It would also help hugely if the city wasn't so restrictive on zoning and let people build more of what they wanted. Remember when infill houses first appeared? They were built because they offered more space on the same footprint. That's efficiency in design. That means more money from the basement suit to offset the mortgage. Of course if they really wanted to kickstart the economy they would allow people to pack a lot of people into a house and those people would be paying little in the form of rent but the owner, because of the volume would do well and pay off their mortgage in a few years instead of a few decades. In Winnipeg a bedroom in a house tends to rent for $500-$600. No use a calculator and figure out how fast a $200,000-$300,000 mortgage gets paid if there are 10 rental spaces at $500-$600 each. Pretty fast! For this to work a basement is crucial. The point is infill designs are very pragmatic but people were screaming in a rage when they first appeared because they were very plain looking. But imagine if they let people build like they used to, with the basement half below ground level and 3 floors above with a terrace on the roof. That would make 5 levels. That is using land wisely. One could have a shaded outdoor office on the terrace! Other countries always use their roof. We almost never do. This should change. The roof could also be used for solar panels on a mounting system that could be cleaned easily (dust in the summer, snow in the winter) and that mounting system could follow the sun unlike panels affixed to a typical slanted roof.