MF YYC Politics - there, I mega did it

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Project Calgary with a poll for Ward 7 conducted September 3rd to 10th:

https://www.projectcalgary.org/ward7poll_sep12-25

Myke is a great guy. If you are in Ward 7, you can't go wrong voting for Myke.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by GGG

They did fix the process they got rid of the part that didn’t make a difference in any development decision that came before the city.

Did they fix the process? Or did they just outsource the decision making? Obviously I would argue the latter and I would conclude that outsourcing the decision making is a terrible way to execute any strategy.

All this did was de-regulate the housing market in the same way that the UCP has been de-regulating insurance and electricity. They are selling you a concept that in execution can not deliver the desired outcomes because the supporting processes or market are not in place to make it successful and the people executing the strategy are not aligned with your outcomes.

Originally Posted by GGG

I read all your posts and agree with a lot of it but it makes no sense given your positions and philosophies basically everything else that you would oppose blanket rezoning. You are for everything blanket rezoning accomplishes.

I understand the goal of blanket rezoning. My issue is the reality of the situation: In Calgary, specifically with our entirely private (and predatory) home developer industry, this strategy will harm people more than help them and prices will go up, not down.

In short, the strategy will fail because it is being executed by a group that is not aligned with the strategy or the outcomes - namely cost affordable housing. The private home developers only care about profit.

Before we entertain the idea of blanket rezoning we should do basically everything else that I listed in my last post in order to create an environment where blanket rezoning will give you the results that you want.

What should happen in a happy hypothetical alternate reality where more populist/socialist processes, systems, and agents are already in place:
- The city development department acquires a $700,000 bungalow for development and then builds and sells two $650,000 infills for homeowners to buy. More homes, costs stay flat or go down because the public developer does not need to make profits, they just need enough money to cover their costs and stay afloat.
- Bonus points: create a city realtor that does not need to take a percentage of the house sale but can do the same paperwork.

What will happen in Calgary today:
- The private home builder acquires a $700,000 bungalow for development (probably by paying $50,000 above list with no conditions so no peasants can compete with the bid) and then builds and sells two $1,400,000 infills for homeowners to buy. Housing costs will constantly rise as the home builders reference their last sale as proof that they need to charge more in their next sale.
- Private realtors will continue to take their cut of every transaction and are motivated to keep costs moving up so that their cut keeps going up.

-----------

Thank you for reading my thoughts. It has been great to be able to discuss the topic beyond just "yuck, I hate it".

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

I believe that using the city communication teams for election- related purposes is generally frowned upon

This was city money - she's not allowed to use it for campaigning.

Let's assume (somewhat charitably) that this is well intentioned public education not focused on getting her re-elected.

If that's the case, the City already has a communications department and she already has a city provided/funded website. If that department/website isn't capable of a pretty basic communications job then hopefully she is advocating that the city get rid of them to save money? If that isn't the case why does she need a 2nd website?

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by chemgear

Excuse me; say what now?

Three years, ten months, and twenty-two days (as of today). Better?

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Myke is a great guy. If you are in Ward 7, you can't go wrong voting for Myke.

Myke and David both appear pretty solid and very similar, one of them is going to have to make the move to drop out and help solidify support for one. Heather isn't going to go anywhere unfortunately.

[Table 5]

I just can't vote for a Mike with a Y. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Table 5

I just can't vote for a Mike with a Y. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

Well you'd have to take out the pettiness on his parents then. Who I don't think are running.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Project Calgary with a poll for Ward 7 conducted September 3rd to 10th:

https://www.projectcalgary.org/ward7poll_sep12-25

20% between the three progressive candidates and 17% for Terry Wong. My worst fears confirmed and Wong is going to waltz right up the middle while the progressives split the vote. Ugh.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Torture

20% between the three progressive candidates and 17% for Terry Wong. My worst fears confirmed and Wong is going to waltz right up the middle while the progressives split the vote. Ugh.

Makes you wish for a ranked ballot.

[WideReceiver]

Originally Posted by The Fisher Account

A little concerning that Gondek has access to an entire City communications department and chose to go with an external agency

Using city comms for your own purposes is illegal.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Did they fix the process? Or did they just outsource the decision making? Obviously I would argue the latter and I would conclude that outsourcing the decision making is a terrible way to execute any strategy.

All this did was de-regulate the housing market in the same way that the UCP has been de-regulating insurance and electricity. They are selling you a concept that in execution can not deliver the desired outcomes because the supporting processes or market are not in place to make it successful and the people executing the strategy are not aligned with your outcomes.



I understand the goal of blanket rezoning. My issue is the reality of the situation: In Calgary, specifically with our entirely private (and predatory) home developer industry, this strategy will harm people more than help them and prices will go up, not down.

In short, the strategy will fail because it is being executed by a group that is not aligned with the strategy or the outcomes - namely cost affordable housing. The private home developers only care about profit.

Before we entertain the idea of blanket rezoning we should do basically everything else that I listed in my last post in order to create an environment where blanket rezoning will give you the results that you want.

How and where are they outsourcing the decision making?

What is the result you want? I think you've said before that it's essentially more affordable housing available for purchase? You can restate it precisely as you wish; IIRC your goal seemed heavily focused on home ownership (while seeking to reduce asset appreciate aspect of being a homeowner). Is that outcome desirable if it is coupled with higher property taxes and personal transportation costs (both financial and otherwise)?


I argue a better objective is simply: to build a better and more affordable city to live [work and play] (if we want to get sappy)

Which certainly involves more affordable housing, but looking only at purchase price is far too narrow.

What should happen in a happy hypothetical alternate reality where more populist/socialist processes, systems, and agents are already in place:
- The city development department acquires a $700,000 bungalow for development and then builds and sells two $650,000 infills for homeowners to buy. More homes, costs stay flat or go down because the public developer does not need to make profits, they just need enough money to cover their costs and stay afloat.
- Bonus points: create a city realtor that does not need to take a percentage of the house sale but can do the same paperwork.

What will happen in Calgary today:
- The private home builder acquires a $700,000 bungalow for development (probably by paying $50,000 above list with no conditions so no peasants can compete with the bid) and then builds and sells two $1,400,000 infills for homeowners to buy. Housing costs will constantly rise as the home builders reference their last sale as proof that they need to charge more in their next sale.
- Private realtors will continue to take their cut of every transaction and are motivated to keep costs moving up so that their cut keeps going up.

-----------

Thank you for reading my thoughts. It has been great to be able to discuss the topic beyond just "yuck, I hate it".

Let's game this out a bit more...what makes one half duplex worth $700k and the other worth $1.4M? Is the city version just smaller and less featured?

Higher priced housing becomes more scarce, and those prices go up; which most of us will say is fine to a degree. But what do the people who wanted to buy the $1.4M infill do? Maybe settle for a $1.2M...meaning more people competing at that price point driving that price point up (sending another $1.2M buyer down to the $1M price point driving that price up repeat repeat repeat). And maybe another prospective buyer weighs the value of what they can buy within the city vs what they can buy outside the city limits and opts for the latter, taking their property taxes with them while increasing the mileage they will drive on city roads.

Meanwhile, property taxes will go up more for everyone else more than they would if the infills were sold at $1.4M.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Makes you wish for a ranked ballot.

I'm not a fan of ranked ballots for federal or provincial elections, but I would support them for municipal elections for exactly that reason.

[Wolven]

Woof. Strap in.

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

How and where are they outsourcing the decision making?

If you make a strategy but then do none of the work and provide minimal oversight and basically let some external organizations make all of the decisions then they are the decision makers, not you. This is a very common problem in dealing with outsource models where you are trying to find the balance between outsourcing the work and outsourcing the decision making (most often talked about in IT).

Think about Main Streets. The city had these presentations with beautiful walkable streets with big sidewalks and 4 story mixed retail and condo buildings that were all red (is that brick?) with white trim and trees dotted along the way. It looked awesome, like you were being transported to a city in Europe where they know what they are doing!

In reality we have some sidewalk and hodgepodge builds. One lot is a cheap looking 6 plex and another is a condo building with no retail. The strategy died at the end of the presentation because the people doing the work didn't care about it and were not encouraged or pushed to execute the strategy as designed. The outsourced decision makers (builders) did whatever they want to generate their profit and moved on.

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

Let's game this out a bit more...what makes one half duplex worth $700k and the other worth $1.4M? Is the city version just smaller and less featured?

There are many ways that a public builder could become more cost effective:
- Insourcing all of your trades. Many private builders cannot do this because they do not have enough volume of work to have full time trades but if the city were to get into the game they would certainly need to work toward having all of their trades in house and not paying contractor rates. The big ones would be: concrete, framing, electrical, plumbing, insulation & drywall, finishing carpentry, roofing, flooring, siding.

For each of these trades you have a guy getting paid a rate to do the work building a house. Subcontractor A then pads that guy's rate and charges the general contractor. The general contractor then pads the subcontractor's rate and charges it to the home builder. The home builder then pads the GC's rate and sells the house. At the finish line a realtor shows up to get their % too.

- Streamline processes: Since the city electrician and the city electrical inspector work on the same team you can likely make that part of the process faster and more efficient than when the electrician is external.

- Purchasing materials in larger quantities. When you buy in bulk, you get a cheaper rate

- Lower end features. You do not need to go cheap but you avoid the most expensive brand names like Wolf for appliances, etc.

- Eliminate the need for profits. Home builders always try to maximize profit in their sale price. If they think they can find a sucker who will pay more then they will raise the price to that number whether the value is there or not. A public builder could say "cost + 5%" and the 5% contributes toward the next build.

I am sure there are more ways to reduce cost but that list would likely generate a huge gap between public and private home building.

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

Higher priced housing becomes more scarce, and those prices go up; which most of us will say is fine to a degree. But what do the people who wanted to buy the $1.4M infill do? Maybe settle for a $1.2M...meaning more people competing at that price point driving that price point up (sending another $1.2M buyer down to the $1M price point driving that price up repeat repeat repeat). And maybe another prospective buyer weighs the value of what they can buy within the city vs what they can buy outside the city limits and opts for the latter, taking their property taxes with them while increasing the mileage they will drive on city roads.

Meanwhile, property taxes will go up more for everyone else more than they would if the infills were sold at $1.4M.

What you are describing here is one of the reasons I am against blanket re-zoning. The city's old zoning structure, while not perfect, did allow for different neighbourhoods to provide an inventory of houses to meet people's different needs.
- If you want to live in a cheap condo, go look down south along McLeod Trail to find something affordable to get into the market
- If you want to move into a nice condo, head to the beltline or downtown and get a great condo that is walking distance from everything
- If you want to live in a starter home then you can look to an "RC2" neighbourhood where you won't get as much home, and your home might be attached to another home, but at least it is affordable to start in
- If you are able to afford a bigger SFH then you can look to one of the "RC1" neighbourhoods

With blanket rezoning, that diversity of homes is going to be eliminated and developers are going to start moving in on neighbourhoods that were previously unavailable to them and apply their same playbook of making profit.

I am not sure why property taxes are going up in your story. Just for fun? Property taxes should only go up if the city needs more income to support the services they provide. However, in my suggestion of a public homebuilder, the selling of the homes should be more than enough to cover the cost of the department, so taxes will not need to change.

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

What is the result you want?

This question is complex but specific to the blanket rezoning topic... I want a more thoughtful solution that meets the diverse needs of a larger number of people and (as much as possible) does not negatively impact one group of people to benefit another group of people and, most importantly, does not create an environment that largely benefits corporations at the expense of people.

I expect that any good solution will require more effort from the public sector and/or more regulations to ensure that the work is driving toward the desired goals.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by GGG

Empty parking lots (which people object to putting into towers anyway) arent significant enough.

Look at Glenmore landing as an example of empty parking lots being fought against. You can’t win density on a project by project basis.

While I generally agree about densification, that particular project is a bad example of ‘empty parking lots.’ Glenmore landing is a ####ing gong show for parking even at 11 am on a Wednesday. It’s an extremely busy place, everyone drives, and there are only two entrances and one exit. My barber tells customers about a secret parking spot because the lot is often full.

Ask anyone who goes there regularly, and regardless of their feelings on densification, their jaw would drop at the idea of adding 3000 residents and the associated traffic to the site. Even if the developer built out a 5 level parkade, there would still be overflow from guests, not to mention worse congestion in the one way out.

[woob]

There’s always lots of parking on the Safeway end.

[puffnstuff]

Originally Posted by Amethyst

Brian Thiessen calling on the province to investigate the current mayor removes any minute chance I had of voting for him. The last thing we need is the corrupt UCP interfering more with city politics. Also, the councillor candidate for The Calgary Party has this truck driving around the neighbourhood with neon billboards and it is super annoying.

Too bad there isnt some sort of Code of Conduct thing that municipalities could use to ensure elected officials did the rignt thing.

I agree with you though about the calling in tne province, thats just dumb.

[WideReceiver]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

Too bad there isnt some sort of Code of Conduct thing that municipalities could use to ensure elected officials did the rignt thing.

I agree with you though about the calling in tne province, thats just dumb.

There is. I can’t say it’s enforced.

[puffnstuff]

Whoosh...

Alberta Municipal Affairs minister Ric McIver introduced a new bill Tuesday that would automatically repeal all municipal codes of conduct as soon as it is proclaimed into law.#

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...duct-1.7505306

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Wolven

This question is complex but specific to the blanket rezoning topic... I want a more thoughtful solution that meets the diverse needs of a larger number of people and (as much as possible) does not negatively impact one group of people to benefit another group of people and, most importantly, does not create an environment that largely benefits corporations at the expense of people.

I expect that any good solution will require more effort from the public sector and/or more regulations to ensure that the work is driving toward the desired goals.

A lot to unpack here, and maybe I'll bite off more tomorrow. You seem to have a lot of disdain for corporations/developers (fair enough I guess), but seem to ignore the part where they need people to like what they build enough to buy it...restrictive zoning is the primary thing hindering their ability to "meets the diverse needs of a larger number of people". People vote with their wallets mortgages here more than any other product (except those at the bottom of the housing ladder who really feel the pain of our unnecessarily constrained housing supply).

We're pretty good at building suburban sprawl and condo towers, but the missing middle is missing for a reason, and there's also a reason why this type of housing is so expensive (demand exceeds supply). I just don't see how the city is going to be better positioned to deliver what people want - especially without changing their own rules (ie. ZONING!)

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

While I generally agree about densification, that particular project is a bad example of ‘empty parking lots.’ Glenmore landing is a ####ing gong show for parking even at 11 am on a Wednesday. It’s an extremely busy place, everyone drives, and there are only two entrances and one exit. My barber tells customers about a secret parking spot because the lot is often full.

Ask anyone who goes there regularly, and regardless of their feelings on densification, their jaw would drop at the idea of adding 3000 residents and the associated traffic to the site. Even if the developer built out a 5 level parkade, there would still be overflow from guests, not to mention worse congestion in the one way out.

We would be ~30 years out from 3000 people, but whether it's 500 in 5 years or 3000 in 30, what if that number of people did NOT have to drive for groceries, pharmacy, post office, coffee, fast food, pub, daycare, barber, lingerie/running store/bakery/all the other services there? Nor would they drive to go for a walk/bike ride near the reservoir. Nor would many/most of them drive to work (if they work that is, as this would have been an amazing place to live as a retiree).

The fact that it can be a congested mess at times right now is exactly why it makes sense to build housing that is less car-dependent.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

We would be ~30 years out from 3000 people, but whether it's 500 in 5 years or 3000 in 30, what if that number of people did NOT have to drive for groceries, pharmacy, post office, coffee, fast food, pub, daycare, barber, lingerie/running store/bakery/all the other services there? Nor would they drive to go for a walk/bike ride near the reservoir. Nor would many/most of them drive to work (if they work that is, as this would have been an amazing place to live as a retiree).

The fact that it can be a congested mess at times right now is exactly why it makes sense to build housing that is less car-dependent.

Yes, that’s the long-term outcome - different people would shop at Glenmore Landing, people who lived on site. And that’s a good thing.

In the short to medium term, it would displace the people who currently drive to Glenmore Landing. They would get crowded out and need to find a new bank, a new barber, a new bakery, and a new coffee shop to hang out with friends in*. So those who weren’t happy with the proposal were not all being complete morons and defending an empty parking lot. They were being selfish. But being selfish isn’t dumb, and almost everyone is selfish about stuff that affects them personally.

That’s why I don’t like how we frame these issues in public discourse: this new thing will be awesome for everybody, and anyone who disagree is ignorant or a bad person. In reality, every big change is a tradeoff with winners and losers. When those in authority can’t even acknowledge downsides, it fosters a distrust of institutions. People feel they aren’t being presented with the full picture - because they aren’t.

* Not to mention the lab, one of the busiest in the city. Between patients and staff, it probably has a footprint of 30 parking spots, and is one of the main reasons the parking lot is a ####-show.