Canada

The Star reached out to dozens of people who left Toronto

Toronto, they said, has become unlivable.

Wow, incredible investigative journalism there. In other news, The Star reached out to dozens of people who left [CITY]. "[CITY], they said, has become unlivable." Very informative 👍

Money. Saved you a click.

What a terrible article. Literally says a bunch of stuff about affordability, then says “it’s not all about affordability”, then immediately cites an example that IS about affordability.

“I can live in my dream home and still walk to the bar” is 100% affordability. There are tons of areas of Toronto where that is possible. The problem? You can’t afford them.

People move out of the city because they can’t get what they want at a price they can afford, and they aren’t willing to concede on those things to stay. That’s it. Every other reason is a statistical aberration.

If significantly more people are leaving, it’s not because there are new reasons. It’s because more people have crossed that threshold due to delayed life starts, stagnant wages and skyrocketing housing costs.

Articles like this are a waste of column inches that could be spent on talking about why people can’t afford those things. Instead of acting like the mystery is why people are leaving, investigate the actual issue of why they can’t afford to stay.

Without reading this:

"Too many new people here! Rents are high/not enough housing!"

"New people are leaving! Aaaaah!"

Talk like that worries Toronto Coun. Gord Perks, who chairs the city’s planning and housing committee: “What happens to the city of Toronto if nurses can’t live here? If people working in your local grocery store can’t afford to live here? If the people who work in your local packing plant can’t afford to live here? What does Toronto become? It’s not a pretty picture. It’s a terrible, terrible future.”

From July 1, 2020-2021, the most recent year for which detailed migration data is available, 203,115 people left Toronto while 92,175 people relocated there from within Canada. Nearly 80 per cent of those who left the city stayed in Ontario while 20 per cent left the province for another part of the country. “I don’t think any community can thrive without a strong middle class and that’s essentially who’s leaving,” said Moffatt [senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute and an assistant professor in the business, economics and public policy group at Western University]. “It’s a massive problem.”

It’s a problem not just for Toronto but for the municipalities that these urbanites are flooding into that lack the infrastructure to support their new residents. [Moffatt] uses his own hometown of London, Ont., as an example. City council adopted its official plan in 2016, which projected a population of 458,000 on Canada Day in the year 2035. As of last Canada Day, the population is 474,000. “In a matter of seven years, it’s already had 20 years of growth,” he said.

Everybody should be worried about Toronto becoming the next San Francisco, said Moffatt, referring to a city now dominated by rich tech people with homes worth an awful lot of money, high rates of homelessness, and where schools now provide housing for teachers because there’s nowhere they can afford to live.