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.
