Thursday, August 9, 2007
Op-Ed in today's Herald
Yes, there has been a lot of radio silence around here, but a lot of work behind the scenes as well. A shiny new website will launch here very soon, and a new blog with it. In the meantime, here is an op-ed from today's Calgary Herald on the problems facing Calgary Transit. There are two small editing errors: the note on the West LRT should say "an expanded BRT line" and the reference to "Garrison Woods" should read "Currie Barracks", which, when completed, will look like "Garrison on steroids" according to the developer.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
We'll get to you, really!
Thanks to the many many of you who have requested our e-newsletter and/or offered yourselves up as volunteers in the lat few weeks. We've been overwhelmed by the response and are working to make sure we offer you the best possible information and the best possible opportunities. So, if you sent us a note recently, we'll certainly be in touch soon!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Ethnic Business Parks?
BCC Co-Chair, Chima Nkemdirim, spoke on CBC's the Calgary Eyeopener on June 18 about the rise of South Asian-dominated business parks in Calgary's Westwinds area. The tone of the report was generally positive, but Chima cautioned against increasing segregation of both residential and business neighbourhoods.
NOTE: The link above will open an audio file (RealPlayer). If you have trouble opening the file, click here, and scroll down to "South Asian Business Parks".
NOTE: The link above will open an audio file (RealPlayer). If you have trouble opening the file, click here, and scroll down to "South Asian Business Parks".
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Op-Ed in today's Herald
Today's Herald op-ed starts to set out the results of much of the BCC's work over the last several months, into a bit of a manifesto. The piece is not available on-line (strangely, op-eds on the letters page never are), but the major points include:
UPDATE: the full test is indeed posted on the Herald's website.
Ending urban sprawl. The growth patterns we see in Calgary are not natural evolution; it’s because of the choices we have made that 80% of Calgary neighbourhoods lost population in 2005, a year of incredible growth. We have chosen to subsidize new homes on the outskirts of the city, while making it difficult to redevelop inner-city and existing suburban neighbourhoods. We need to ask ourselves why bureaucrats measure the height difference between a “deck” and a “patio” for home renovators while we pay almost full freight for the infrastructure needed in new areas.
Renewing our focus on public transit. Everyone who has studied the issue comes to the same conclusion: new roads create traffic, they don’t remove congestion. Transit, on the other hand, is the answer to so many of the issues that big cities face: congestion, pollution, social isolation. We have to work hard to make it the best possible choice, not the choice for those who have no other choice.
Fighting urban poverty and homelessness. While big cities have inequities in income almost by definition, homelessness is not inevitable. How is it that Calgary, with its sometimes-brutal winters, has far more homeless people per capita than Vancouver?
Building vibrant, missed communities. Arts and culture really matter – even if people never go to the ballet, they want to live in a city with a ballet. Even more important is the backgammon-and-bocce stuff I discussed at the beginning. Cities need an urban vibe, attractive and attracting public spaces, and neighbourhoods that are welcoming, safe, and mixed.
We'll post the full article in the next couple of days, after the Herald's exclusive expires.
UPDATE: the full test is indeed posted on the Herald's website.
Ending urban sprawl. The growth patterns we see in Calgary are not natural evolution; it’s because of the choices we have made that 80% of Calgary neighbourhoods lost population in 2005, a year of incredible growth. We have chosen to subsidize new homes on the outskirts of the city, while making it difficult to redevelop inner-city and existing suburban neighbourhoods. We need to ask ourselves why bureaucrats measure the height difference between a “deck” and a “patio” for home renovators while we pay almost full freight for the infrastructure needed in new areas.
Renewing our focus on public transit. Everyone who has studied the issue comes to the same conclusion: new roads create traffic, they don’t remove congestion. Transit, on the other hand, is the answer to so many of the issues that big cities face: congestion, pollution, social isolation. We have to work hard to make it the best possible choice, not the choice for those who have no other choice.
Fighting urban poverty and homelessness. While big cities have inequities in income almost by definition, homelessness is not inevitable. How is it that Calgary, with its sometimes-brutal winters, has far more homeless people per capita than Vancouver?
Building vibrant, missed communities. Arts and culture really matter – even if people never go to the ballet, they want to live in a city with a ballet. Even more important is the backgammon-and-bocce stuff I discussed at the beginning. Cities need an urban vibe, attractive and attracting public spaces, and neighbourhoods that are welcoming, safe, and mixed.
We'll post the full article in the next couple of days, after the Herald's exclusive expires.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Naheed on CBC today
In his new role as affordable housing expert (??), Naheed will be on CBC Radio's Wild Rose Forum provincial call-in show. Listen in live at cbc.ca and or call in on 1-866-468-4422.
Friday, May 18, 2007
More on affordable housing
CBC has created quite a good website from the Blueprint Alberta:Rent forum. You can listen to all of the speakers, including Naheed's comments (towards the bottom) on the site. Some very interesting diverse points of view.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Affordable Housing thoughts
It just looks like we've been away for a bit, but the team's been working hard. Naheed Nenshi was on the Calgary Eyeopener discussing policy prescriptions for affordable housing, and was invited as an external "expert" at the CBC sponsored forum, Blueprint Alberta: Rent. (If you want to hear Naheed's brief comments, scroll down to "Edmonton vs Calgary"). Expand this post to see our thoughts on affordable housing policy.
We're still developing our thinking on this topic, but here are a few thoughts to kickstart the debate. Of course, homelessness and affordable housing are deep complex issues (and this isn't really about homelessness broadly writ), but in some ways, we know the solution, and to quote Grant Neufeld of the Calgary Housing Action Initiative, what we need is a combination of political will and public will. People know what the solutions are, really; it's a matter of seeing if our politicians can find the courage to lead and get us there.
Both the supply side and the demand side of the equation need to be addressed, as follows:
First, we need to manage the short-term. While the economy is indeed cooling (Sam Kolias of Boardwalk says that his vacancies in Grand Prairie have shot up to 8% in the last few months), we need to deal with today's crisis, not wait for new accommodation to be built in two to three years.
-- The City has shown itself to be incapable of showing leadership, in an election year, on the one area that would make a difference immediately: the legalization of secondary suites. There should be a two-year moratorium on enforcing the current laws, except in cases of significant safety problems, and new codes should be drafted that make it inexpensive and easy to bring any existing home in Calgary into legal compliance. If the City won't do it, the Province should legislate them into it, as has been done in other provinces. (Naheed called this last idea a "get out of jail free" card for the provincial Tories going into the Calgary byelection)
-- We need to do everything possible to keep people from falling into the shelter system, which is very expensive and difficult to escape from. This means we need emergency rental supplement programs and the ability for tenants in trouble to get representation from the city or social agencies when negotiating with landlords.
-- Rental supplements won't work without some kind of rent increase management guidelines. The economy is cooling There should be a one-year moratorium on condo conversions of existing rental accommodation, and a reasonable cap on annual rents for the next year or two, with flexibility given to landlords to reflect actual increases in costs like property taxes and utilities. Yes, every Econ 101 textbook says rent controls constrain supply, but given that no rental accommodation has been built in Calgary in a decade, we are clearly not in a well-functioning supply-and-demand market today.
-- Once these three steps have been done to solve the immediate problem, we need to look at mid-term solutions like donating City-owned land for affordable housing, forcing 10-20% of all multi-family housing and new neighbourhoods to be fordable housing (also called mandatory inclusionary zoning), and examining new models of home ownership for the working poor (of which there are many examples). To make this happen, such housing needs to be integrated into communities, and City Hall needs to ignore the neighbours with NIMBY concerns (most studies show integrated housing raises, not lowers, nearby property values). The most shocking part of the forum was Sam Kolias saying he was ready and willing to build more rental housing, and had the land for it, but that NIMBYism was stopping his development permits.
-- In terms of public will, we all need to realize that we are truly in a crisis, and we all need to share the burden of solving it. This means that landlords need to restrain their potential profit in the short-term, yes, but, more important, that citizens need to accept that their neighbours should be able to rent their basements to students or seniors, and that those old strip malls and derelict hotels can and should become mixed-income housing, bring people into the neighbourhoods and kids into the schools.
We're still developing our thinking on this topic, but here are a few thoughts to kickstart the debate. Of course, homelessness and affordable housing are deep complex issues (and this isn't really about homelessness broadly writ), but in some ways, we know the solution, and to quote Grant Neufeld of the Calgary Housing Action Initiative, what we need is a combination of political will and public will. People know what the solutions are, really; it's a matter of seeing if our politicians can find the courage to lead and get us there.
Both the supply side and the demand side of the equation need to be addressed, as follows:
First, we need to manage the short-term. While the economy is indeed cooling (Sam Kolias of Boardwalk says that his vacancies in Grand Prairie have shot up to 8% in the last few months), we need to deal with today's crisis, not wait for new accommodation to be built in two to three years.
-- The City has shown itself to be incapable of showing leadership, in an election year, on the one area that would make a difference immediately: the legalization of secondary suites. There should be a two-year moratorium on enforcing the current laws, except in cases of significant safety problems, and new codes should be drafted that make it inexpensive and easy to bring any existing home in Calgary into legal compliance. If the City won't do it, the Province should legislate them into it, as has been done in other provinces. (Naheed called this last idea a "get out of jail free" card for the provincial Tories going into the Calgary byelection)
-- We need to do everything possible to keep people from falling into the shelter system, which is very expensive and difficult to escape from. This means we need emergency rental supplement programs and the ability for tenants in trouble to get representation from the city or social agencies when negotiating with landlords.
-- Rental supplements won't work without some kind of rent increase management guidelines. The economy is cooling There should be a one-year moratorium on condo conversions of existing rental accommodation, and a reasonable cap on annual rents for the next year or two, with flexibility given to landlords to reflect actual increases in costs like property taxes and utilities. Yes, every Econ 101 textbook says rent controls constrain supply, but given that no rental accommodation has been built in Calgary in a decade, we are clearly not in a well-functioning supply-and-demand market today.
-- Once these three steps have been done to solve the immediate problem, we need to look at mid-term solutions like donating City-owned land for affordable housing, forcing 10-20% of all multi-family housing and new neighbourhoods to be fordable housing (also called mandatory inclusionary zoning), and examining new models of home ownership for the working poor (of which there are many examples). To make this happen, such housing needs to be integrated into communities, and City Hall needs to ignore the neighbours with NIMBY concerns (most studies show integrated housing raises, not lowers, nearby property values). The most shocking part of the forum was Sam Kolias saying he was ready and willing to build more rental housing, and had the land for it, but that NIMBYism was stopping his development permits.
-- In terms of public will, we all need to realize that we are truly in a crisis, and we all need to share the burden of solving it. This means that landlords need to restrain their potential profit in the short-term, yes, but, more important, that citizens need to accept that their neighbours should be able to rent their basements to students or seniors, and that those old strip malls and derelict hotels can and should become mixed-income housing, bring people into the neighbourhoods and kids into the schools.
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