I am a PhD student and…

I am a PhD student and educator with experience working in social services, healthcare, policy, social research, and education fields. The lack of scientific rigor found in the proposal is appalling. It lacks proper research into effective sollutions and is an incredibly ineffecient way of making use of people and experts in the field of city planning and environmental management.

I disagree with all edits made to the document. The Greenbelt is a crucial part of Ontario's infrastructure and should not be built on. Building into the Greenbelt will pick away at our protections from major weather events like what's happened in Pahkistan. The Greenbelt is not only ecologically important for biodiversity and as a carbon sink, it sucks up water and holds it in place in the water column. Building into these lands will result in significant risk increase for flooding, soil erosion, and stronger winds. As global warming takes more and more into efect, it is unwise to increase these risks for the long term health of the people who could live there and the other communities near them. This is also assuming that the new housing built is affordable in the first place.

Please look into what successful housing projects have done in other places. We need leaders like Jennifer Keesmaat leading the housing initiative.

We need an end to foreign investments and limiting investment properties. We need to fill vacent apartments and houses first. Why should there be properties empty when there are people who could be living there? Tax places with vacent units if they remain unfilled for 3 months. We need initiatives to drive the price of housing down. If they can't get renters/buyers, perhaps the cost needs to come down?

Define what a housing unit is and what is not housing more strictly. The minimum requirements for housing need to be increased and there needs to be a maximum size for housing units. We need to crack down on closet/shed "rooms" and shared units smaller and tighter packed than prison cells. There is increasingly, more subdividing of houses and apartments into smaller, strange shaped spaces. Then there are the giant, sprawling McMansions that are significantly more than what a single family could ever need. The cap can be generous, but there should be a cap on how large a single family dwelling can be.

Prioritize housing construction applications that are for affordable/non-profit housing initiatives and remove red tape from registered non-profits to build affordable housing. The housing crisis is happening because the vast majority of Ontarians can't afford housing prices. If an incoming police officer or doctor can't afford to rent a place in Toronto, the system is broken. We need millions of quality units that are affordable to all Ontarians. Find spaces within pre-existing cities and towns that could be redeveloped or filled. We haven't been very efficient with our use of the spaces we've already developed.

Housing shouldn't cost more than 40% of someone's income. For people on OW or ODSP, housing for the average bacheolor unit in Toronto is more than 100% of what they make. A minimum wage worker will spend well over half of their income on rent. We need to fill all the vacencies in buildings already built. It's unacceptable for there to be all these units built without people living in them.