Need Ideas for writing. Assignment: Opinion: Like it or…

Need Ideas for writing.
Assignment:
Opinion: Like it or not, building houses on the Greenbelt is necessary
write a formal piece of writing in which you argue your point of view on a topic using the rhetorical mode of compare and contrast. Argue the point using logical arguments supported with examples and evidence. Need to write in 3rd person, and in present tense.
Using the article below, write an opinion piece.
Make sure you:
Use proper APA in-text citations when you paraphrase or quote from someone else’s work.
Include a Works Cited in proper APA format.
This article to base the Writing…. Use citation (APA)
Opinion: Like it or not, building houses on the Greenbelt is necessary
Ontario needs a lot more housing, quickly. We no longer have the luxury of holding out for perfect solutions
Author of the article:
Steve Lafleur and Josef Filipowicz, National Post
Published Nov 21, 2022 • Last updated Nov 21, 2022
URL: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/we-need-more-urban-sprawl-in-gta
Urban sprawl is a bit of a dirty word. It hasn’t always been that way. Post-war suburban development gave a lot of people access to homes they could afford with backyards and enough space to raise a family. But as large metropolitan areas grew, some of the downsides became obvious. Long commutes are bad for people’s physical and mental health and they pump emissions into the atmosphere. Outward expansion has also strained our infrastructure.
This isn’t new information. We’ve known about the growth pressures facing the Greater Toronto Area for a long time. We could have spent the past decade building enough suitable housing to avoid more sprawl. We had room for such “missing middle” housing types as duplexes, townhomes and low-rise apartments that could meet the needs of young families. But for the most part, it wasn’t permitted by zoning. So we didn’t build enough of it, and now we’re in a housing emergency. No one should be surprised, then, that the Ford government has decided to redesignate some Greenbelt lands to allow development.
Unless someone is going to invent a time machine and make different housing choices, we’re going to have to take an all-of-the-above approach to housing development. All Ontario political parties agree that we need to roughly double housing starts over the next 10 years to tackle this crisis. So we’re going to have to make hard choices, both in existing neighbourhoods and on the urban fringe.
Ontario’s housing math is ugly. Between August of 2012 and August of 2022, the average Ontario home price increased by more than half a million dollars. Homes earned $50,000 a year during the past decade. And lest you accuse us of cherry-picking numbers, average prices have decreased by more than $175,000 from their peak in March.
To restore balance in the housing market, Ontario’s Housing Affordability Task Force estimated that the province needs to roughly double housing production to 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimated that we need about a million more than that.
Even if interest rate hikes take the air out of Ontario’s housing market, it’s hard to see a durable price decrease without some sort of economic cataclysm. Canada is planning to increase annual immigration levels to half a million. And the GTA alone tends to attract just under 30 per cent of new immigrants. This is going to be a major challenge, given that we’re starting from behind.
A lot of things need to go right to (at least) double housing starts. We need enough labour and materials, and the housing industry also needs adequate access to capital, which gets tough in a period of tightening financial conditions. But forget all of that for a second. We need places for those homes to get built. With restrictions on both upward and outward development, homebuilding gets even harder.
This is where the suite of policies recently proposed by the Ford government can help. The provincial government will effectively end exclusionary single-detached zoning. While there are some details to iron out, and some co-operation needed from municipalities, this is a big step towards allowing more homes in existing neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, that still takes time. And even if there’s theoretically enough room to build within the confines of the Greenbelt, that doesn’t happen overnight. People don’t just hear that they can sell to a developer who will slot in rowhouses and pack up the next day. Incremental density takes time. It might have been enough had we allowed this sort of housing immediately upon introducing the Greenbelt. But we didn’t. So we need to build what we can build right now.
Instead of allowing mature neighbourhoods to gradually densify, taking pressure off the housing market, we let concerns over parking, trees and “neighbourhood character” trump concerns over affordability. We no longer have the luxury of holding out for perfect solutions.
Ontario needs a lot more housing, quickly. Like it or not, some of that new housing is going to be urban sprawl. We made that choice long ago through inaction, and we need to live with the consequences.
National Post
Steve Lafleur is a public policy analyst and Josef Filipowicz is an urban policy specialist.