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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

CalgaryTiger said:
When will councilors and MLAs (because I know it will require a change to the municipal government act) be willing to change how property taxes are collected to more evenly share the cost?
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You don't need a change to the MGA. The city can implement residential sub-classes based on number of units per parcel, density, frontage, lot coverage, impermeable surfaces, etc, etc.
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darwink said:
You don't need a change to the MGA. The city can implement residential sub-classes based on number of units per parcel, density, frontage, lot coverage, impermeable surfaces, etc, etc.
View attachment 440185
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Thank you, I've edited my post to reflect this new knowledge.

I see the benefit of this clause over my idea because you reward density on a specific parcel but not the area, with my idea you could be subsidizing SFHs next to a 10+ story tower. That's not the desired outcome, even if you do discourage NIMBYism.
 
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CalgaryTiger said:
Thank you, I've edited my post to reflect this new knowledge.

I see the benefit of this clause over my idea because you reward density on a specific parcel but not the area, with my idea you could be subsidizing SFHs next to a 10+ story tower. That's not the desired outcome, even if you do discourage NIMBYism.
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Historically in Calgary a sub-class was used to charge a higher tax rate to multi-unit properties held in common.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
In some ways that's sad and too bad (if you're raised to think 'success' is a SFH and having multiple cars) but in other ways it is a very good thing if you're an existing rate payer in the City of Calgary. It means your tax dollars will go further in the future. Currently, and using the city's current formula, SFH communities do not pay anywhere near their fair share of taxes. Basing taxes off of property value subsidizes suburban SFHs long after the communities they're in are subsidized for their initial development. As the article points out suburbs are essentially a loss for the city which is made up for by taxes on businesses and more urban communities. When will councilors and MLAs (because I know it will require a change to the municipal government act) be willing to change how property taxes are collected to more evenly share the cost? I don't think a lot of people know the disparity in dollar per service a urban community pays versus a suburban community.
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It's probably a shock to some people when they've seen their parents and grandparents buy SFHs and have been told that's the way things are supposed to be. Calgarians and Canadians in general have been shielded to the fact that the rest of the world does not live this way. It was only a matter of time before it caught up to us.

Looking at most of the new subdivisions these days, there is a lot of multi-family, so at least the costs won't be as bad as some of the older subdivisions of 30-40 years ago (Ranchlands, Dalhousie, etc..), so at least we are headed in the right direction. If only those older subdivisions from the 70's and 80's were developed in a way that added new development can happen.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
In some ways that's sad and too bad (if you're raised to think 'success' is a SFH and having multiple cars) but in other ways it is a very good thing if you're an existing rate payer in the City of Calgary. It means your tax dollars will go further in the future. Currently, and using the city's current formula, SFH communities do not pay anywhere near their fair share of taxes. Basing taxes off of property value subsidizes suburban SFHs long after the communities they're in are subsidized for their initial development. As the article points out suburbs are essentially a loss for the city which is made up for by taxes on businesses and more urban communities. When will councilors and MLAs (because I know it will require a change to the municipal government act) be willing to change how property taxes are collected to more evenly share the cost? I don't think a lot of people know the disparity in dollar per service a urban community pays versus a suburban community.
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Just be cautious in using a broad brush with the bolded part. Not Just Bikes is a fun channel and all, but it probably better applies to communities built from the 70s-early 2000s. I guess to provide even better context, our new greenfield communities are anything but SFH communities, as they are designed with all of the policies contained within the MDP and then the more specific ASPs. If you look at all of the business cases submitted this past summer for consideration to Council, many of them are revenue positive for the City in terms of operating budgets. Some do have deficits, but the 5 recommended ones I think are all positive in pretty short order. Here is a link to the agenda item from the June 27th Infrastructure and Planning Committee:

As an example, here is the Jayman/Telsec chart for their Ricardo Ranch community. I should note there isn't a capital expenditures one, because this community doesn't require any capital expenditure by The City. It will also contribute roughly $75.6 million in levies, to be used towards capital expenditures elsewhere:
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MichaelS said:
This is one of the aspects that is troubling about the Stephen Avenue Quarter proposal, as the owners of those buildings did seek the heritage designation, to preserve the buildings and receive (I assume) the tax breaks. If they reneg on that, and especially if it is allowed to be renegged on, I can see that really impacting the effectiveness of the overall program.
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I have already heard from a few owners who designated their homes/buildings who will be looking to have it removed if Council allows it to be removed from 5+ downtown, as they feel that will prove it to be a pointless restriction, So yes if the Stephen Ave proposal goes through as proposed that will likely kill the heritage designation process in Calgary.
 
MichaelS said:
I guess to provide even better context, our new greenfield communities are anything but SFH communities
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I acknowledge that, and I was being general. I tried to compliment the 'good' new communities below that in the post. But I do think SFHs in general should face a higher burden than a multi-family. In a city full of SFHs, that will never happen, because if you're a suburban councilor who's part of the council passing that change, you're done! Whether you vote for it or not.

There are other things the city can do to incentivize density in established communities and it is happening. So it's probably not required to change how the city assess properties.
 
MissingMiddle said:
Anyone know why the rising mortgage rate cost is included in inflation calculations? If we use inflation to set our interest rates, and interest rates determine mortgage rates, that turns the whole thing into a mathematical no-no/positive feedback loop. If I recall correctly, Canada includes it in their CPI and the US doesn't.
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DougB said:
I don't think interest rates factor directly into CPI. Instead, they push up the cost to produce everything, which in turn pushes up CPI. Mortgage rates specifically push up rents as building owners pass on their higher financing costs. For owner occupied properties, CPI includes owner equivalent rent, which is the rental amount that would have to be paid in order to substitute a currently owned house as a rental property. Rising interest rates do create a positive feedback loop, which is why fiscal and monetary stimulus is playing with fire.
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Owner-occupied housing is the hardest thing to do in the CPI. Most things in the CPI are like bananas or whatever, you buy them, you eat them, done. Even things like clothing or washing machines that have a life, basically once you buy them you're intending to use them. But owner-occupied housing has an investment component to it -- people expect that they will sell their house after living in it for years and get a lot of money back; we've built our policies on people getting more money back than they paid (and wonder why housing is becoming unaffordable).

There are a number of approaches that can be used; there's no international standard. The Aussies just use the cost of new housing (the "net acquisitions" approach) - just like they go to the store and ask how much a pound of bananas costs today and compare with what they cost a year ago, they will go to builders and ask how much a typical house costs and compare that. I don't like this methodology -- for one, it's potentially hard to separate the cost of house and land (and land is purely an investment). And for another, there are plenty of people who have no intention of buying a house for years or decades; a six-month spike in the price of lumber shouldn't jack up the CPI.

The US and the UK use what I would personally use -- the "rental equivalence" method (aka owner equivalent rent). They note that there is a class of people who consume housing services with no investment component at all; that is, renters. At the end of each month, the renter has gotten a month's worth of housing, and no residual value. So this approach is based on figuring out what it would cost if owners were to rent their house instead, and how this would change over time. This is different from just the pure change in rent because the portfolio of owned housing is different; there's less in city centres, owners tend to have larger properties, more houses than apartments, and so on. Presumably whatever owners are paying differently from their rent value represents capital flows; either investments in future property sales, or the payback on having paid off a mortgage.

But Canada uses what is called "user cost" approach. It's an amalgam of costs that maybe is best though of as trying to approach what a landlord would pay to rent the dwelling to the homeowner -- except their capital costs (capital gains and opportunity cost). The costs are direct household payments on repairs, taxes, insurance and the like, plus depreciation and mortgage insurance cost. The depreciation amount is kind of arbitrary; it's just 1.5% of the value per year. And including mortgage insurance, as as MissingMiddle notes, embeds something that is changed in response to the CPI into the CPI itself. (Note that the US/UK rental equivalence metric doesn't need to include repairs, taxes, etc, because those costs are already automatically included in the rent -- a renter doesn't need to pay separately for repairs or taxes; if the costs go up, their rent will as well to cover the costs.)

I think it's stupid; philosophically, if the appropriate thing to allocate home owner costs is to come up with an equivalent of rental -- and it is -- why use the landlord's perspective, rather than the actual household's perspective? It's like calculating the change in the price of a banana by trying to figure out how much it costs the grocery store to sell it, rather than what the consumer pays to buy it like literally every other price in the CPI. The UK ONS has a study where they're comparing their housing cost measure with the "net acquisitions" method and a fourth method, the "payments" method, which is basically the "user cost" method less depreciation. But they specifically avoid even calculating a cost measure using our method, "because of the subjectivity involved".
 
Surrealplaces said:
calgaryherald.com

Do parking lots have a future in Calgary's core? Yes … but perhaps not only for cars

With downtown Calgary parking lot demand at 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, officials ponder how to make the best use of excess space.
calgaryherald.com calgaryherald.com
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Thanks for posting - would love to get my hands on this data set that was references. First time I have seen an estimate of total downtown parking supply:

"Parking supply in the core peaked in 1982, and has slowly contracted in the four decades since.​
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As of 2018, the most recent numbers available, there were 18,299 parking spots in downtown surface lots and 51,397 spots in downtown parkades."​
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That's about 70,000 stalls in the downtown in 2018 - at about 300 sqft per stall (includes stall, circulation, ramps etc.), that's 21M sqft of parking spots !
 
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