Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

[darwink]

Why aren't Plebiscites that great? Isn't that the most direct form of Democracy? Call me an optimist, but I think given the information presented, the general public will act in the best interest.

I think for some questions they can be good, when there is a discreet project that there is a true binary. Like "put in place this tax to do this. If not approved, we will not try to do this in another way without this tax". I am very supportive of that, for local projects with local benefits (sometimes local could be very broad, for big projects).

Plebiscites on general policy issues are bad, because most government policy is to address a market failure in some way. In this case it is a market failures analogous to a freeway. Everyone is going to vote to drive on the freeway as it saves them time, even with congestion. But the community outcome is bad ( even worse congestion), because that choice is driven by a market failure (you don't pay a cost that is proportional to the cost you are causing for others). The congestion is so bad that the natural outcome is crippling congestion, failure. But in other words, the cost of your choice on yourself is positive, but your choice creates a negative on the group members trying to use the freeway, and on the community at large.

What is even worse in the case of housing, is that it isn't a market failure, it is actually the opposite. The government has caused the market to fail through regulation, by preventing market forces from accurately pricing land and property due to creating artificial central planned quotas that are attached to pieces of land and are perpetual.

 

[Urb]

Not exactly. Requires a court process with low odds of success on the developer's part. Depends on how it was written of course. Not all are created equal.

I think that goes without saying. My point is there's precedent now, so I wouldn't depend on having a RC as a back-up plan, if the blanket rezoning is approved.

 

[darwink]

I think that goes without saying. My point is there's precedent now, so I wouldn't depend on having a RC as a back-up plan, if the blanket rezoning is approved.

Seems to have been very enforceable in parts of Elbow Park and Mount Royal, in cases I have knowledge of.

 

[badc0ffee]

A RC can be overridden by DC land use. See Banff Trail case law. Unless an entire street goes the heritage preservation route, homeowners are SOL.

I think what helped the developer in the Banff Trail case was that the RC's maximum density was below the minimum allowed by the city's zoning. But that's not the case in other areas going from R-C1 to R-CG.

I also don't know how engaged the Banff Trail homeowners were about the change or how well funded. In other places, like Britannia/Elboya, there have been lawn signs for years urging people to join/donate to the community association to help uphold the RC if needed. I would expect the same in other areas like Scarboro.

 

[Urb]

Seems to have been very enforceable in parts of Elbow Park and Mount Royal, in cases I have knowledge of.

Those cases haven't been challenged by a DC that shadows an existing zoning like R-CG.

 

[Red Star]

I think it's myopic to think that a blanket rezoning of SFH to row housing will put a significant dent in housing affordability. Yes, we are in an affordability crisis. An affordability crisis created by the ruling class. The issues are structural and go much deeper than simply zoning laws. Obviously supply and demand dictate price.

Demand:

1. Record levels of population increase due to mass migration
-The elites of this country are importing cheap labor to suppress wages and increase aggregate consumer demand. These new workers need a place to live.

Supply:

1. High material cost
-Lead times and material costs in the construction industry are still ridiculously long/high. They've improved slightly since Covid, but not enough. I think many manufacturers and suppliers are taking advantageous of this to pad their profit margins.

2. Energy Code Requirements
-The 2020 National Energy Code has more stringent energy requirements. Walls and roofs require a higher R value, more complex mechanical systems. You know those 1960's commie blocks that would have one giant boiler in the basement that provides radiant heat to the building? Those could never be built now as they don't meet air exchange requirements. You'd have to install an HRV Even a four-plex is subject to National Energy Code and energy modeling requirements. All these additional measures increase the cost of construction.

3. Financing
-With a key interest rate of 5% many developers are probably not wanting to risk investing in residential.

4. Land
-Within the inner city and downtown Calgary there is already a tremendous inventory of vacant/underutilized land. Why re-zone and demolish existing housing stock when there is already vacant brownfield sites ripe for re-development? Below is a great example. There is a full 8 city blocks ripe for residential development. Why not create incentives to focus development near employment centers and C-train lines rather than in suburban neighborhoods with with existing single family homes?

 

[haltcatchfire]

By my count that yellow stretch would fit a minimum of 16 towers. Height would not be an issue at any point of this stretch and actually a benefit as higher units receive more separation from the CP tracks below. Using the 554 unit count from a West Village tower we could have at least 8900 units alone in this section of the city. If only landholders didn’t sit on so much land potential.

 

[darwink]

I think it's myopic to think that a blanket rezoning of SFH to row housing will put a significant dent in housing affordability.

Depends what you think of as significant. It certainly cannot hurt. And has helped where it has been implemented.

 

[darwink]

By my count that yellow stretch would fit a minimum of 16 towers. Height would not be an issue at any point of this stretch and actually a benefit as higher units receive more separation from the CP tracks below. Using the 554 unit count from a West Village tower we could have at least 8900 units alone in this section of the city. If only landholders didn’t sit on so much land potential.

There are active proposals on that stretch.

It is a lot cheaper to build wood based walk ups. The land is cheaper. The structure is cheaper. You don’t need elevators or circulation space. You don’t need circulation space for cars or structured parking. You can get a lot more square footage for similar prices.

A big thing is actually a point made: capacity and land banking.

What is left out of that diagnosis: competition. Right now those towers have far less competition because development approvals are restricted by council. That restriction reduces the number of projects and units attempted. It changes the size of projects upwards to try to spread the risk premium over more units.

Reducing the government risk to zero means far more developers and new developers can attempt projects. Reducing the project size means less capital is needed for a first time developer. Both combine to enable more developers to take on more projects.

There is a limited market for 1 to 1 replacements and limited places in the city where 1 to two or 1 to four are allowed. Enabling more higher density redevelopment may enable developers who only do 1-1s to try to make more profit with more density. It will enable 1-2 developers to take on more projects in more diverse locations. It will enable people who have been thinking about trying to strike out in their own as developers to decide that this is the time to try.

Which yeah, brings it back around to trades. One of the reasons for pressures there is that a fair amount of trades are hired on projects where complicated work is needed due to the high end product being produced. But change the incentives and now it makes way more sense to build 4 mid range units than 1 high end unit, and you’d have to work pretty hard to convince me that that would mean 4 times the trades are needed.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

I think it's myopic to think that a blanket rezoning of SFH to row housing will put a significant dent in housing affordability.

Who's saying that it will? This is one of 98 pieces of the housing strategy that council passed last fall (item 1.C.4). The current expectation is that the average household will have a roughly 1 in 1000 chance of living next door to a parcel that will change because of this zoning. It's worth doing, because every bit helps, and because it's easier and more flexible to do it once and change the rules for everyone than have a bunch of special targets and carveouts and backroom deals and red tape. Another one of the 98, for example, (1.A.1) was to dedicate two parcels for emergency housing, which was done back in February with a small news conference. Nobody said that 104 new housing units would put a significant dent in affordability back then either. Nobody wrote piles of editorials. Nobody called for a plebiscite (!) It was just another small step in the right direction.

The zoning is a small technical change that needs to have a public hearing because it changes zoning, and that has for a number of reasons managed to get whipped up into a firestorm.

• Normally, when zoning is changed on a parcel it is done for a specific development that is then built; in this case, 99.x% of the parcels with zoning change will not have anything happen for years.
• There has been a huge cultural effort over decades to incentivize, normalize and valourize single family detached housing; it is inevitable that this implicitly leads to demonizing other types of housing
• Some people hear that this will lead to more affordable housing and leap to the conclusion that this means poor people living in their neighbourhood; these people also think that having poor people living in their neighbourhood will be bad.
• This topic has been widely discussed, and I suspect this has led to echo chambers working people up with opposition lines that build into fictional fears; residents talk about being worried that a new rowhouse in their community will strain the water
• Some city councillors have decided that they would rather get media attention than to do their jobs, and raised the idea of a plebiscite as if it was a proportional or reasonable concept.
• People have a hard time dealing with change.
• I suspect some people enjoy having bad guys to yell at, and potentially some people see political gain in having a big fight.
• People don't want the hassle of construction next door and don't want a larger building overlooking theirs and focus on this as a reason to oppose this, even though no change in zoning is needed for this to happen. As near as I can tell the only difference between good R-C1 and evil R-CG buildings is that the latter can be 10% (1m) taller. The picture below shows some perfectly acceptable new RC-1 buildings having no impact at all on their neighbour.

Have you ever been in a parking lot, seen a car pull out and parked in the space, only for someone else you didn't notice to honk at you, yell at you that it was "their space", roll down their window and swear a blue streak at you, or even get out of their car? Was that particular parking space really the most important parking space in the history of parking spaces and worth a verbal tirade and physical threats, or was it just another parking space, and someone who was making a huge deal out of it, mostly due to their own issues. Two years ago, the Beltline was paralyzed for weeks in a row with trucker protests aimed at ending medical protections that had mostly never been enacted or that already been ended. The amount of noise fuss kicked up is not always proportional to the actual problem, especially in the social media age.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

I went for a walk with my mom who turns 65 this year, she brought up this topic, and didn't like it because she thought it meant someone could develop whatever they wanted. I simply told her that isn't true, there's still the development permit process, and there is still quite a low ceiling for what this land use allows.

You'd think giving every individual land owner a right to choose what to do with their property would be endorsed by a lot of people as it removed the big bad city from the process (at least for land use). Instead they see it as the big bad city telling them you have to have a row home as your neighbor and construction starts tomorrow.

 

[artvandelay]

Who's saying that it will? This is one of 98 pieces of the housing strategy that council passed last fall (item 1.C.4). The current expectation is that the average household will have a roughly 1 in 1000 chance of living next door to a parcel that will change because of this zoning. It's worth doing, because every bit helps, and because it's easier and more flexible to do it once and change the rules for everyone than have a bunch of special targets and carveouts and backroom deals and red tape. Another one of the 98, for example, (1.A.1) was to dedicate two parcels for emergency housing, which was done back in February with a small news conference. Nobody said that 104 new housing units would put a significant dent in affordability back then either. Nobody wrote piles of editorials. Nobody called for a plebiscite (!) It was just another small step in the right direction.

As mentioned - it's a publicity stunt that allows council to appear to be doing something about the crisis while avoiding difficult actions that would make a material difference to planning and development. Like simplifying the zoning bylaw and moving towards form-based codes as opposed to Euclidian zoning. Or actually executing a main streets strategy that considers the utilities infrastructure upgrades required to enable corridor based intensification.

 

[Mull]

As mentioned - it's a publicity stunt that allows council to appear to be doing something about the crisis while avoiding difficult actions that would make a material difference to planning and development. Like simplifying the zoning bylaw and moving towards form-based codes as opposed to Euclidian zoning. Or actually executing a main streets strategy that considers the utilities infrastructure upgrades required to enable corridor based intensification.

Isn't hundreds of millions of federal dollars tied to this change going through, if so, it doesn't seem like a publicity stunt by Council at least? Or would your proposed changes listed in what I quoted also allow the City to obtain that money?

 

[CalgaryTiger]

a main streets strategy that considers the utilities infrastructure upgrades required to enable corridor based intensification.

This is happening on 33/34 is it not elsewhere?

 

[MichaelS]

Isn't hundreds of millions of federal dollars tied to this change going through, if so, it doesn't seem like a publicity stunt by Council at least? Or would your proposed changes listed in what I quoted also allow the City to obtain that money?

No. This was the first question at the very start of the hearing on Monday morning by Councilor Demong. The Federal funds are NOT contingent on this rezoning happening.