| Despite the extreme housing shortage in Calgary some aldermen remain staunchly opposed to allowing secondary suites in their wards.
The City of Calgary has created a new draft land use bylaw under which council could have allowed secondary suites throughout the city. However, city council voted to continue not to allow secondary suites in single-family residential areas, which make up most of the communities in Calgary. Secondary suites are living quarters with separate cooking facilities. The land-use bylaw still has to go to a public hearing.
Aldermen Diane Colley-Urquhart, Madeleine King and Druh Farrell are hoping that council will reconsider the issue before the land use bylaw is passed.
"NIMBY (not in my backyard) doesn’t work anymore when it comes to housing. We have a total lack of affordable housing in this city," says Colley-Urquhart.
She says she’s heard from "tearful" seniors who say they need to be able to rent out part of their house to afford to stay in it.
Farrell says secondary suites can also be "mortgage helpers" for people who would find it difficult to afford their own home without the extra income.
"We have a critical housing shortage and this is one way of meeting it," she says. "By not allowing secondary suites in most communities we are pushing them underground so they don’t have to comply with any kind of safety regulations and they are generally poor neighbours."
Farrell says she knows of a case in her ward where someone is living in a garage without bathroom facilities.
She says there are problems related to legal secondary suites, including "slum landlords" who don’t maintain the houses and increased parking demands in neighbourhoods, but she says those issues can be addressed through regulation.
King says she finds it "very disappointing" that some aldermen are opposed to allowing secondary suites throughout the city despite the fact that it would increase affordable housing for struggling Calgarians. She agrees with Farrell that the city can come up with solutions to the concerns communities have about secondary suites.
At the September 11 council meeting aldermen Craig Burrows, Ric McIver, Ray Jones and Andre Chabot expressed their opposition to allowing secondary suites in single-family residential areas.
McIver argued that allowing legal secondary suites would lead to "instances of the 24/7 party people living in the basement and you’d have a heck of a time getting them out of there if they were legal."
Chabot said that he was concerned that increased legalization of secondary suites would lead to a "proliferation" of them in his ward in the Forest Lawn area, which would lead to an increased number of parties and minimal parking.
Council has agreed that more needs to be done to crack down on illegal suites. Aldermen approved a motion by Colley-Urquhart that directed administration to study how many illegal suites there are in the city, examine the effectiveness of current enforcement and look at what other cities are doing to clamp down on them. Colley-Urquhart estimates there are currently between 50,000 to 80,000 illegal suites in the city, which could be unsafe for tenants living in them. Her motion also asked administration to look at how other jurisdictions regulate secondary suites and how more legal secondary suites in Calgary could help address affordable housing requirements.
Colley-Urquhart argues that allowing more secondary suites around the city would not only increase affordable housing, but would also help combat urban sprawl.
"We absolutely have to intensify the population rather than growing and spreading outwards because we can’t afford all the infrastructure that goes along with that. At some point we just have to draw a line in the sand," she says. |
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