The land cost can be discounted if cities provide the sites as their contribution. Perhaps the largest share would be non-profit rentals located near transit stations. Extended care should also be included as needed. The next priority should for seniors projects with limited communal dining and recreation and possibly 1/3 of the units set aside for affordable and good quality assisted living services as an alternative to expensive legacy private facilities. Vancouver and BC are both to be commended for taking on vociferous NIMBIES who are pulling out all the stops to kill one project on the wealthy West Side, and who were completely silent on several identical projects built or proposed on the more accommodating East Side. There is a start in some cities but not nearly enough supportive housing projects with addiction and Healthcare services are provided to date. Homes for the homeless should have been well underway by now. Make that two big dents with the participation of provincial funding and municipal donations of land and speedy permit approvals. Time is not a luxury these people have, and the decision to fast-track the arena while simultaneously slow-walking efforts to build more housing speaks volumes about where this council’s priorities really lie.įor the value of one TMX, a serious dent in the national housing affordability crisis could be made. According to a recent Calgary Economic Development report, “379,200 working Calgarians would be stretching their financial resilience to independently access even the most affordable of market housing currently available.” For many Calgarians, especially those on the economic margins, waiting a few years for improvements isn’t an option. This total lack of urgency is at odds with the scale of the problem, one highlighted in a CBC Calgary piece on the city’s white-hot rental market. But changes to the zoning and parking bylaws will be exposed to the full weight of public scrutiny, most of which will come from self-interested homeowners looking to protect their neighbourhoods from the apparent scourge of new people. For some reason, there won’t be any public consultation on the massive arena-shaped giveaway to some of the city’s wealthiest people. “It’s a leap to think we should just accept the expert recommendations with no further debate on what it all means, on whether Calgarians support those recommendations,” Sharp said. Sonya Sharp, who leads the arena negotiation process, has said it will move at “the speed of business.” But she seems more than happy to slow-roll the work done by the city’s expert panel on affordability. Among those who voted no was Dan McLean, a councillor who once described Poilievre as the “best MP in Canada” and employed his brother Patrick as a communications and community liaison.Ĭouncil’s decidedly languid pace stands in stark contrast to the speed at which council is moving on its arena deal, one that shovels $853 million in public money to a hockey team owned by billionaires. Take Calgary, where the city council’s most conservative members helped vote down a proposal to accept recommendations from its Housing and Affordability Task Force that included pro-affordability measures like removing parking minimums and making R-CG zoning - a standard that allows for rowhouses and duplexes as well as single detached homes - the base residential standard city-wide. There’s just one wrinkle in Poilievre’s argument: a lot of these “gatekeepers” happen to be his fellow conservatives. The success of NIMBYs has come at an incredibly high price for younger and new Canadians, who have to contend with rising rents and ludicrously high home prices in our big (and increasingly, not-so-big) cities. He has a point, given the smothering influence of NIMBYism on local planning decisions and their resistance to new townhomes, condominiums and other forms of built density in supposedly “mature” neighbourhoods. For months now, Pierre Poilievre has railed against the role so-called “gatekeepers” play in delaying the construction of much-needed new housing in Canada’s cities.
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