Beautiful development, well done. My main question is, does this project make any sense? The cost of design and construction for these units, plus the amount of city staff time that was consumed to produce 8 units of affordable housing is astronomical. And at a city-wide scale, at the risk of
agreeing with Richard White, 8 units is utterly meaningless.
The best argument I can think of for this project is that these units are sort of a symbol of the city's commitment to creating affordable housing in many different communities, even the rich ones. If they kick on with larger scale initiatives that are lower cost per door, maybe an occasional small-scale high-cost project builds political support in some way.
However, if the goal is to make any sort of material change in the life of the average Calgarian struggling to afford housing, building 8 units at a time is a cruel joke.
Good comments, I largely agree.
The Rosedale affordable housing project is nicely designed and integrated, but all effort was to achieve 16 units (I think it was 8 lots, with two units per lot)? This location is along a MAX BRT line, walking distance to several post-secondaries and the highest density of both professional and service jobs this province has to offer (Calgary's inner city). Both units come with a parking stall, a uniquely Calgarian amenity for affordable housing.
Sure there are some site limitations - a lot of coulda-woulda-shouldas from the terrible 16th Avenue expansion project of 2005-2010 - that prevents larger developments here and makes everything less efficient. From my count of the aerial photos from pre-16th expansion, the roadway took out ~20 homes in Rosedale (not counting other communities so the total housing loss is higher). So even with some well designed, well-integrated affordable housing, what did we achieve? A net loss of 4 units in effectively what has evolved to become one of Calgary's best examples of a wealthy but publicly financed, pseudo-gated community.
Perhaps a better way to achieve mixed-income communities with more affordability is not to wall them off and have their political clout grow to essentially prevent all land intensification, while they quietly reaping the location benefits (and increasing housing values) of billions of public dollars of investments in our transportation system, post-secondary schools and other area amenities nearby. Hell, we even bought Rosedale a wall to physically separate themselves along income lines.
I don't know what a sound wall costs, but perhaps 1km of concrete could have bought a few more homes instead? Better yet - if the sound wall was done to preserve "property values" from increased traffic noise (which is often the case), lining the neighbourhood with affordable walkup apartments is an even better sound-mitigation tool. If traffic noise is such a detriment to property values, congratulations you have found a way to keep the walkups from appreciating in price and becoming affordable by putting them next to your loud roads.
Ideal outcome? Probably not - it's not great to live next to a terrible road regardless of income - but if we held the assertion that traffic noise lowers property values enough to justify an expensive wall, surely we could apply the same logic to put some affordable housing at a large scale in areas that are likely to maintain lower values. Of course, to have that outcome would have require that choice to be available during the 2005 road expansion project - a tough task in siloed transportation project world. Far easier to throw up a wall and let the affordable housing advocates fight for scraps a few decades later.
In summary, within the limits of the scope of the housing project itself - they are well designed and should be commended for fighting through incredible opposition and political battles to achieve the results that they did. Certainly better than empty lots, certainly a design win to point to regarding integrating affordable housing anywhere. But expand the scope to a slightly to a macro-level and the results of a limited tactical victory for affordable housing and urban design are overshadowed by strategic failures elsewhere.
