Yes, the board game, which–according to the 68-year old PC mayor–is sometimes better than a “financial literacy course.”

As Toronto battles an impending housing crisis, its Mayor John Tory warned that real estate investors and landlords could go broke should they contribute in exacerbating the problem with rising costs. To illustrate his point, he encouraged everyone to play the board game Monopoly.

“Monopoly is a fun game but it’s also one that has a lot of lessons in it,” quipped Tory. “And there are lessons that also help people to better citizens and better residents.”

Tory also said that the board game teaches you “the bad parts of greed.”

“If you go too far to try to buy too much houses and charge too much rent to people and say, ‘I’m gonna get rich’? That could often have a very bad ending,” he explained. “If you spend all your money too quickly on buying things up and think you’re gonna be sort of the biggest landlord in this game, you could end up broke.”

Tory reportedly maintains four separate homes including an $8 million condo in Yorkville and a Palm Beach property.

Twitter user @CanadaRecord also pointed out the irony that while Tory preaches the values of the board game, the mayor continues to “work at Rogers [Real Estate Development] in multiple roles at the highest levels.”

The Toronto Mayor just recently unveiled his administration’s plan to address the housing issues, logically titled 2023 Housing Action Plan.

“We as a city government need to take a more aggressive approach to addressing the acute affordability and housing crises facing our city,” Tory said in a speech.

The plan will be presented to the city council on Wednesday, and the City Manager will be asked to report on how each item will be authorized and implemented, including dates by March 2023.

Included in the plan’s goal is reaching the provincial housing objective of 285,000 new houses over the next ten years by addressing all areas of the housing spectrum, from student housing to affordable housing to housing targets in the Port Lands and on the Waterfront.

Tory added that the plan will also attempt to “bring the city into the 21st century by removing the exclusionary zoning that has focused growth in just a few areas of the city and prevented Torontonians from having a variety of housing choices.”

Toronto was recently placed the most at-risk city to a real estate-induced market collapse. The ranking was made by UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index which evaluates the top 25 major cities in the world based on the risk of a market collapse, assigning index scores to the housing market in each city, with scores over 1.5 signaling that a city is likely in a bubble.

The index warns that Toronto, with a score of 2.24, and Vancouver, with 1.70, are the two most at-risk cities in North America – while Toronto is the most at risk globally.

Information for this briefing was found via the sources mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.

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