The condo tower you see here is “One Bloor St East”, on the southeast corner of Bloor and Yonge streets, in downtown Toronto, Canada.
According to a 2021 article I read, you could buy a penthouse apt near the top for $32 million, Canadian [about $26 million USD]. If you can’t handle that, there are one bedrooms, or maybe bachelors, lower down for $3million.
Across the street, on the southwest corner, there is another tower, named “The One” (it’s address is 1 Bloor St West) that is still fairly early in construction, not very photogenic at the moment. This is planned to be 91 floors (getting close to the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed in 2001), but the project was put into receivership by the Ontario Superior Court on October 8 this year, because of unpaid debts.
Is this the beginning of the end? Toronto, for at least a decade, has led North America in the number of high-rise crane-constructed projects. No other city has come close.
Because of the cost of buying or renting in such buildings, they do nothing to assist ordinary people. I saw a stat recently that said 32% of condos built since 2018 were purchased by investors. Real estate competes now with the stock market, etc. According to the world’s elites, it seems, real estate is for making money, nothing else. Financially, the world is one big investment casino now
The cost of housing has been going up everywhere, not just in Toronto. I left Toronto one year ago, to live in the rural town of Listowel, 2 1/2 hrs drive west of Toronto, because I couldn’t afford Toronto bachelor apt in the $1400 range – only one year later the cost of that is now $1800. Families with children are paying $2400 and up for two bedroom apts in working-class areas of the city. How are they dealing with this? Canadians are said to be carrying their highest average debt level in history.
This week I read in economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s book, A Life in Our Times, how during World War II he and US president FDR brought in price controls, and held their ground in the face of a storm of protest from the business community. The result of that was that when the war was over there was massive construction of new homes that working-class people were able to buy.
The current housing catastrophe could have been avoided with similar action. It didn’t have to happen. Many saw it coming, and watched it progress over the past decade. But politicians no longer have that kind of courage now. There are whole books trying to explain it, so I won’t try to here.
One way or another, we look like we’re headed for some kind of spectacular multi-vehicle financial pile-up. Fasten your seat-belts.
Alan Conrad 