Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!rbutterworth
From: rbutterworth@watmath.waterloo.edu (Ray Butterworth)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Rent control, zoning, and politics.
Message-ID: <17362@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 8 Mar 88 15:01:44 GMT
References: <594@oscvax.UUCP> <2303@unicus.UUCP> <2399@geac.UUCP>
Distribution: ont
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 31

In article <2399@geac.UUCP>, daveb@geac.UUCP (David Collier-Brown) writes:
>   Specifically, if one wants to add a deck to the roof of your
> garage, you have to apply for an get a variance to your zoning.  
>   This applies to almost any neighbourhood in Toronto proper, even
> if you have the only un-decked roof in the area (say, census tract).

Not only that, if you spend $10000 on installing your deck, paving
your driveway, repainting your siding, and other home improvements
the city will charge you more taxes than your neighbour who lets
his house rot and spends the $10000 on vacations in Hawaii.

I could understand a tax based on the area of land owned, the
number of people that live or work there, or some such measure
of how much your presence is costing the city (roads, utility
access, garbage disposal, etc.), but basing municipal (and even
worse, educational) taxes on how much one's buildings are worth
is a ridiculous idea.


> --dave (I won't live downtown) c-b

But many people do prefer living downtown.  That is one of the
main reasons why the rents and land values are so high.  

What I don't understand, is why the poor, especially those
with no jobs at all, tend to live downtown.  For the rent many
welfare recipients pay to live in a tiny room in downtown Toronto,
they could afford a much larger and nicer place in a small town
elsewhere.  i.e. why do people, both rich and poor, seem to feel
that the poor should live in areas where the free-market price of
housing is naturally the highest?