Jessica, you're not wrong on basically all accounts. From my perspective, as one of the ones who aren't willing to pay the higher prices (I'm also not willing to drive to Toronto from Oshawa, hell I'm barely willing to drive to Ajax), is that the Durham TERB board is very capable of putting high quality providers on a pedestal and driving business to them and keeping them in town at a lower price. They keep their price low, they keep their turnaround high, everyone's happy. A good or bad review here can make or break an SP's career. But there does seem to be a mostly silent plague outside of the board who no-show, abuse, treat SPs poorly, etc. More than anything, I hear from SPs that Durham is an area of no-shows. I don't really know what to do about that. When I get the opportunity, I preach politeness on applicable threads, but that's probably not reaching the offenders.
Second to no-shows, I hear that SPs leave because they can get more money in Toronto or Markham. I don't really know what to do about that either because I'm one of the ones unwilling to pay more than $140/hh on a good day. For me it's a budget issue - I scrape together a few twenties whenever I can until I've cobbled up enough of them to afford a session. Who knows, maybe if I'd been introduced to the hobby with a $160/hh floor, then I'd scrape together my twenties until I reached $160, but since I don't have to, I don't. My best theory otherwise is that Durham is a relative discount compared to Toronto for lots of things. Concerts, gas, property tax, realty, renting. So it just makes sense to us Durham locals that Toronto costs more. Might not even be that Durham costs less, it's that Toronto costs more.