Toronto's housing crisis is hollowing out the city

• 55 per cent of GTA residents say they would move elsewhere if they could afford a home and find employment.

  This is the clearest vote of no confidence Toronto could receive. You do not tell a pollster you will leave unless you have genuinely accepted it as an option.

• Only 47 per cent of Ontarians aged 18 to 38 believe home purchase is achievable, while more than one-quarter think it impossible.

  Younger people have stopped hoping. That shift in psychology is more damaging than any price metric because it kills the incentive to stay or invest.

• Toronto's fertility rate has fallen to 1.11 children per woman, below Canada's 1.25 and far below the replacement rate of 2.1.

  Housing costs are directly reshaping family formation. Governments cannot subsidize their way out of this; the math says young people are rationally delaying or abandoning parenthood.

• HST rebates and reduced development charges are described as positive but temporary and insufficient.

  The article is right. Incrementalism does not address a structural problem. You cannot offer Band-Aids when the patient is bleeding out.

“Housing prices have risen far faster than incomes.”