Every month, I write a column in the Calgary Herald. Here is the full text of my March story:
On Monday your city council will debate a key issue about the future of our city and the kind of community in which we want to live.
I have long been in favour of making changes to how we regulate secondary suites. I've written about it on this page for years, and it was the very first plank in my platform in the recent election.
I spoke about it every day, with thousands of Calgarians, who told me, and continue to tell me, that they agree we need change.
And we do. We have willingly created a system where many of our neighbours live without the protections that the rest of us enjoy.
As I have often said, if the smoke detector doesn't work, if there are mice, if there is mould, if there is no heat, tenants have nowhere to turn. And we, as a city, cannot help them. We have only one tool, which is to tear out the stove and kick people out of their homes.
We can't go after the slumlords and the bad landlords because we have to treat them the same as the good responsible landlords.
We've all heard the arguments many times, and Calgarians understand them. One of my colleagues is fond of saying "we need to ask people" and on this page a former alderman said we need to listen to "ordinary taxpayers."
I agree.
But here's the thing. We have asked. And over and over and over again, people have told us to follow the lead of every other city in Canada, to stop ignoring the needs of our neighbours, and to stop pretending that our current system makes any sense. Council needs to listen.
We had a public hearing (the public is very welcome to attend Council on Monday, but there will not be an opportunity to address us during the debate).
Twenty-five submissions were made by Calgarians who gave up their day to be there. Two or three spoke against the proposal, the rest were in favour - that's about 90 per cent.
An unprecedented array of citizen groups have also stood up in favour. All major business groups, including the chamber of commerce, have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with anti-poverty groups, social agencies, and student associations to call for this change. The Roman Catholic Diocese even sent a letter encouraging all parishioners to support this change.
Further, in the recent election, 66 per cent of voters voted for a mayoral candidate who made this change a priority (most of the rest voted for someone who promised change, but did not specify exactly what change).
And on Thursday, a scientific poll was released that showed a vast majority of Calgarians support legalizing suites across the city. Some 75 per cent support development of secondary suites in their own neighbourhoods.
A full 77 per cent of Calgarians say they're happy to have a secondary suite next door. Seventy-nine per cent support legalization of existing suites.
This is true in every neighbourhood in every corner of the city and across all demographics.
Not only is this absolutely consistent with all other polling that's ever been done on this issue, it is as close to consensus as we get in municipal politics. We could not get that many Calgarians to agree that this winter has been too long.
So why all the controversy?
It's easy to say that the kind of people who have their alderman on speed dial are the only people opposed to this change (indeed, it's worth noting that the same survey suggested that only seven per cent of citizens knew their community association's position in the matter, highlighting that on this issue, the loud voices are not speaking for their neighbours).
But we should also understand that there are some real concerns and real fears about what this change will bring, even if these fears belong to a small minority.
The good news is that, since we are the last major city to make this change, we have a very good idea of what will happen after this change is made.
The take-up to build new secondary suites is likely to be modest in early years. In Edmonton, between 2007-10, about 100 new suites have been built on average annually -one or two in each neighbourhood.
However, this allows for the creation of safe legal alternatives, which gives us the power to go after the bad landlords. We can work with them to bring their suites to code, or we can shut them down without worrying about where those tenants will go.
Our plan is not a panacea. It won't solve the problem of affordable housing forever. There will still be some illegal suites.
But it will go a long way to fixing the current bad situation. It will allow us to do the right thing for our community and for our future. It will allow us to protect landlords, tenants and neighbours in a way that has not been possible under our current system.
I don't know what will happen on Monday. I've long said that I let good ideas come to council and let them stand on their merits, rather than only debating foregone conclusions and pre-cooked plans. There will be a great deal of discussion, and there may be some interesting new ideas proposed.
We may even decide, as politicians love to do, that more study is needed.
I encourage you all to lend your voices to the debate. Please pick up the phone or the keyboard today and contact my office and your alderman.
You can reach us by dialing 311 or visiting the city's website. On this, and many other issues that will come before council, we need to hear from you.
- Mayor Nenshi
You can read the article here. I wanted to share it today because, well, it's not all that often Calgary's held up as an example in The New York Times. (And, since my job here at the Mayor's Office is to communicate, I might as well do just that.)
