast. And so the question
[20:04] then becomes one of strategic realignment and you know, and revisioning of what Windsor
[20:14] is in some ways, because if you're not going to have the density and
[20:18] like a true big city downtown, you know, with towers, and you
[20:22] know, we're at parallel of forty two and you have a picture of the
[20:25] market with the two condo towers off of Policia there, but if those are
[20:27] still the only two condo towers in twenty five years here, like that's going
[20:32] to be a challenge. And so the question really becomes like you then have
[20:34] to reframe everything where you know, people are coming downtown from the county for
[20:40] events or whatever, and then it changes the priority of what certain parts of
[20:45] the city are. So if you are a twenty five year old who wants
[20:51] to live in Windsor Essets, don't and live in a community that is dense,
[21:00] thats is walkable, that has all of the good community elements that you
[21:04] want and you want to be part of shaping that, and you want to
[21:10] see that move forward. It's probably a better move to be in Amersburg's downtown
[21:18] than it is to be in Windsor's downtown. Yeah, I think so.
[21:22] Now, I think that there's still again a lot of this is a subject
[21:26] to political change and political winds and things like that, and so election comes,
[21:30] things could change, absolutely, But I do think in the short term,
[21:36] you know, Windsor has a burden of having this old, broad infrastructure
[21:41] footprint and you know, the smaller municipal communities in the county don't have that,
[21:45] and so the ability for you know, it's like trying to turn a
[21:51] super tanker or an aircraft carry you know, it's hard to really pivot the
[21:55] city of Windsor in a way that allows for a while, you know,
[22:00] apid change like sure, there might be a quick win, like okay,
[22:02] you could ramp up you know, some existing events or whatever, or ramp
[22:06] up you know certain programs. You know, consort of Ronaldo's talking about his
[22:10] downtown sort of list for the budget, you know, is like scaling up
[22:15] incentive programs. All those things are absolutely have potential to do stuff. But
[22:18] like I think, you know, the big you know, you're in a
[22:22] race against smaller, nimbler communities in the county, and you know you have
[22:29] to overcome that inertia in order to play catch up. So if I can
[22:34] just what I'm hearing, I feel like if if the ambition of Windsor is
[22:41] to be that that two three story, you know, charming, mid size
[22:47] city, which is really what we were, you know, all of my
[22:52] my time growing up, That's what Windsor was is. You know, you
[22:55] can disagree or agree on the charm, but I think we're charming and we're
[22:59] a midsize city, but you stone city as well. The annihilation of space
[23:06] that the Internet brought, and I think that COVID and the acceleration of remote
[23:12] work has vastly accelerated. I don't know that you can be a two story
[23:22] city of two hundred and fifty thousand people anymore, if you know what I
[23:26] mean. And maybe because Amersburg would not have been a viable place to live
[23:34] an urban lifestyle twenty five years ago. I know that because I lived there
[23:38] twenty five years ago. And the main difference between then and now is that
[23:44] you could live, You could live a pretty full version of a modern lifestyle
[23:51] in downtown Amersburg. Because of the advent of the internet, access to retail
[23:56] is less important than it used to be. Because when eighty percent of the
[24:00] retail purchases that a household makes are a brown box on the porch, does
[24:06] it matter if there's three shoe stores within walking distance. Well, that's a
[24:10] whole other conversation around you know, downtown vibrancy and like local economic development.
[24:15] Where I'm going here is that I think that there's you know, if you
[24:17] you can indulge me, I think there's a trend where what Windsor is doesn't
[24:22] have to be as big as Windsor Is to be the thing that people want
[24:26] it to be. People want neighborhoods. Like that's what people want, the
[24:32] neighborhood. They want to be able to you know, fifteen minute cities.
[24:36] God, okay, but in Windsor. A fifteen minute city is anywhere in
[24:38] the city of Windsor in a vehicle, No, But like that's the critical
[24:42] thing, right you can have a house and a vehicle in Windsor, And
[24:47] like that's that's the piece that I think a lot of people miss is that
[24:49] will slowly fade away. I don't think so, because because more people come
[24:56] and more people are on the road and more traffic goods. At the asumption
[25:00] there, though, is that you're able to densify existing areas. And so
[25:03] I think so adding any more people is just going to intensify. Yes,
[25:07] but again Windsor. Windsor was home to one of the shortest community times in
[25:11] Canada over the multiple multiple don't don't you think that South Sandwich South is like
[25:17] Sandwich South is going to have industry. It's going to have and it's going
[25:22] to have retail and it can be its own little area with a little bit
[25:26] of a Well. So what I'm saying is that if you add another sector
[25:29] to the city, you can have right. Yeah, So I'll tip my
[25:33] hand, all right, my hand is this Windsor was never a no,
[25:38] no, no, no. Windsor was never a real city. Was always
[25:41] a suburb of Detroit right from an all arts culture, all of those things.
[25:45] The only reason why we have a hockey team and some of the facilities
[25:48] that we have is there's an artificial line that is a border there. Now
[25:52] the border has gotten thicker and thinner over time, but what Windsor has also
[25:56] been is a city of multiple hubs in that Windsor you know, grew up,
[26:00] you know, through amalgamation, and there were established communities on like London
[26:04] and other places where like when they absorb Masonville, Masonville was like nothing,
[26:11] you know, it was still farm fields and they built that Masonville hub.
[26:14] Fuck Masonville, Walkerville and Riverside still remember that they were something Sandwiches does.
[26:18] There's the b I a's are those, you know exactly the bias are the
[26:25] structure of those old communities, right, And so Windsors. A lot of
[26:29] people think that Windsor has a downtown problem because like people don't want to go
[26:33] downtown. You don't actually have to go downtown in Windsor. In a lot
[26:37] of cases, you want a restaurant, there's a decent restaurant in almost every
[26:40] BIA. If you want to go for entertainment, you know, there's an
[26:42] entertainment venue in almost every b I A if you and then areas outside like
[26:47] I think about like Cabana and like Provincial and like some of the intersections down
[26:49] there where the plazas are, well, there's like Spago's in the South Windsor
[26:53] Great, you know, pizza places in South windsor all those things. So
[26:56] Windsor is a city of hubs, not because there have always been living in
[27:03] those traditional areas, right and so well, like I live in what was
[27:06] a sprawl neighborhood quote unquote, you know, near the bridge, and so
[27:11] Windsor. So when you think about you know, and you're making we were
[27:14] discussing the what downtown should be, right, Really, what we have to
[27:19] have a conversation about is what are the differentiating factors between those hubs. Like
[27:25] there's a brewery in Sandwichtown, there's a brewery in Walkerville, there's a brewery
[27:26] downtown, there's a brewery in Ford City, there's a brewery. And you
[27:30] know, unless you like a particular beer over one another, you can find
[27:34] something close to you that doesn't require you to drive twenty five minutes away with
[27:38] better park and so then yeah, so the conversation about you know, what
[27:44] is the core of Windsor or what is the urban downtown of Windsor. You
[27:48] know, it's not about one place in like the downtown BI a place.
[27:52] The downtown BIA has some differentiating factors that make it an attraction certain times of
[27:56] the year with fireworks. You know, if bright lights were to move downtown,
[28:00] you know, things like that would make it a differentiating factor. And
[28:03] then those time of year people from Ammasburg will come downtown. So if the
[28:10] downtown Windsor's fate was to be an entertainment district, then then probably the fatal
[28:15] error was the location of the arena. And then of course, right death,
[28:19] because if you hadn't done that, if you hadn't done that, how
[28:22] different would downtown look today? You know how much money was lost because of
[28:26] that, people who had bought businesses. I know someone who bought Ted boomer
[28:32] Old, promoter of a bluesfest. My parents' business partner bought Johnny Canucks,
[28:37] which became Pepper's, which became the Ceady Grill, which became empty. The
[28:41] only reason they bought that fucking place was because there was going to be an
[28:45] arena in the downtown core and they dropped a million and a half into it.
[28:48] And they've got a hilarious story about the brick wall and old Italian guy
[28:51] walking into the place. Man like that a wall. She's a fun She's
[28:53] gonna fall down in the wall filled she fell down, Okay, but actually
[29:00] side. My people know bricks, buddy, Damn right, he's not insulted
[29:03] by the Italian. I like the fact that you said they don't know.
[29:07] He jumped on it for like the praise side of what I was saying.
[29:11] No, to back up something Frazer said, but we killed our core as
[29:15] my part, well, I don't know if we did, because you know
[29:17] what, well we did. Maybe well we do have an adventure back.
[29:19] I'm going to contradict myself a little bit. But so look, I lived
[29:23] somewhere else in my twenties and then the nineteen nineties other than Toronto, so
[29:27] that kind of sounds like it was federal prison. Yeah, I did some
[29:30] time somewhere, and but you know what, you know what Windsor has always
[29:33] lacked. So when I came back to Windsor twenty four years ago, Windsor
[29:37] basically was an entertainment just it was just Kitty Bars was you know, all
[29:40] the people from Detroit coming over. And then nine to eleven happened, and
[29:42] that changed things just because of the the ease or the difficulty of getting through
[29:47] the border Windsor downtown. What it was always lacking, probably from about the
[29:52] eighties on nineties on. Compared to other communities that have what people would consider
[29:59] a real downtown is it was never the business center. People weren't going downtown
[30:03] to work like you would in Toronto. Like when I worked in Toronto,
[30:07] everybody worked downtown. It didn't matter where you live. That's why traffic is
[30:11] chaos. You know, areas like you know London to be another example,
[30:15] everyone kind of works downtown because that's whereas Windsor didn't have that. Your downtown
[30:19] here was you know, you had lawyers and accountants and the banks are down
[30:22] here. But the majority of our employment base really is probably out towards the
[30:30] Chrysler plants, out towards you know, where all the tool and die places
[30:33] that were out there. That is where people go to work. So they
[30:37] didn't they didn't have to come downtown. So you know, like in Toronto,
[30:41] you go work downtown and afterwards there's always a restaurant or a bar around.
[30:44] You go out and you have a drink afterwards. Where the case,
[30:45] you don't have to do that here because you're working at you know, Druard
[30:49] and Walker Road. Well you can just go down the street and walk a
[30:52] road and do that. So that is something which is unfortunate because I wish
[30:57] we did have like a main you know, heart of the city if you
[31:00] want to call that and that, but that is just I think geographically that's
[31:03] always been our issue because like you had said, we were an amalgamation of
[31:07] like three different cities really four Sandwich, Windsor Walkerville and Riverside, and we've
[31:12] just expanded from there, so there we just we were always lacking that one
[31:17] element that would relate to other cities where you have a main, main downtown.
[31:22] Just tangential to your comments, like the the counterpoint to you don't have
[31:27] to come downtown to do business to work is that it's also because the downtown
[31:34] jobs aren't here there there's like a lack of leadership and administration roles, right,
[31:40] corporate head quarters aren't here as soon as you're not, you know,
[31:42] that's not what happens here. As soon as they opened up Roads Drive and
[31:45] like WFCU headquarters went out there. I mean even our real estate boarders thou
[31:49] basically on Roads Drive, that business center that they opened just up the expressway,
[31:53] that really didn't help the downtown economic situation. Can ask can I ask
[31:59] this, you think that like if we were at a situation where we didn't
[32:02] already have a city hall built, Would we ever move city Hall out of
[32:08] the core. Would the police station ever decide that their headquarters wouldn't be directly
[32:14] in the core, you know, decide that they wouldn't be located in the
[32:19] core. We all recognize that it's the fucking core, So like, let's
[32:23] treat it like it then, because like, this is insane to me that
[32:27] we have this, Like I think that city Hall could be somewhere else,
[32:31] and maybe it should maybe maybe, but but but one like I, you
[32:39] know, on that I thought that I thought that about building the new city
[32:44] Hall as kind of a making a statement about the city's commitment to downtown.
[32:47] The fact that we did that was, you know, somewhat of a statement.
[32:52] But Fraser, I want to go back to the to the discussion about
[32:57] the you know, the way that the city works, the sort of how
[33:00] the city has always been sprawl because it's the convergence of a bunch of smaller
[33:06] communities and so forth. One thing that people listening might have been screaming to
[33:10] their podcast machine while you were talking is that there's an assumption that the you
[33:21] have to continually, you know, sort of despoil new agricultural land in order
[33:28] to continue to serve this like a larger population with this same lifestyle. And
[33:34] the other the other piece that I think folks often present is that infrastructure costs
[33:39] become unsustainable. And in fact, the argument has been raised many times by
[33:45] uh, you know, urban advocates and windsor that that county municipalities are already
[33:51] unsustainable, and and so I just wanted to just sort of put those those
[33:55] notions on the table and get your thoughts. Yeah, so if you know,
[34:00] yeah, if you're going to build new and build out, of course
[34:05] you're going to cover up land for other purposes, whether that's residential, industrial,
[34:08] or commercial or office spaces or whatever. Right, So that is part
[34:14] of the problem with the model, I agree. But I think in the
[34:17] context of a lot of the advocacy that you hear in the local area,
[34:22] you know, the hospital going on a beanfield does not actually impact food security
[34:28] in windsor Essex County in any sort of way. So you have to like
[34:31] put that into context. Yes, it is prime agricultural land. Yes,
[34:35] I would prefer it to be used for agricultural purposes. You know, it's
[34:39] I've actually done some digging on agricultural designations in the city Windsor, and actually,
[34:44] you know, the only the city Windsor doesn't even have an agricultural zoning
[34:49] in its boundary. The only zoned agricultural areas are the leftover zones from the
[34:54] purchase of the Sandwich South Lands from the company. They just sort of copied
[34:58] and pasted whatever the rules were there and left that zoning in place. So
[35:01] actually, this is true, and that's one of the main reasons why there
[35:04] aren't any cannabis production facilities within the city proper and so, and they don't
[35:08] have it rules around urban agriculture either, right, So if you wanted to
[35:12] like start up a cannabis or like an urban grow thing like growing lettuce in
[35:16] a in a warehouse somewhere, you can't do that in the city of Windsor.
[35:21] So that's like a planning gap, right So I so, yes,
[35:27] like the model is going to lead to covering up that land and that's not
[35:30] ideal, I would agree, But you know, Windsor covering up Sandwich South
[35:36] is not a climate catastrophe and it's not ideal, and that's that that that's
[35:42] the title of the episode. But but it's not ideal, but it does.
[35:46] You know, again, it's not the end of the world. Sorry,
[35:51] go ahead, your second question around what was it about, because I
[35:54] got it was sustainability. Sustainable, Yeah, so, well at some point
[36:02] it comes So first of all, no municipality in Ontario. Everyone's backstop by
[36:07] the province. So unlike Detroit, which can go bankrupt, no Canadian or
[36:12] Ontario municipality can truly go bankrupt under the current municipal system, under the municipal
[36:16] because the province backstops everything. So if we did drink, get drunk and
[36:21] spend like you know, drunken sailors and built you know, ten city halls,
[36:25] one for each ward, you know that sort of thing. You know,
[36:29] at some point the province would come in take over the finances. There'd
[36:31] be austerity, but you know, the city doesn't go bankrupt. So you're
[36:36] saying, we could have nine more adventures. Would that be fantastic? So
[36:40] it's like, so the financial question again is in so that is again it's
[36:45] been painted like, oh, you're going to go bankrupt like the US,
[36:49] and a lot of that urban research on those costs have been based on like
[36:52] the US model, where cities can go bankrupt now. Is dense living more
[36:58] sustainable and cheaper from attack space perspective, absolutely, But if the choices are
[37:04] being made and people are coming in and buying up those properties, if they're
[37:08] assessed appropriately, when they buy that house, they will have a tax bill
[37:15] exponentially larger, larger, but it will also be proportionally covering the cost of
[37:21] that infrastructure. And whether or not the city and the impact and things like
[37:27] that will do that level of assessment, that's another conversation, but the die
[37:30] has largely been cast in that. You know, Ward one is largely suburban
[37:35] sprawl, right Ward seven is largely suburban sprawl. Right So if you're wondering
[37:42] about, you know, is the city sustainable over the long term, well,
[37:45] the province backstops it. You saw Amisburg get its finances, you know,
[37:50] gutted by the province when they got into financial trouble, and suddenly they're
[37:52] now the poster child of urban downtown's investments and financial sustainability. And the the
[38:00] Ford government has made a number of moves to sort of open up densification.
[38:08] The one that comes to mind immediately is triplexus. As of right that something
[38:14] that was imposed on communities, including the city of Windsor. And it strikes
[38:19] me that, like, just based on what you're saying, which I think
[38:22] is really interesting, that it's far more likely that the province will impose a
[38:29] limit on sprawl before local political forces are able to contain the outward. You'll
[38:37] end up with green belts around every city. That's where it sort of goes
[38:39] at some point where they say you can go no further, and that will
[38:45] be sort of it will take a certain provincial government to do that, and
[38:47] they'll have to carry it out water from because municipal officials will get mad and
[38:52] all those things. As for the county municipalities, again like growth pace for
[38:57] growth to a degree, and the question that they have to manage is you
[39:01] know, they get a free rider bonus on the amenities of the city of
[39:06] Windsor, and so you know when people say, well the county miunicipalities aren't
[39:09] sustainable, well yeah, they don't need ten. They don't need to build
[39:13] a second arena though, because the winds the East Windsor Minor Hockey Association books
[39:19] time and Windsor and books time into Coomesy m books time in Bell River,
[39:22] and so you know you have this again, there's a great conversation there about
[39:28] cost sharing and regional governance that could be had around things like that, you
[39:32] know, and if you want to like figure out that piece, I think
[39:36] there's a lot of great discussion that could be had about that and a lot
[39:37] of great debate. But county doesn't need a transit system the reliant on the
[39:43] City of Windsor. And then when the City of Windsor they you know,
[39:46] the police force, you know, yeah, like you know, they're able
[39:50] to do those things if should they choose to, and so there's opportunities for
[39:53] those things. And you know, again I haven't looked at the county's balance
[39:58] of books out there all that recently, but like and how well each municipality
[40:01] is doing. But I don't think anyone's on the verge of going bankrupt in
[40:05] the counter and I think some people don't understand is when you see a new
[40:08] subdivision going up and you see, you know, we talked about infrastructure costs,
[40:13] Most of the infrastructure costs to the municipality is really just main trunk lines.
[40:17] So the bigger super lines going out, all those roads, sidewalks,
[40:21] sewers, electoral the developer pays for all that stuff. So from a political
[40:25] standpoint, I get your point, and I actually agree with your point.
[40:29] I don't know if it's sustainable. But from a political standpoint, the life
[40:31] cycle on those infrastructure things roads in that is probably twenty five years before you
[40:37] really have to start thinking about you're redoing roads and things like that. So
[40:40] if you're not thinking twenty five, thirty five, forty five years out and
[40:44] nobody cares, it's like I'm getting this development now, We're getting all this
[40:47] new tax base. It's really not costing us a lot right now because the
[40:52] developer pays for all this stuff, and what are the odds we're gonna have
[40:54] to replace well, see decorative lights twenty five years. But you know what's
[41:00] funny is that is a perfect example of things like that, because the reality
[41:04] is when a developer does that, yeah you're a pretty smart guy. Job
[41:07] the city has to agree when this development project goes down that they're going to
[41:12] replace those lights with like lights or whatever the case may be. Like infrastructure,
[41:16] and when the province mandated the wing government mandated asset management plans, that
[41:22] changed the financial projections of a lot of big cities and a lot of small
[41:27] cities because now they have to actually account for forty five years from now,
[41:31] and so you know what you're going to see. And this is why all
[41:36] these cities are have these infrastructure challenges because they spent the last five years actually
[41:40] accounting for it. Realize they are short X billions of dollars and it's going
[41:46] to have to be made up now. Is the best way to make that
[41:50] up to add density? Absolutely, but you can still you know, it's
[41:55] not the end of the world if you're still building outward. It just means
[41:59] that your kid's tax bill which is going to be twenty five percent higher.
[42:02] So I think that there's there's also a climate angle to consider here, and
[42:12] and I you know, these these two things are often conflated, right,
[42:16] They're often pushed together. Is it possible to reach the canas and global climate
[42:25] goals if we don't commit to a different kind of approach to development of housing
[42:32] and urban development? Again, climate's a space I don't know as much about,
[42:38] but I would say probably not. But I also think that there's a
[42:43] lot of reliance on you know, I think you talked in the last episode
[42:45] or maybe as we were conversation with Kieren Mackenzie that just came out about some
[42:50] of the winsor EST's climate goals. And you know, if everyone gets an
[42:52] electric car, suddenly that transportation number drops dramatically and you can still drive,
[43:00] you know, And yes, again, like we have to think about this,
[43:01] as I would argue, you know, you have to segment the population
[43:05] into who wants to be where and where they are they in their housing or
[43:08] overall life cycles. Right, for some people, dense urban living is where
[43:14] you want to be, right, But I have friends in Toronto who have
[43:17] moved to the suburbs of Toronto are doing that two hour hell commute because they
[43:22] had a kid and they couldn't have a kid in a one bedroom condo anymore.
[43:28] And so they make those life choices. And there's a whole field of
[43:31] behavioral economics that looks at you know, why people make the choices that they
[43:36] make and the financial considerations on those because people can you can value things.
[43:40] Are you willing to pay, you know, an extra twenty percent in property
[43:45] tax in order to have that suburban living in Sandwich South. You're not going
[43:51] to pay the twenty percent up front, but over the next twenty five years
[43:53] you're probably going to see an incremental increase, so at the end of the
[43:55] day, you end up paying that much more versus are you willing to Maybe
[44:00] your neighbor is about to knock down his house and put up that triplex on
[44:04] his property in your neighborhood, and you know, downsize to whatever size that
[44:08] triplex is. And frankly, triplexes can be quite large. You could have
[44:12] a two thousand square foot unit in a in a triplex or something like that,
[44:15] depending on the lot size. So you know that's the challenge and there
[44:21] is no there is no consensus on this, and you know your point around
[44:27] the internet and information making distances shorter. It also drives wedges in some of
[44:30] those consensuses because you can find a far more niche position and stand on that
[44:36] niche position, which easier. Feel free to read my blog and see my
[44:38] niche positions. But like you know, there's but you know there's also sorry,
[44:45] go ahead, no, well, I was just I completely forgot where
[44:50] you know what to me? Like it so frustratings me because when you look
[44:52] at the first housing boom of the twentieth century, like late twenties, mid
[44:59] thirties, Yeah, like we know what caused things to work well, you
[45:02] know, the missing middle as we describe it today, a lack of parking
[45:06] minimums. The idea of just things being built and giving people places to rent,
[45:10] what a novel concept. There's always any people who buy houses, and
[45:15] there's always many people who aren't going to buy houses and want to use rentals
[45:20] or leases to step up to the next level, get to the place where
[45:24] they can have some equity and go from there. And then we saw,
[45:29] you know, post World War two. I listened to a great podcast about
[45:32] the issue in California specifically with their housing prices and how they've gone up.
[45:37] But you know, it's emblematic of everywhere across North America. And after World
[45:42] War Two, everyone came home and the vast majority of people who went off
[45:44] to war were either living in you know, inner cities in the squalor,
[45:50] or they were living in rural communities without hot water. Like that was those
[45:54] were the guys who went off to war. After that came home and they're
[45:58] like, hey, maybe we should fucking try something a little bit different.
[46:00] And that was like sort of what the post war boom. And then we
[46:05] saw the nice white picket houses. But this podcast attract the house that was
[46:07] built in fifty three, and it went from fifty three to two thousand and
[46:14] three, and it started out as a fifteen thousand dollars house, and then
[46:17] at the end of that fifty five year period it was sold for three point
[46:22] seven million because it was turned into a duplex with an ADU in the backyard.
[46:29] But the whole point is, we know what's stopping us. It's our
[46:30] own fucking policies. We've zoned ourselves out of I was saying, we've zoned
[46:37] ourselves out of affordability. The way you solve the housing crisis is to allow
[46:40] for people to build houses to live in them, build units to live in
[46:45] them. I'm glad that the Ford government's actually seemingly, you know, it's
[46:50] understanding this. It's an interesting perspective that we have pampered residenceential homeowners to the
[47:01] point where they drive policy that maybe that is stifling innovation and stifling that kind
[47:10] of density that you're talking about. So let me just jump back in and
[47:14] where this podcast goes. It shows that the first NIMBI policies were actually developed
[47:19] in California out of the environmental movement, where for the first time back in
[47:24] the seventies, after the first Earth Day and everyone signed up for the Sierra
[47:29] Club and became membership. They saw that, oh, these environmental laws can
[47:36] be used to stop development in our neighborhoods. And after that they went,
[47:40] oh, if we can do that with environmental policies, why don't we go
[47:46] just creating other policies. And that was where the first restrictive zoning policies really
[47:51] came out of. Was in the seventies. The environmental movement created the NIMBI
[47:55] movement, and I fucking love that more than anything because it's like, oh,
[48:01] you think you're also progressive, don't you? You destroyed North America environmentally.
[48:08] Now I sound like Dawn, what's happened? Welcome to So I'll get
[48:14] to your membership next week. At the top of my show, does it
[48:16] a distinguished conservative? We talked about we talked about Fraser's hazing, what that
[48:23] would be, and apparently the what that entails is that we talked for forty
[48:29] eight minutes about your blog. We kill the show. Besides that, right
[48:37] right, everything else gets thrown in the garbage. I hope it wasn't too
[48:42] harsh. Money. Okay, I have a couple more points to make my
[48:47] god man the conversations that I've done. Everything after this point is edited out.
[48:54] Carry on. Okay, two main points about urbanization, especially in this
[49:00] area. It's a running joke every time a development gets brought up to city
[49:05] Hall there are thirteen neighbors who go down and try to light City Hall on
[49:07] fire because they're gonna ruin their sunset. It's gonna ruin reviews. So if
[49:12] you look at it from a developer standpoint, you may hate developers. You
[49:15] may hate all those real estate people. We get it. The reality is
[49:19] this is a business. If I'm gonna build, we'll use the walker So
[49:22] everybody, I assume most people know their story about the Walkerville condos that are
[49:25] supposed to be built on the old church site. They're still not built.
[49:29] This is years later. Why are they still not built. They got a
[49:30] lot of pushback from the neighbors there. We don't want these condos here.
[49:34] It's gonna ruin our neighbor and blah blah blah blah blah. If you're that
[49:37] developer and you're gonna spend thirty million dollars doing a development, forty million whatever
[49:42] the number is, and I can go to LaSalle, and no one's gonna
[49:46] bother me because there's a piece of green land right there, and say,
[49:49] go ahead and build it. You're gonna make You're gonna build it. You're
[49:52] gonna get them these prices. You're gonna make this much return on investment.
[49:55] Or you can sit in Windsor and fight for three years because eight people don't
[49:58] want you. You're just gonna go there. It's just gonna be easier.
[50:00] So as a city, we know we can sit here and blame politicians.
[50:05] You can blame real estate. We are our own worst enemy. How many
[50:08] developments downtown have been killed in the last thirty years because neighboring condos or neighboring
[50:15] apartments, We're gonna lose their views of the river or their sun sets.
[50:19] So these developers, this is a business for them. They're just gonna go
[50:22] somewhere else. And what we have we've talked about. I've talked about this
[50:24] many times. We don't have any regional development plans. Winds are gonna do
[50:28] whatever they want. They can say, we're never building another subdivision in Sandwich
[50:30] South, We're never doing anywhere. Only gonna do infill, not yourself.
[50:34] Oh but you know what the south to come see Essex Amersburg's gonna build new
[50:37] subdivisions like there's no torow and the people you you're gonna lose population. They're
[50:42] just gonna move there. It's only ten minutes further away. We don't have
[50:45] the same You can't force certain lifestyles in an area that doesn't justify it.
[50:52] You can say in Toronto, yeah you're not we're not gonna build X downtown,
[50:57] but people are still gonna live there just because it's a nightmare to drive
[50:59] to it hours here it's another ten minutes to get the amsburd damn it.
[51:02] Don Now you're making your We had a perfectly good like aid and and everything,
[51:07] and I want to respond to that. But so I think the the
[51:13] counter argument to that would be that what you could do as a community is
[51:20] if your windsor recognized that building subdivisions, you're always going to be disadvantaged against
[51:25] the county municipality. Well, because they are because they the county municipalities are
[51:32] more nimble, right, they're able to move faster, those those those single
[51:37] subdivisions mean more to them, right, A single subdivision is going to mean
[51:43] more to the entire city to the entirety to make a bigger effect on that
[51:46] community, right, exactly, right, exactly, So would it not be
[51:53] an opportunity for Windsor to perhaps offer an alternative, right and rather than trying
[52:00] to compete with the county on something that it's going to be difficult to compete
[52:05] with them on, right, because you're really competing on price and on as
[52:08] you say, on like the how much attention you get, yeah, right,
[52:13] how much white glove treatment you get from the municipality, which I think
[52:15] is probably a function of the you know, the relative size of the two
[52:20] parties. I think that's got a lot to do with it. So so
[52:23] what if what if rather than compete by by trying to offer the same product,
[52:30] what if you competed by offering a different product. It's like, I
[52:32] don't know that I'm just offering you a turn of the kaleidoscope from the idea
[52:37] that it's forcing a lifestyle or is it is it creating an alternative that that
[52:43] people may actually want? Okay, two points in that, I don't think
[52:46] we're lacking any alternative. You want to buy a condo, that you can
[52:50] buy a condo, that there's condos down here. I know I always get
[52:53] yelled at when I bring this point up, but look, I've been in
[52:55] the real estate business for twenty four years, going to be twenty four years
[52:59] in this in this area, whether we like it or not. I mean,
[53:01] I know a lot of the listeners on our show tend to be more
[53:05] urban, left leaning. You know, they want bike wings, they want
[53:07] urbanization, they want a lot of stuff. The reality is, my experience
[53:10] in twenty four years is a real sta age. This is how it plays
[53:13] out. People in your twenties. They want to before houses when really expensive.
[53:16] They want to buy a starter home. They want to live in an
[53:19] urban environment. They want to blah blah blah, blah blah. Frazer made
[53:22] a very good point about his friends in Toronto that was very indicative and it
[53:24] still happens here. Once people when gen X was or the millenniums were coming
[53:30] up, we had all these real estate meetings. Millenniums aren't going to buy
[53:31] houses. Millennials aren't going to buy houses like they did in the past.
[53:35] They do everybody, it's been it's just our culture. I think when you're
[53:38] younger, yes, you want an urban environment. I'm kind of an outlier.
[53:42] I do, but I'm in my fifties. Then you get married,
[53:45] you have a kid, maybe you buy a place you know where, a
[53:47] little outside the core, and then eventually you get sick of that when your
[53:51] kids are getting older and you want to move to Lisaal you want to move
[53:53] to Amersburg if you have the financial means to do that, or you're moving
[53:57] to Riverside, South windsor I just I think we talk amongst ourselves that everybody
[54:02] wants this urbanization plan, and the culture down here is just everybody. You
[54:07] know what, everybody wants to live in the county on an acre of land
[54:09] with trees around it, because that's all anyone has asked me for the last
[54:13] twenty four years. People in their thirties and their forties who are raising families.
[54:16] We have a culture here. We want to live outside of urban cores
[54:20] when you get older. I'm not saying there's nobody that wants to, but
[54:22] I'm saying, on if you had to parade it out and do the math,
[54:25] I know more people who are in the thirties and forties who want to
[54:29] live outside the city now than want to live inside it. And that has
[54:31] been the pattern of my real estate experience for twenty quarter of a decade.
[54:36] That that's how the lid flows. And that is the segment of the show
[54:39] that we call Don's bullshit. Thank you very much. Bull You don't have
[54:45] to believe me, but that's the fact. No, no, no,
[54:47] I'm dude. You lived in Kingsville before you. I definitely did. I
[54:52] grew up in the county absolutely, and I think like and I certainly,
[54:59] like I said, only know that that narrative exists, and I seen that
[55:05] I've seen that that narrative and and that's something that that people do want to
[55:10] live out in windsor like there is there is a pattern that that people follow,
[55:16] that some people follow. I don't think that that's where our population growth
[55:22] is necessarily coming from. I think that folks coming to windsor whether they're coming
[55:28] from another country or coming from another part of Canada, may have different perspectives
[55:32] and may want different things. And and I'm just not sure how like how
[55:40] much we can carry forward that sort of folk narrative about what, you know,
[55:45] what the people want into the future like where where things are going to
[55:51] be different and I think there are more people who want more things and and
[55:54] if what you say, is true, Windsor can never compete with that because
[55:58] Windsor doesn't have one acre lots to offer people. Sure, so why would
[56:04] we not offer an alternative rather than rather than like manufacture a new neighborhood so
[56:08] that we can sell one acre lots. Because I think we do, and
[56:12] I don't think it's it's not as desirable as we'd like to think it is.
[56:16] So Windsor traditionally had a horrible condom anian market just because of cost.
[56:22] You throw in the condo fees. It just didn't make sense you could buy
[56:23] a hundred thousand dollars more on a house. Our condo market only matured one's
[56:29] prices went up. I think a lot of things have changed with new apartment
[56:31] construction that only because of the fact that prices went up so much. Now
[56:37] you have no choice. You can't afford to buy a seven hundred thousand dollars
[56:40] raised branch out of less hour the cases. So I think we've always offered
[56:45] that option, and it might be a little more desirable now just out of
[56:47] pure practicality and cost. But I don't think I just I understand what you're
[56:54] saying. I just I don't think that our market is built around that narrative,
[57:00] as much as people like to believe it is just to add in.
[57:02] I think there's two things there. I think there's value in that differentiation narrative.
[57:07] And I think like Windsor does have opportunity. You know, if there
[57:12] should be condo towers are all along the Detroit waterfront, right, there should
[57:15] be right, But like what it takes to do that is a lot of
[57:20] political leadership. You've got to be able willing to you know, push through
[57:24] those thirteen people and the other one hundred people who are on the Facebook group
[57:29] that only the thirteen showed up. Can I offer a counter well? And
[57:34] then I also think I also think though that like you know, the challenge
[57:39] is also like we have to look at you know, those new people who
[57:43] are coming. You know, if we're talking about newcomered households for example,
[57:47] those are multi generational households that they are bringing to Canada. They are not
[57:52] moving into a condo on the waterfront or a condo downtown. They actually want
[57:57] that raised ranch because they want the extra bedroom for grandma. They want the
[58:00] extra you know, the sun is Sun is going to stay at home until
[58:04] married, right, you know, there are cultural traditions that are coming to
[58:07] North America. You know, all the many of the students who are coming
[58:12] to the University of windsor Saint clairk College, their plan is to get residency
[58:15] and that sponsor family members to come to North America and those family members will
[58:20] live with them for an extended period of time when they arrive. And so,
[58:23] you know, when thinking about that, you know, from my understanding
[58:27] and looking at some of the demographic data, like there's a massive boom in
[58:30] East Indian population in LaSalle and Lake in Lakeshore and the South. Yeah,
[58:34] people have asked, who are buying those million dollar homes? Is exactly what
[58:37] and so, and it's it's they're not buying it because they want that one
[58:42] acre or land or whatever. They're buying it because they want an extra bedroom
[58:45] because you know, they want square footage. They want square footage for their
[58:49] family. And they also recognize that there. I think the other thing that
[58:53] we're not talking about is newcomer household sizes are one to one point four person
[59:00] larger than you know, traditional Canadian households, and so when you have families,
[59:05] Canadian families are you know, willing and able to stay into a condo
[59:10] because they're only gonna have one kid. That the family plan for some of
[59:15] those newcomer families is very different. Okay, So so I just want to
[59:19] I want to offer this because you were taught. You were saying it was
[59:22] going to take municipal leadership, and I take everything in that you were saying
[59:25] about. Uh uh, you know, the the what people want and how
[59:34] what how what people want gets mediated by what the market offers. I think
[59:38] is an important thing to consider. Folks who want to raise ranch because a
[59:44] raised ranch is the only way to get the square footage that they need,
[59:45] does not mean that that's the configuration they want. But also, why are
[59:52] there not condo towers lining the river? It's not the municipality is not the
[59:57] reason. It's capital. Oh there's there's no capital, Like the capital is
[1:00:01] not investing here. I agree, But the missipality can be a catalyst for
[1:00:05] capital. So let's use Leamington as an example. That's where it will cite.
[1:00:08] Yeah, but but this is where I wanted to go. I think
[1:00:10] you're right that that the municipality has a role to play, and it can,
[1:00:15] Like the the level the c IP downtown attracted capital downtown. It did
[1:00:21] its job right, it did what it was supposed to do. So there
[1:00:22] is an element of that that that's there. But there's also a limit,
[1:00:28] right, there's a limit to the power of government to attract capital. I
[1:00:32] think more was expected of the Downtown CIP than eventually materialized, right, potentially,
[1:00:37] But I also think the power to attract capital is proportionate to the political
[1:00:44] leadership and so if you're willing to do more as a municipality. So look
[1:00:47] at what Leamington did with their old school site. They bought the land from
[1:00:51] the school board, they pay for that cost, and then what they did
[1:00:53] is they went to they arefpedo that land with conditions. Compare that to the
[1:00:58] Gray site. The city owned the land and they just looked for the best
[1:01:01] deal, right, and then they gave the land. From my understanding,
[1:01:05] they sold the land at a premium to the developer who's taking over the Grave
[1:01:08] site. So what are you getting in Leamington. You're getting a mixed use
[1:01:12] development with I think Habitat for Humanities getting five lots for their builds as well.
[1:01:17] The developer partnered with the local homeless shelter the Bridge, which is getting
[1:01:23] three units as transitional housing. And they're also like a number of the units
[1:01:29] had to be attainably priced. Right, so we have a vacant lot on
[1:01:32] the riverfront, the city can buy land from Farhi. Yeah, they're going
[1:01:37] to pay premium and then they can do whatever that. They could even have
[1:01:39] their own planner design of building that meets their criteria and then they get RFB
[1:01:45] who wants to build that out? You could cut a check this we see
[1:01:51] CMHC or the Community Housing Cork and they could build on that land like the
[1:01:55] city could do those things, you know, and there are opportunitiesquestion is where
[1:02:00] is the line fair enough? You know? I mean I've had these conversations
[1:02:04] a lot on the station with developers and real estate agents that come on and
[1:02:08] my question as always, we know where the biggest demand would be right now,
[1:02:14] can you build you know, studio bachelor, one bedroom apartment size things
[1:02:19] like you would be able to sell that or your post war homes. Don
[1:02:23] you know that is what would sell like hotcakes. And my question is why
[1:02:28] are these not being built? That's where the demand is. And the answer
[1:02:31] is just always the same, Why would I take ten percent of one hundred
[1:02:37] and seventy five thousand instead of ten percent of one point five million, And
[1:02:40] that goes to exactly what Fraser is saying, like, you need the government
[1:02:45] incentive to fix that fucking dynamic. Yes, to go back to Fraser's point
[1:02:51] and actually the counter Dark's point, yeah, well you well no, we'll
[1:02:54] use We'll use those fire properties. As a perfect example, there's been like
[1:02:57] two proposals over the last thirty years of build towers there. We didn't the
[1:03:00] politicians in this city wouldn't let them do it because they didn't want to piss
[1:03:05] off those twelve people are gonna lose their sunset views. So there hasn't been
[1:03:08] the political well de light there anymore. There has not been the political will
[1:03:15] to let developers build along the waterfront because we have this weird notion that all
[1:03:22] development on the waterfront is bad and we're never going to have it no matter
[1:03:24] what it is. The only development I have is some shitty restaurant where you
[1:03:28] look at a fucking parking lot. And what we need is that is perfect
[1:03:30] example of a municipality deciding their developers and they're going to develop something on the
[1:03:34] waterfront to appease people. They screwed it's a pilot garbage. Anyway, we
[1:03:38] have not had the political will to let development happen in a lot of these
[1:03:42] areas. I mean Kieren m Kiaren. We've talked about before. Oh that
[1:03:45] the just what is not cambotal quill, but it's the one right to Charlie.
[1:03:50] They've been trying to do that development forever. Finally got approval because they
[1:03:52] backed it up twenty five feet. It was a three two three year process
[1:03:55] because neighbors wanted a twenty feet moved. That has probably not gonna happen now
[1:04:00] because the math may not work anymore. So we have not had the political
[1:04:04] will to let a lot of development happen because our politicians in this city have
[1:04:10] been so worried about themselves getting re elected and wanting to play you know,
[1:04:15] master and commander of everything, that we've created our own problem politically in the
[1:04:18] city. For housing, what we need to do is make torches and pitchforks
[1:04:23] more expensive hundred percent. Okay, folks, this is roastity politics. It's
[1:04:27] been really great to spend some time with you today. Hey, Frasier's great
[1:04:31] to have you. Thank you for coming back. Actually I'm gone next weekend.
[1:04:35] Sorry, that's easily. How it goes to the jis how it all
[1:04:41] starts. I say, hey, it's been a lot of fun. Thanks
[1:04:43] so much for tuning in. Head over to patreon dot com slash Rose City
[1:04:47] Politics. We are in print in biz X, online, banned in some
[1:04:54] places, and always available for you whenever you decide to tune in. UH
[1:04:59] and roasti Pul was able to broadcast live on tape thanks to the kind support
[1:05:01] of Leuna six two five building better Communities. Hey, maybe we're back next
[1:05:05] week. Maybe we're not. Who knows.

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