All reports are that the forum went well, although with the limited time, time for each candidate was sorely limited. CBC reports that there was a great deal of sniping between the candidates, but apparently Jeremy Zhao managed to stay out of a lot of it. (Who would have thought that the youngest candidate in the room would be the most mature?).
CBC reports that the biggest issues on the table were affordable housing and election financing.
I have given a lot of thought to both of these issues, and I must agree with Bronconnier that the bandaid solution of "make secondary suites legal" is not the best solution. I'm sure that a lot of people who currently have an illegal suite would love the opportunity to make it legal - but a lot of others would also jump at the chance to use an unused basement to bring in some additional monthly income.
Certainly, on a case by case basis with relaxed zoning it could make a great deal of sense - but there are a lot of suites that are illegal for good reasons ranging from health and safety issues (such as access/egress, fire supression) as well as valid concerns with added occupant loading on streets (parking, access to city services such as EMS, garbage removal, etc).
If we consider legalizing secondary suites in areas not currently zoned, we need to take a careful look at emergency services to serve the area (i.e. would a sudden population surge such as a ten percent increase in population in Acadia cause undue pressures on EMS potentially resulting in lower quality of services? Do the suites meet basic safety and health regulations? It comes down to a case of the city needing to do significant legwork to legalize suites and like the rest of Calgary, the City is short staffed too.
It's not the instant-fix bandaid solution that candidates like Alnoor might be hoping for. Certainly if we threw open the floodgates and cried "the illegal is now legal" we would generate some more housing - but as Al Foster pointed out short term gains may not be in the best interest of a city that is here for the long term.
"You've got limited parking in these areas now. And if they have alleys now,
you're just going to double the garbage pickup," Foster said. "You're just going
to turn them into slums in the future."
About a year ago I attended a symposium on affordable housing that was hosted by Liberal MLA Dave Taylor. A number of good ideas came out of that evening, and I must admit that I was quite impressed by Alderman Joe Ceci's approach. He suggested that we need to look at housing on a different level - new communities need to support a mix of housing, and to be designed in a way that no one section of the community becomes a "slum". His vision was not to have rows upon rows of duplexes squashed into the least-desirable section of a new community, but instead to spread them throughout. Urban planning is something that Calgary has long ignored in favour of the developers - perhaps we need to revisit the need for a master plan in developing a City that we all want to live in.
Certainly by ensuring that developers have to provide a certain percentage of lower-cost housing more opportunities are opened up for everyone. However, Ceci made a very important point - that current provincial legislation does NOT allow the City to regulate this. Perhaps this is the first thing that we need to look at as part of the solution. (And this seems to be the tack that Bronconnier is taking towards the problem - a healthy long-term solution).
Campaign financing was also addressed - and Alnoor is proclaiming loud and clear that once he has purchased HIS seat, he is all for putting limits on the fundraising that others can do. As I have mentioned in a previous post, it worries me when a candidate spends $1 million to become Mayor - a post that has a significantly lower return on investment in terms of dollars than he is investing. It just doesn't make sense! (Doesn't something seem fishy for a profit-minded individual to not care about losing money on a proposition?)
No comments:
Post a Comment