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Comment by kolbe | Hacker News Reader

How? Why? I mean, it's easy to see the return on investment that SV has yielded from employing more people, and to see the competitive advantage SV has to maintain its growth. But Toronto is everything bad about SV, and nothing good. Its housing is just as unaffordable, yet it doesn't have a large network of talent from decades of innovative companies to draw from.

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It's actually a very attractive option for people who are stuck in the EB-2 GC queue in the US. For instance, you could wait in the US for 15 years on a H1-B unable to open your own business, or you could move to Toronto on Express Entry and try and build a company.

>Its housing is just as unaffordable

What? It's not even remotely close.

Not in absolute terms, but it's closer when you compare housing cost vs compensation, I think.

The cost of rental housing has jumped up quite a bit recently, too. When I was looking for a place to live in 2015, I saw quite a few condos for rent right downtown for $1700-1800 a month. Now I see units in those same buildings renting for $2300 a month and up.

Still cheaper than SV, I suppose? And if you don't mind a bit of a commute, you can find more affordable accommodation.

Yup, all the new building (buildings built after 1992) weren't under rent-control. Since last year, they now are under rent-control which means landlord can only increase rent by 1.7% every year, which is why you saw that jump in rent. Not leaving my condo until i manage to buy my own place, which is going to be very difficult as well.

> Not in absolute terms

Well no-one is saying that Toronto is better than SV "in absolute terms" either. Just that more tech jobs were added.

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