Some New Thoughts

How are you enjoying the cold weather these days? I wish I could find it now but I remember reading a story some time ago predicting four years of quite cold weather in our area. I think that the prediction is pretty accurate because this is the second year of very cold weather that we are now experiencing. I am not going to talk a lot about it other than just to make sure that you stay warm, dear reader. The last thing that I want to have happen is for any of us to get sick by not keeping well.

I do spend lots of time checking the media to see what kind of stories are out there that interest me. Once I find one, as you know, I write a story from my perspective based on the facts that have been revealed. It is my way of trying to guess what happens with that particular situation.

There have been some interesting matters that I have seen over the past little while in the news that I might write about later.

     -How about the one about former Councillor Hilary Payne in his new career helping people when they deal with City Hall. Why, even the Windsor Star was so excited about it that they included his phone number in one of their stories about him!

     -Lots of interesting conversations about GM in Canada and what might happen to a number of its employees who seem to have lost their job working for them. It is interesting watching what the Auto Union is doing. What is also quite fascinating is how the other members of the Big 3 auto companies group are letting us know how well they are doing.

    -A new price has opened up over the cost of going across the water between Windsor and Detroit over the Ambassador Bridge. Instead of the price going up as is usual, it has gone down for some of the autos that go over by a rather significant amount. What will the impact of that be on the Government who is supposed to be building a competitive bridge.

    -Real estate prices are still going quite high in sales of homes around our area. How much higher can they go for people who work here? After all, people’s salaries are not going up that dramatically so that one has enough money to pay for the new home. Yet, for people who live in other cities, e.g. in Toronto, moving to our area is not difficult for them at all. Their prices have also risen dramatically so that they can sell their unit in their city and move here and get a bigger home at a much lower price.

Do you see what I mean, dear reader? Lots of nice, interesting subjects to sit down and write about. Can you imagine how many similar type of stories I have found over the last little while! It gives me a good incentive for continuing to write.

Let me show you what I mean by that by writing the following.

IS ENWIN MOVING FROM DOWNTOWN NOW

It should be interesting to see if Enwin will be selling its building downtown and moving all of its facilities to its offices on Rhodes Drive.

If you will recall, the building was offered for sale last November. The time granted to make an offer terminated a short time ago. Now, and we are not told how many offers came in, the Enwin people will consider whether they should sell the property to one of the people who have made a bid. I am sure it will be fascinating to see how many people wanted the building and what the highest price will be. I believe that it should be even more fascinating to see who the bidders were and who may have won.

I expect that if the number of bidders was high then the prices being offered by them would also be high. It should be interesting to see what the criteria are for Enwin to decide to whom they should sell the building. I expect that the sale might not necessarily go just to the group that offers the most amount of cash. I expect that the winner has some ideas though that are significant for the future of that area to help it prosper.

However, what if few people actually bid and their prices are not all that high. I did not expect that this happened but if it did…

THE COST OF A HOUSE SALE IN JANUARY, 2019

It really is crazy what is happening to the cost of real estate in Windsor. House price sales have shot upwards to very good levels for this area. Here is a summary that I believe you will find interesting:

“368 properties were sold in January 2019 (up 24.32% compared to January 2018 with 296 properties sold).

The Average Sales price for January 2019 was $306,005. The Average Sales Price for January 2018 was $278,094.” (Biz X Magazine, February5, 2019) 

However, consider the following for what I wrote about above for the Toronto area. I read that the Toronto MLS average price for houses sold was more than double the price here: about $800,000.

In spite of everything, it appears as if not much has changed over the years even though the house prices are so remarkably high here now. House prices in Toronto are still so much higher. From the Toronto residents’ perspective, they can put their excess sales price funds from their home sale in a nice bank account after paying for the home here considering the lower cost. For retired persons, it is now a great way to live in an area that is a lot better as well from a climate perspective.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next year as far as real estate prices are concerned in this area. While it may be difficult for residents here with the higher prices, it may make no difference for people who are selling their homes in the much higher priced communities and then coming down here.

AND WE WANT TO CLOSE OUR HOSPITALS HERE

I am sure that you have read that, after building a new hospital here which is not all that big in size in my opinion, we will be closing down the hospitals that exist now. Well, they still might be around for certain medical purposes but not for being a “hospital” the way our two hospitals are now run.

I have to admit that I never understood this. Not only is the population in our area supposed to increase but also I expect there will be a lot more older people here than now who also will need to be in hospital for a variety of different reasons. I hardly think that the proposed size of what our new hospital is supposed to be will be all that satisfactory.

Just to make sure that you understand exactly what I mean, take a look at this story:

“About 1,000 patients in Ontario hospital hallways on any given day: report”(Canadian Press, January 31, 2019) 

Obviously, this is the problem that somehow has to be fixed. How can these people be treated properly when they are put into a hallway after being admitted into hospital. Take the total number of people who are in the two Windsor hospitals today and try to figure out how they would be able to be treated in just ONE new hospital that is set up to replace both of them. 

Surely, one could make the argument very easily that the new hospital would be overpopulated immediately after being opened. Then, how much more money has to be spent to expand it and how much time would it take to do so.

Oh sure, there are all kinds of comments made in the story about the problems and that they are going to be looked at down the road. Of course, this is only the first report and a second one is coming out so we are expected to believe that a lot of the problems will be solved.

Of course, with our population growing older, we are going to be faced with all kinds of new problems that we have not considered up until now. In my humble opinion, closing down our existing hospitals is a huge mistake to make. Sure, we may need a new one but we cannot afford to close down the hospitals that are around now.

Just remember the number of hospitals that used to be around in Windsor before they were closed down. In looking at our situation now, was that closing down of any sense? If it was not before, then why are we doing it again!