Serra Squared Delta Squared

• If you want to see my thoughts on the City of Windsor Economic Development Strategy. Depending on when actual budget documents drop, you will likely get a special post(s) on that before Budget Day Feb 22nd.
  • Winnipeg Economic Development Group is explaining what it does, with Lego!
• It will take young people a decade to recover economically from the pandemic.
• There was this story on housing affordability by CTV Windsor and the original report from Mid-January is here. Lets start with the methodology:

• Bullet 1 is inaccurate based on the data sources cited, it isn’t cities but rather cities/regions they are measuring.

• The link in their methods section brings you to a lovely spreadsheet on CMHC website that breakdown median income by Renters, Owners and Total.
• As the methodology states they use the “Owners” median income as the basis of their calculation. I would argue this is flawed in three ways:
  • First Owner data, leaves out a lot of people. 29% of the population in the Windsor CMA are renters.

• Second, if you are trying to measure affordability is it best to take the total median income of all home owners or of all of the population and compare it to housing prices? Homeowners already own a home, if they are looking to buy, in theory the can sell their asset to create capital for their next purchase. Renters on the other hand, not only earn less money, but they have few assets that allow buying into the housing market.
  • The approximate $15,000 difference between the total income and owner median incomes in 2018 is telling. $15,000 is not an insignificant amount when looking at a down payment or competing in a hot-housing market where homes are going over asking price.
  • As the chart below illustrates, Windsor in 2018 had the largest gap between renter and owner incomes for SW Ontario CMAs.

• Finally, Looking at the raw data, much of the data for Windsor is scored “c” or “d” which means the data quality is either good or acceptable with an estimated error of between 4% and 16%.
• As I tweeted, this report honestly isn’t news, it is bad research and CTV shouldn’t have just pushed it out without getting actual context on the data that they were reporting.
• How is this subway story a story? It would cost between $37.5-$125 Billion to build. So why?
• Toronto City Council approved 10% equity hiring commitment on all major infrastructure projects and selected the Toronto Community Benefits Network as a key strategic partner.

• It is back to school this week is which good new for parents. Feb 22 becomes an important day as that is when we starting see if schools do spread the plague. Also when do we start thinking about Wave 3? To soon?