PATHS AHEAD AFTER THE OLD DREAM IS GONE

professional with a law degree and a young family, said. “But our long-term goal is eat the rich.”

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Over the past several months, the Star has spoken to almost three dozen leading experts in construction, urban planning, politics, economics and housing advocacy. Almost to a person they agreed that 2024 could be a sliding-doors moment for housing in this city.

“The time is here for us to do something,” said Mayor Olivia Chow in an exclusive interview in her office last fall.

Few believe we can actually “solve” the housing crisis, certainly not in the short or medium term. But many, from construction magnates to homeless advocates, are convinced we can do better, a lot better, if we commit to dramatic changes starting right now. “We are going to have to do something radically different in how we build housing in order to meet the moment,” Richter said.

Those changes have the potential to significantly increase housing affordability over the next 10 years. But they won’t be easy and they will mean accepting, well, change: to the built form of this city; to our idea of where homes go and how they get built; and, perhaps especially, to our collective cultural understanding of what exactly a home is. It will mean, in other words, accepting that the Toronto of 2034 will be a lot different from the one we live in today.

That’s because getting there will mean accepting, among other things, that a dream that has endured for generations in this city — that if you work hard at a good job, you can own your own home, with a patch of grass out front and a mailbox on the porch — is dead, at least for anyone without generational wealth. “That is the (19)50s-’60s concept,” Chow said. “That is so done.”

How we got here