Paralyzed by ineptitude

By admin on October 13, 2009

Saturday’s article about secondary suites in the Calgary Herald, “Basement suites hit brick walls – Homeowners leave city open houses frustrated by rules” does a good job pointing out the absurdity of Calgary’s land use bylaw.

To have city council hear individual land use re-designation applications, in a city of over a million people, doesn’t just hurt the people that need affordable housing, or the home owners looking to rent out their basements, it hurts council itself.

This isn’t just an issue of parking, or homelessness, or even of creating more urban density to combat Calgary’s urban sprawl; the secondary suites issue is one of governance – a recognition that city hall exists to serve the needs of Calgarians. With bylaws like these, it’s hardly surprising that many Calgarians are growing ever more cynical about the way our council works, or doesn’t work at all in their eyes. As Dan Gustafson is quoted as saying in the Herald article “it’s to the point of ridiculousness.”

The shameful admission that city council approved only four land use re-designations in the 10 months prior to the launch of their $25,000 secondary suites grant program for homeowners – a band-aid solution at best – is another glaring example of the paralysis gripping our council. This paralysis consistently prevents council from making the right decisions, look no further than today’s analysis that “backroom politics cost taxpayers $2 billion.”

It was hard not to laugh out loud reading Ald. Diane Colley-Urquhart’s absurd claim that “these illegal suites […] are destroying our neighbourhoods.” Even more disgusting was her call to ramp up enforcement to “hire the inspectors and get these people out of there” and straight onto the street in the middle of winter. But given her recent inept effort in the Calgary-Glenmore by-election, this kind of ignorance seems more and more commonplace amongst our many mediocre elected officials.

I hope they can prove us wrong by tackling the real problem, a land use bylaw that prevents honest homeowners from securing a legal source of additional income while thwarting the efforts of students and other lower income Calgarians to find a safe, affordable, and legal place to live.

To meet the Calgary Homeless Foundation’s call for 200 new, affordable and legal secondary suites every year (in line with their goal of ending homelessness in our city), it’s going to take vision and leadership on our city council. Sadly, these two things are about as scarce a legal basement suite.

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  • http://www.calgarycowbell.com/ Calgary Cowbell

    City Council is set up to ensure that the status quo continues, whether it is secondary suites or suburban sprawl it doesn't matter. Why are city councillors voting on secondary suites anyway? Shouldn't it be up to neighbours? City workers should be working with those interested in creating secondary suites to actually create secondary suites. Instead their job is to ensure that no such thing happens.

  • Christopher Spencer

    Edmonton is much more liberal in allowing basement suites. However, I'm not sure that's a good thing.

    In my (mature) neighbourhood, many houses have been purchased for the purpose of dividing them into two units. On paper, that seems like densification, but often what has happened is that places built to be occupied by parents with two or three kids now have two residents, one upstairs, one downstairs. Twice as many units, yes, but half as many people.

    My community has never had more dwellings, but the population is at its lowest point since the Second World War.

    Meanwhile, Edmonton continues to sprawl, as families with kids search for the biggest, newest house at the lowest price — in the suburbs. Unlike much of the country, Alberta has had strong birth rates and immigration, so the sharp decline in the number of children living in established parts of the major cities can't be explained away by Boomer demographics.

    Setting aside environmental concerns, this trend is a disaster for taxpayers, who ultimately must come up with the money to build the new infrastructure, while good schools in mature neighbourhoods are closed because so few kids live there.

    Achieving the goals the young social media crowd seems to want (including me) — more compact and
    liveable cities — is immensely more complicated than simply creating more housing units. I don't care for some of the hysterical arguments against basement suites, but, in general, reducing the amount of family housing in mature neighbourhoods is not an effective strategy.

  • andrewmcintyre

    @CKLS,

    Growing up in Regina I saw the same “urban decay” (is that a fair term?) and IMHO it had relatively little to do with whether people were living in basement suites. In other words, I think what's happening in your neighbourhood is a symptom rather than the disease.

    That said, I don't think opening the land use floodgates is a viable solution either. But for neighbourhoods – near post secondary institutions for example – that want to embrace secondary suites, it doesn't make sense to have them mired in red tape either.

    Broadly speaking, I think the sensible way to address the “urban decay” problem is hard density targets for new “greenfield” developments. (i.e. not allowing the sprawl to continue unencumbered). That's why the “backroom politics cost taxpayers $2 billion” story I linked it is so disheartening. The developers met behind closed doors with council the weekend prior to them voting on Plan-It, Calgary's 60 year development plan recently approved by council. The result? The density targets were relaxed for new developments.

  • http://greggferg.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/secondary-suites-in-calgary-ya-right/ Secondary Suites in Calgary? Ya, right… « PLOG

    [...] As Andrew McIntyre points out, ineptitude or perhaps well considered choice has stood in the way of any actual increase in legal suites.  http://andrewmcintyre.ca/2009/10/13/paralyzed-by-ineptitude/ [...]

  • http://andrewmcintyre.ca Andrew

    @CKLS,

    Growing up in Regina I saw the same “urban decay” (is that a fair term?) and IMHO it had relatively little to do with whether people were living in basement suites. In other words, I think what's happening in your neighbourhood is a symptom rather than the disease.

    That said, I don't think opening the land use floodgates is a viable solution either. But for neighbourhoods – near post secondary institutions for example – that want to embrace secondary suites, it doesn't make sense to have them mired in red tape either.

    Broadly speaking, I think the sensible way to address the “urban decay” problem is hard density targets for new “greenfield” developments. (i.e. not allowing the sprawl to continue unencumbered). That's why the “backroom politics cost taxpayers $2 billion” story I linked it is so disheartening. The developers met behind closed doors with council the weekend prior to them voting on Plan-It, Calgary's 60 year development plan recently approved by council. The result? The density targets were relaxed for new developments.

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