Though its combination of retail shops, office spaces, restaurants and residences have made Liberty Village a thriving neighbourhood, some fear that young families are fleeing the area due to rising rents, tiny condo units and businesses catering primarily to transient twentysomethings.
Edward Keenan’s Nov. 10, 2011 cover story for The Grid posed the question of whether downtown condo complex CityPlace would become Toronto’s next ghetto, noting its high concentration of short-term residents and disengaged foreign ownership and the lack of nearby amenities and large, family-friendly units. In the article, the nearby Liberty Village was cited as a more successful highrise community, given that its mix of boutiques and businesses seem to attract more than just the typically transient twentysomething demographic. However, talk to some local residents these days, and they’ll tell you it’s just the same crowd in different condos. And with seven new towers set for completion by 2015, current housing trends suggest a future without families for Liberty Village, echoing the concerns of CityPlace residents.
“The new people have dogs,” says longtime Liberty Village resident Michael Golland. ”They don’t have babies.”
Francesca Fabry, a representative of the Liberty Village BIA, echoes the sentiment. “The condos that are being built are such small units that I don’t see how it’s possible to live with a family, other than maybe a young toddler, in this neighbourhood.”
Instead, Fabry says that residential developments in Liberty Village—a good three-quarters of which were built after 1986—primarily accommodate young professionals without children. The resulting neighbourhood population is primarily between 25 and 44 (57 per cent) and single (54 per cent) according to real-estate website Zoocasa.
“There are two types of people that live in Liberty Village,” says real-estate agent Christine Cowern. “Younger people who can’t afford a house, and older couples who were living in a house and decided to downsize.”
The one characteristic that these groups share is the ability to live in smaller spaces, such as the one-to-two-bedroom apartments, condos and lofts that make up more than 80 per cent of Liberty Village—a neighbourhood with no detached homes. And developers are capitalizing on this demand, says The Condo Store‘s Paul Hegarty.
“Developers logically need to lower the square footage in order to increase value,” Hegarty says. And since families require larger living arrangements, this logic can add up to a price tag that people are not willing to pay.
In addition, Fabry says that local businesses have followed the developers’ example, gearing products and services toward the condo demographic. Residents have ready access to beer boutiques, fine cheese stores and fancy coffee shops but, Fabry says, “as soon as they have a baby, they move out to a neighbourhood with a school and a community centre and a library,” none of which are currently available in Liberty Village.
But former Liberty Village resident and current Parkdale property owner Consuelo de la Vega says that the neighbourhood can house families so long as residents are willing to adapt.
“It’s a perfect little place, it really is,” says the mother of two. ”But people have to think about how much space they want and what are they willing to give up materially.”
Terry Smith and his family did just that. In 1995, Smith moved into a two-bedroom apartment at Liberty and Atlantic with his wife and two small children, and they still live there today. The lack of children’s services was not a major issue, according to Smith, since there are libraries and daycares in Parkdale, within walking distance from the Village.
Though his family of four never moved, Smith does concede that rising rent in both new and older buildings has turned Liberty Village into a neighbourhood that normal families can’t afford. He says that many of his neighbours are moving out because “why would you rent for $1,500 when you can get a mortgage for that price?”
As a result, Smith says, “there are no long-term residents” in Liberty Village.
Instead, the condos are creating a community in “continuous turnover,” according to Cowern. She says that, after three to four years, her clients tend to move out of Liberty Village to start a family.
As the neighbourhood fills up with single professionals, Hegarty says the next step will be “convincing Mike in [condo unit] 35 and Diane in 47 to stay and raise a family in Liberty Village.”
But, in order to build a more stable residential community, Hegarty says that developers will have to decide whether they are going to support potential future markets of emerging families or whether they are going to continue meeting the current demand from young urbanites.
And De la Vega adds that the change won’t just come from developers—The City needs to take action to support mixed housing.
Municipal and provincial governments need to “make allowances for growing a community, not just for building transient neighbourhoods,” she says. “It starts with those who make and enforce the rules. Developers just play by them.”
