A few years ago, it was pointed out to me that if you assign a number to each letter of the alphabet in order, with A equal to 1 and Z equal to 26, and then add up the corresponding numbers for the letters in the word “ATTITUDE” - you come up with 100. I was surprised and delighted. It makes perfect sense to me, because I believe attitude is the number-one thing that determines how we live our lives.

I see it in practice every day in my personal life, but also in the building industry. The people and organizations who approach home buying and home building in an enthusiastic, yet realistic way, accomplish a lot and make good choices. It takes understanding and patience, however, because community planning and home building are so complex.

For builders, it can be frustrating – particularly when there seems to be a double standard in many municipalities in the GTA. I see it time and time again that a corporation wanting to invest in putting a commercial or industrial building on a piece of land receives tremendous assistance from the municipality, but a builder wanting to turn a vacant piece of land into a vibrant new home community has to wait for years.

This difference in attitude is illogical. When a piece of land is lying dormant, the only revenue coming in from it involves the property taxes the owner pays. When a builder is finally zoned to create a residential community, the first thing that happens is the company pays development charges. Then the builder installs sewers and roads, plants trees, maybe adds parks or a school, and of course, the homes themselves. This represents a huge revenue source for the municipality ad infinitum, because those homes will bring in property taxes for generations to come.

Yes, additional infrastructure is needed to accommodate the increase in population, but remember, the builder has paid millions to the municipality in development charges for that purpose. And remember, too, the builder puts in the roads and sewers, not the municipality, so in the end, the home buyer pays for those. Some planning departments tell us the development charges cover only 80 per cent of the future infrastructure costs, but as yet, I haven’t encountered anyone who can explain how they arrive at this figure.

Why does this attitude exist among municipal planning departments? Hypothetically speaking, let’s say a builder owns a 100-acre parcel of land that could have 500 homes built on it at a selling price of $400,000 per home. This represents a $200,000,000 investment in housing that would keep on paying for many years to come. In addition, the marketing, construction and servicing of the community creates a phenomenal number of jobs, with those workers paying taxes on their earnings. Municipalities should look at this as a positive boost to the economy.

Of course, I understand the ongoing political challenge that occurs because people resist change. I sometimes smile, however, when objections to growth come from people who recently purchased brand new homes. Without growth, we stagnate or go backwards. And frankly, we owe it to our children and our new Canadians to enable them to enjoy the same benefits we have in housing choices.

New home purchasers need to have understanding and patience, too. Many have an idyllic notion of the building process. They want solid guarantees about delivery dates, and as much as we builders would love to make that happen, the unpredictable sometimes gets in the way. When it does, it is the builders’ responsibility to make purchasers aware of delays and the reasons for them. But on the whole, builders do an amazing job today of delivering excellent homes in reasonable timeframes.

When builders build homes and people buy homes, they contribute to the well-being of their municipality and province, and to Canada’s gross domestic product. And in the end, to our enviable quality of life.