MF YYC Politics - there, I mega did it

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Slava

I don't know, if they're already approving ~95%, the overall impact of this has to be small?

Problem was that it took ~8-10 months to approve 95% of the re-zoning applications. There was a speaker at the council meeting representing BILD Calgary that said added ~80k-100k in carrying costs to each project.

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Not too likely low income apartments go up there.

$1.5MM luxury brownstones, sure.

Those $1.5M luxury brownstones would also need to come with two garage stalls to be marketable to that crowd.

[GullFoss]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

I'm not sure if this adds to the conversation, but I just moved into an infill 4-plex in Altadore and the area is great. There's a mix of SFH, duplex, 4-plex and apartments. There's also a mix of high-end, middle and lower income properties. It's early days for me but it feels like Altadore has done it right. The area seems mixed and therefore organic.

That said, if I paid a couple million or more for a SFH in Elbow Park or Mount Royal I wouldn't be too happy about a middle or low income apartment complex going up in my neighborhood. But also, F those rich bastards

I know you mean this as a joke, but this is what is gnawing at me about the housing policy. Did we just blanket wealthier neighborhoods because "soak the rich"?

If r-cg doesn't make sense for these neighborhoods, why blanket them r-cg?

If someone is a star surgeon who cures little kids of cancer and we pay them $2m per year. And then they want to live in upper Mount Royal in an exclusive r-1 community, why are you giving him stress for no reason? It doesn't increase affordability. It doesn't help the core of the housing policy. It doesn't increase density. Why do it?

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

I know you mean this as a joke, but this is what is gnawing at me about the housing policy. Did we just blanket wealthier neighborhoods because "soak the rich"?

If r-cg doesn't make sense for these neighborhoods, why blanket them r-cg?

If someone is a star surgeon who cures little kids of cancer and we pay them $2m per year. And then they want to live in upper Mount Royal in an exclusive r-1 community, why are you giving him stress for no reason? It doesn't increase affordability. It doesn't help the core of the housing policy. It doesn't increase density. Why do it?

If it doesn't increase affordability and doesn't increase density, why in the world would he care if it's R-1 or not?

[Torture]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

I know you mean this as a joke, but this is what is gnawing at me about the housing policy. Did we just blanket wealthier neighborhoods because "soak the rich"?

If r-cg doesn't make sense for these neighborhoods, why blanket them r-cg?

If someone is a star surgeon who cures little kids of cancer and we pay them $2m per year. And then they want to live in upper Mount Royal in an exclusive r-1 community, why are you giving him stress for no reason? It doesn't increase affordability. It doesn't help the core of the housing policy. It doesn't increase density. Why do it?

We blanketed everywhere R-CG vs RC-1/2 because there was no reason for them to be exclusively RC-1/2 in the first place and it was needless red tape on density. "Blanketing" it helps fix the supply problem.

If a star surgeon in upper Mount Royal wants to build a fancy SFH there's nothing stopping them but why should they get to control what their neighbours do with their property?

Also, if somebody wants to re-develop the property adjacent to the surgeon's fancy SFH and it doesn't fit into the community, he and the community association can still raise concerns about it at the Development Permit meeting.

[GullFoss]

Originally Posted by Torture

Problem was that it took ~8-10 months to approve 95% of the re-zoning applications. There was a speaker at the council meeting representing BILD Calgary that said added ~80k-100k in carrying costs to each project.

It's maybe a bit exaggerated but in the ball park.

Around $650,000 for a lot x 8m approval x 12% interest to hold property while waiting for approval is $52,000. And they maybe spend $15,000 on the approval process. So call it $70,000

[GullFoss]

Originally Posted by Torture

We blanketed everywhere R-CG vs RC-1/2 because there was no reason for them to be exclusively RC-1/2 in the first place and it was needless red tape on density.

If a star surgeon in upper Mount Royal wants to build a fancy SFH there's nothing stopping them but why should they get to control what their neighbours do with their property?

If they collectively agree they all want to stay r-1 because they each get more joy out of an r-1 neighborhood, then they should be able to do it. How do you prove that though?

It would be interesting if Elbow Park tried to go down the restrictive covenant route. I wonder if people would actually agree to it

[GullFoss]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

If it doesn't increase affordability and doesn't increase density, why in the world would he care if it's R-1 or not?

Because there's value in certainty.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

Because there's value in certainty.

So it might increase affordability and density?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Slava

It's that second paragraph that is the most interesting though. In not convinced that this helps with low and affordable housing, and obviously not for many years if it does. But that's what the protests and a chunk of the speakers to council this past week wanted.

And of course, these are complicated issues and there's no one easy to enact policy that fixes everything. But there are still a lot of housing issues in Europe (where it seems like we see less restrictive zoning). I don't know how many cities in North America have really implemented these policies at this time, but I think Houston is the only one. And frankly, they're dealing with the same housing crisis as we are. They went to a full "no zoning" in 1993, and it's a bit of a misnomer because there are some base restrictions, but largely people can build whatever they want. But over the past couple years they had less inventory, prices shooting up and a housing crisis just like we have.

I agree that council used the current crisis to push through long term systemic changes that won’t immediately help the current crisis.

The US is in a much healthier housing state than we are by most metrics. I think to evaluate the success or failure of zoning initiatives you’d really need a comparison of a like city in the US that didn’t change zoning rules.

The more important thing that increasing density does is that long term it reduces infrastructure costs to the city.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by GGG

The US is in a much healthier housing state than we are by most metrics. I think to evaluate the success or failure of zoning initiatives you’d really need a comparison of a like city in the US that didn’t change zoning rules.

The more important thing that increasing density does is that long term it reduces infrastructure costs to the city.

Financial Times won't let me copy the images and charts to CP but here's an article that covers exactly that:

"Repeat after me: building any new homes reduces housing costs for all:" https://www.ft.com/content/86836af4-...0-8aec6181dbc5

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Torture

Financial Times won't let me copy the images and charts to CP but here's an article that covers exactly that:

"Repeat after me: building any new homes reduces housing costs for all:" https://www.ft.com/content/86836af4-...0-8aec6181dbc5

I had to use an archive to read that: https://archive.ph/jHP47

I'm glad I did, because man is that New Zealand graphic compelling. In summary - Auckland did a big upzoning. Immediately after multi-family construction had a huge increase and rents flat-lined. They compare to Wellington (same country, no upzoning) and the difference seems pretty obvious.

[Burninator]

Most of Upper Mount Royal (northern half) and Elbow Park are not great examples to use since they are Direct Control districts and I am assuming would be unaffected by a blanket rezoning change.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by edslunch

Well, r-cg always was kind of available. According to the mayor, 95% of zoning change applications are approved.In my neighbourhood several r-cg were rezoned to d-c over the objections of the neighbours and community association. This will make it easier though for sure, though I imagine much of the focus will be on places like Altadore where they can carve up a lot and still charge premium prices.

As an aside, I found the mayor's rationale pretty circular. "We (the developer-friendly council) approve almost all applications that come our way no matter what the community input is, so we might as well blanket approve all of them." I wonder how this will affect their future donations from developers?

I think another councilor brought it up but I think council approves 95% of the applications that make it to them. I am sure there are more applications that don't get administrations approval that get cancelled before making it to council. For example I have heard lots of developers have been trying to rezone industrial properties to commercial but they aren't getting administration support as they don't want to remove industrial property in the City.

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by Burninator

Most of Upper Mount Royal (northern half) and Elbow Park are not great examples to use since they are Direct Control districts and I am assuming would be unaffected by a blanket rezoning change.

You're right of the northern half of Upper Mount Royal, but almost the entirety of Elbow Park is R-C1.

[Yoho]

I listened to a Calgary councillor on radio today he said the only thing they agreed on was to look at this so the Federal funding wouldn’t stop for now. He said this zoning is a long way from seeing the light of day and when 400k residence get a notice in the mail of this he would be very surprised if it passes.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by topfiverecords

You're right of the northern half of Upper Mount Royal, but almost the entirety of Elbow Park is R-C1.

You are right was looking at the map wrong, Mission is the Direct Control, not Elbow Park.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by Yoho

I listened to a Calgary councillor on radio today he said the only thing they agreed on was to look at this so the Federal funding wouldn’t stop for now. He said this zoning is a long way from seeing the light of day and when 400k residence get a notice in the mail of this he would be very surprised if it passes.

Which councilor was it?

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by Burninator

Which councilor was it?

All I got was the male voice to it I missed the name. Deep voice.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by Yoho

All I got was the male voice to it I missed the name. Deep voice.

Ah no worries. I am sure not all the councilors feel that way. But we'll see.

Interesting to me was the opposition of Demong and Maclean. I live in Demong's riding and both areas would probably be the least impacted by it. The communities are still fairly new and not a lot of redevelopment happening, nor would it for a long time to come. Making basements suites a permitted use would mostly just reduce red tape IMO. Much of newer communities being built are R-G anyways.