[alistairSH]

When a large chunk of the middle-class is counting on their home value to facilitate retirement, they're rightfully concerned about urbanization of their neighborhood.

I personally believe they're mostly wrong - urbanization probably won't harm home values. And done well, might improve the values even more.

[trgn]

I agree. Nice cities are just attractive places to be. Even for people who live in the single family homes near them. An expensive city is expensive everywhere, regardless the type of housing,

> they're rightfully concerned

Yeah for sure. A lot of the pushback against development is a gut feel concern, the fear of losing something, it's not rational. The "rightfully" part I guess is because institutions groom people in borrowing for single family homes, and specifically that e.g. Try financing a multi-family on the same favorable terms. Few people enjoy pensions at an old age, so you're kind of thrown for the wolves if you don't own a home. The system really is maladjusted.

[alistairSH]

When our son moved out and we decided to right-size our home, we went looking for condos, but there was very little available in our area, at least nothing that was 3 bedroom + priced in our range + located near the subway. We found one condo that had size and location, and while the purchase price was less than a TH across the street, the monthly condo fees were somewhere near $1000/month. That ended up making the monthly expense >30% higher than the TH across the street (which is where we ended up).