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RSS FeedsHeather Scoffield: Toronto´s affordability woes are spreading to places like Belleville
(The Star Books)

 
 

28 august 2019 11:55:56

 
Heather Scoffield: Toronto´s affordability woes are spreading to places like Belleville
(The Star Books)
 


BELLEVILLE—The draw of the supercity that is Toronto just wasn’t enough to keep Derek Fullerton hooked on his life in the suburbs.Until two years ago, Fullerton and his family lived in Oshawa, where he taught computer animation. His career was not on the trajectory he had hoped, so he decided to follow his dreams. He bought a small farm in Eastern Ontario, and he now makes a weekly trek into nearby Belleville to sell homegrown mushrooms and pickles at the outdoor market behind the city hall.“The people are so much friendlier than in the big T-dot. It’s a slower pace,” he said with a gentle smile, offering up samples of spicy pickled beans that he grew and canned so that he could sell them year-round.He has a logo on his hat, a business card at the ready, a Facebook page with all the trimmings, and a marketing plan to sell mushroom-based products online. He has also recently started making mushroom jerky for the vegan crowd that pops in from Toronto.But the influx of people like Fullerton, who leave the Toronto area for a smaller-town lifestyle, is bringing a piece of Toronto with it: climbing housing prices.Even as the semi-rural area along Hwy. 401 grapples with the long, slow downturn of manufacturing that used to drive the region and the irresistible pull from the big city for skilled labour and youth, Belleville is dealing with an affordability crisis.The result is a community that’s exporting its momentum-seeking young people to Toronto even as it imports one of the big city’s most pressing problems. And because the longtime residents feel forgotten, lost in the shadow of the seat-rich cities, their politics are now in play.“We’re on the front lines of the changing dynamics of Canada,” said Mayor Mitch Panciuk. “We’ve got a good thing going on here. We just can’t sustain the growth that we have.”Belleville’s real estate scene is no stranger to population turnover. The ...


 
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