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Comment by scosman | Hacker News Reader

Worth noting the author, Jennifer Keesmaat, has announced she's running for mayor since this was published.

She would also like to commit to building 100k affordable homes.

I've been following her on Twitter for a while because she tweets interesting things about city design, but I find this implausible. I did ask for specific how to info to make that happen. She seems to be out campaigning or something. I'm still semi hoping that she will actually reply to me at some point because I would like useful info to apply to my small American town. But I'm not holding my breath here. I will be quite surprised if I get any reply at all from anyone at all. I think most people don't really know how to foster more affordable housing.

I don't think her plan for Toronto would apply to a small town. A detached home anywhere near the core starts at about $1.3M, so "affordable" housing is relative. Adding 100k units will make the entire market more affordable, the challenge is where to put them. As the former chief planner, she's highly qualified to tackle this; she has been pushing plans for adding density in smart ways for years.

I hope you are right that she's highly qualified. I've certainly enjoyed some of her tweets on city design type stuff.

I sometimes talk to professional planners. One recently said to me that affordable housing was a tough nut to crack. This part of where I get the idea that most people have no idea how to solve it.

As I have the time and energy, I'm trying to do my own research. I still hope to find viable answers.

Affordable housing is easy, increase the amount of available housing to allow for an increase in supply to drive down demand. If you do not increase available housing because of NIMBYISM, landlords wanting to keep supply limited, ridiculous rules for supply creation (San Francisco's rules and regulations for permit application are a great example), historic districts (forcing creators to adhere to maintain old and outdated buildings that require significant investment to meet codes), and politicians who would like to avoid having to figure out a new voter base, then you will never see houses that make financial sense to maintain.

As a thought experiment, how many more people could live in San Francisco city limits if you added three stories to the current limit (which is three I believe). You double the available supply, reduce / address demand and increase the opportunity for transit usage. However, if you proposed this idea, you do not have to worry about re election.

The politicians will say it is difficult, then use public funds to add 1,000 affordable homes, which is a drop in the bucket to addressing the supply issue. Do note, that when the affordable housing allotted to the skyscraper in New York City, the affordable housing facilities were given out by the city and conveniently, if I recall, a city counselor's relative got one of the homes.

She's got a hell of a lot of work ahead of her if she's going to win.

Keesmaat won't win over the right-wing voters- not with articles like "cars are not the greatest thing ever". Many on the left may like Keesmaat, but as a center-left voter, I'd take another four years of Tory over a big unknown with wild promises.

I want her to win me over, I do. But she's got only a few weeks left to do it.

Agree on a lot of work to do, but Keesmaat is far from a big unknown with wild promises. She was the chief city planner for 5 years. Her stance on the issues have been well articulated for years. She has significantly more experience running the city than any candidate in years, including current mayor Tory.

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