Toronto’s highly educated and well-paid young professionals want to see denser housing developments throughout the city, according to a new survey conducted by Environics for the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
Eighty-seven percent of the survey’s respondents said all areas of the city needed to make room for denser housing, such as bigger condos, townhouses, laneway homes, and granny suites.
Seventy-four percent said they support measures to increase residential density, 84% support the construction of laneway homes, and 60% said they would be interested in living in laneway homes.
Meanwhile, 62% of respondents said Toronto has too many one-bedroom condos and 79% said the region has too few three-bedroom units.
“Even the development community is recognizing we’ve had an over-build of one-bedrooms and one-bedroom-plus-dens,” Janet De Silva, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, told The Toronto Star.
“Over time, they have seen their time frame from start to exit of a project move from four years to eight years. Their ability to move is impeded by the way our planning processes are unfolding.
“Their financing costs have doubled if their development time has doubled, and that all gets transferred to the purchaser, which is also creating pressure on some of the housing prices we’re seeing.”
The majority of respondents said high housing prices were inhibiting their ability to save for retirement, and 65% said rent and mortgage payments were making it harder to pay down debt.
