More Action Less Pondering.
I don’t know if it’s a learned behaviour or just how I’m wired, but I’m a planner. I like to gather the information, sit with it, turn it over from every angle and then try to make the best possible decision.
That approach has its strengths. It also means I can be slower to move. I’m patient. I’m comfortable waiting for better data if it leads to a better outcome.
My wife is not built that way.
She is a doer. A force of nature. Someone who can will something into existence by sheer determination. When there’s a problem, she doesn’t linger on the possibilities. She moves toward the solution. Forward motion is the point. If you know the song, she is the living embodiment of “It has
to start somewhere. It has to start some time. What better place than here. What better time than now.”
As you can imagine, this difference creates tension from time to time.
We live on a farm, and like any farm, there is always something breaking. A fence comes down. A water pipe bursts. Cattle find their way into the wrong field. When those moments hit, I default to who I am.
I step back. I think about the system. I consider the long-term fix. I try to optimize.
The tension is that while I’m still thinking through the best way to approach the problem, my wife is already swinging a hammer.
And more often than not, she’s right.
A spraying water pipe is not a moment for reflection. Escaped cattle are not an invitation to ponder. A crisis demands action.
I think about this a lot when it comes to housing.
We talk endlessly. About how we got here. About root causes. About innovative policies and promising ideas. About what other cities are doing and what different levels of government are or are not responsible for. We hold panels. We write reports. We study the problem from every possible angle.
And at the end of all that, we still don’t have enough housing. Because we are pondering in a crisis.
We’ve been discussing inclusionary zoning in Cambridge since 2017. Ontario’s Housing Affordability Task Force delivered 74 recommendations in 2022, and years later more than two dozen remain “under review.” The federal Public Lands for Homes Plan set out an ambitious goal of 250,000 homes by 2031, and to date only a handful of sites are moving forward.
We talk. We review. We debate. We wait.
None of these ideas on their own will solve the housing crisis, and some may not help at all. But what is undeniable is that for years we have been talking about action instead of taking it.
A crisis doesn’t need perfect answers. It needs momentum.
Right now, we need a lot more swinging of hammers and a lot less circling of options. We need more force of will and less fear of getting it wrong. We need to start building, learning and adjusting as we go.
Because when the pipe is bursting and the cows are loose, the worst thing you can do is stand there thinking about it.
-Philip Mills
Philip Mills, CEO Habitat Waterloo Region
