Calgary city council votes against the wishes of 75% of Calgarians…
The vote comes after more than three weeks of public presentations in council chambers, 736 in total, either in person or on the phone. Additionally, the city received 6,101 written submissions, with roughly 75% of all submissions against the implementation of blanket zoning. The city also says 50,000 people watched the proceedings on its webcasts.
However, the city knew it was unpopular based on written submissions received ahead of the April 22 public hearings.
A total of 4,347 submissions were received, with 3,812 saying ‘no’, 399 saying yes and 136 saying they were neutral. According to the city, duplicate submissions made by a single person were counted as one submission
The blanket zoning bylaw will eliminate areas with zoning for only single-family homes, allowing multi-family homes, including four-plexes, each with two additional suites, in those areas.
Of course, 75% of Calgarians sit on their hands through municipal elections, so there’s that.
So, what is old is new again. Name me ONE government in the western world that is working for the benefit of its citizens, rather than toward implementation of one world government.
While I feel you are correct, I also believe it is baked into the DNA of municipal politicians to always vote for the benefit of their pocketbooks … generously rewarded, I suspect, by developers and other interests, after fulfilling their term of their office.
Don’t know, but it eludes me how many of these dubiously-competent individuals seem so remarkably well off after several terms in office.
someone’s math is wrong.
if voter turnout is 25% the ‘wishes’ of the deliquents is that the winner do as they please.
thus calgary city officials are doing JUST THAT.
succinctly, CALGARY AND CANADUH HAVE RIGHT NOW MAY 2024 E-X-A-C-T-L-Y THE REPRESENTATION DEMANDED AT THE BALLOT BOOTH.
There goes the neighborhood.
Governments have a real tough time living within their means, always looking (and often selling out) to outside parties for additional funding. Mayor Nenshi (now the NDP leadership cadidate) spent all of Calgarians money, so now the city council is sucking up to the Federal Liberals for more money. Elections have consequences…
How did the BC NDP come to rule the serfs of Calgary?
Immigration.
Vote splitting. Only one councillor in Calgary received over 50% of the vote in their ward. Everyone else including the Mayor didn’t….and several councillors received less than 30% of the votes in their ward.
Bringing party apparatus to civic elections may repair or prevent the damage from vote splitting.
Citizens will see who has the support of which party, and when the above candidates who voted for this are all wearing orange or red or friggin purple in the Oct 2025 elections, it’ll be much easier for the 25% of civic election voters to make up their minds.
If that doesn’t happen, there’s NO LIMIT to what city council can decide, as they’ll continue to be elected by those 25% of the electorate who show up.
Hopefully the UCP of Danielle Smith shows up in this debate over who decides what.
With a recession due or actually here, but largely unreported, the last thing we need is more immigrants with no skills that Canada needs, especially refugees from third world failed countries and family reunification/sponsorship (mostly old folks who clutter the health care systems). In the distant past, Canada was smart and lowered immigration admissions when the economy was tanking.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2016006-eng.htm
Instead of putting illegal border crossers with many kids in hotels with better “free” benefits than Canadians, we should just send them back immediately, as we have laws for that; most are simply economic migrants. Laws must change and the IRB downsized. These people are criminals who broke border laws and do not deserve a hearing. Why would we expect them to be law-abiding Canadians? Canada should not be a home for people from tragic far away countries. The permanent resident program is being totally abused, as well. Go home and fix your own countries!
Universities have been incentivized to have foreign students, to manage budgets. Maybe try cutting admin staff! We also do not need temporary workers to pick fruit; the recent immigrant kids should do that.
Even the lying Liberals get it, re-instating some of Harper’s tentative rules. Immigrants to Canada are opposed to more.
75% of Calgarians sit on their hands through municipal elections, so there’s that.
Couldn’t agree more. Hopefully that’ll change. I’ve said it once before…apathy is what they count on and it’s how these nutjobs get their foot in the door. After wrecking shop at the municipal level, they set their sights on Provincial politics and if they play their cards right, it’s off to the big show in Ottawa where they can really get in your grill. Boards of Education are another venue.
And why I watch my municipality’s goings ons like a hawk, always on the lookout for that subtle leftist tic. Telling people what to do when all they want is to be left alone is a helluva drug.
Well that’s not really what caused this….the issue is simply vote splitting. Only ONE councillor in Calgary Mayor and Council received over 50% of the vote in their ward. Many “elected” councillors received less than 30%.
Art, 30% to 35 % of the vote gets you a majority in federal politics. This is not something new in this country.
With any luck, Danielle Smith will order a plebiscite on the matter and have it align with the municipal election in 2025. That way, the ridiculous decision by Calgary Council will be put on the back burner and will increase the vote in the municipal election and sweep the Marxists into the sewer where they belong.
Recall legislation should be based on proportionality. A certain percentage is always required to invoke a recall election, a silly number like around 60%. It should also be tied to the percentage that got the official elected in the first place. If an ‘official’ got elected with only 45% of the riding, disgruntled electorates should only need 60% of 45% to recall an official. That is a much more reasonable threshold ror recall.
You Will Live In Pods, Eat Bugs, Own Nothing And You Will Like It … or else!
However, many of you will be culled, so you will be nothing, and the bugs will eat you.
As far as zoning goes, developers should be able to build whatever they want on their property, which will correspond to market demand. It’s not something that a city needs to dictate in the first place.
Again, the primary reason for soaring real estate prices are interest rates going to near zero. As interest rates fall, asset prices will rise, and that includes real estate. It’s inevitable that this creates demand for 4 plexes as the cost of a single family dwelling is put out of reach for the average home buyer. Fix the monetary problem and you fix this problem as well.
As someone who has built a house, maintained the house, and who is now renovating the house in Calgary, I face a complete change in rules of the game I’ve lived under for decades.
I’m annoyed at the potential for degradation in my property value and annoyed at the potential for a row house next to me.
I’m also vaguely annoyed that you’re right about the developers, why should anyone tell anyone else what to do with their land.
Agreed on the monetary bs as well.
No zoning laws, eh? What if that developer chooses to build a waste treatment plant next to your beautiful single family home? How about a mortuary next to your home? The idea of a completely unfettered marketplace is the stuff of looney BIG-L Libertarian nightmares. As is the complete destruction of single family zoning.
Make no mistake, the elimination of single family zoning has nothing to do with the housing supply. No, it is 100% social engineering. It is all about moving poor(er) people into your homogeneous neighborhood. Period. It is all about the fact that our urban areas have been descending into a dystopian nightmare. The divide between the cultured and the uncouth is widening – rapidly. The graduation rates and test scores of the urban hellholes are shockingly bad.
Your social engineering overlords want to “level the playing field” … or as Obama was fond of saying … give everyone a “fair shot”. Turns out they’re quite jealous of all that suburban “privilege” … and they actually believe if the urban poor(er) could JUST move into your nice neighborhood … they would do better in school, and not breathe in so many diesel fumes. But make no mistake, rotten apples ALWAYS spoil the whole bunch. Good apples never “fix” the bad ones. Bad zoning laws destroy harmony … they don’t fix it.
Your argument is no different than the typical objection to gun control: supporters of such legislation routinely claim that if we don’t have strict laws regulating firearms, your street will soon look like the Wild West. Of course that’s nonsense, and it’s equally nonsensical when it comes to zoning, thanks to the long established legal principle that property owners cannot become a nuisance to the neighbors.
It’s the sudden change that is the problem. The city of Huston, Texas has no zoning ordnance and it developed rationally and through deed restrictions. If a city were to offer a new area contiguous to but not within and existing area to laissez faire developers, the costs would be minimized and returns maximized in accordance to what the market demanded. Why do Canadians have to describe capitalism to you Yanks :<)
With all due respect … Houston is a gawd-awful MESS. Because of their lack of zoning reg’s. I’m all for FREE MARKETPLACES … but sadly regulation is needed to keep humans from implementing human nature … such as buying-out all your competition and creating monopolies. There HAVE to be guardrails. Why? Primarily because people are stupid, greedy, sluts who will step on anyone’s face to get what THEY want.
Don’t get me wrong … I still LOVE people.
So if a suburb was originally developed as a single family zone it has to stay that way forever? Why? Cities need to rebuild and change. A four plex next to your bungalow is hardly the equivalent of a waste treatment plant. The reluctance to change zoning laws is part and parcel of the NIMBY and BANANA mentality which has become endemic over the past decades. Now no one wants a different style of house in their neighborhood because it might obscure their view of the mountain, bring out the “wrong” type of voter or some other irrelevant criteria.
More to it than NIMBY.
Parking is a huge problem which could lead to why do you need a vehicle.
Power availability is never addressed because it’s the elephant in the room. A fourplex will draw more power than an R1. There is not enough power in any suburb that can recharge 1.5 EV’s in every driveway let alone demand from expanding to 4 plexes, plus AI and Bitcoin farms demand.
The politicians were bought to bring this in to advance Agenda 2030.
15 min cities, no vehicles, walk, rent.
Pure and simple.
Yes things need to be upgraded but if a main needs resized the developer should pay. I think that’s fair. And to the second part I’m glad I drive an hour into work.
Last year I watched a six year old immigrant kid on a trike purposely screw around with the builder’s super by swerving back and forth in front of the guys pickup . The truck would slowly go one direction so would the kid. His grand parents watching from the second floor window, smiling.
Bring twice as many half as far is my firm belief. And any worth having would agree.
Myself I don’t think some cities will be fit to live in if things carry on like they are.
Dead on Kenji.
I watched exactly what you describe happen in Chicago.
Bulldoze the high rise housing projects. Ship them all out to the suburbs. Just dump them there. Someone else’s problem. Subsidize a cheap duplex, but nothing else.
where a car is essential, they have no family or friends, no support.
Instead of improving the city, bring the suburbs down to the same crappy level.
Bonus- suburban districts vote blue now.
houston texas had no zoning at one time. dont know what the situation is now
25% vote and 100% statistical guarantee of the mayor being re-elected.
We’ve had multi-term idiots for decades. And this one is the worst one yet.
// Calgary city council votes against the wishes of 75% of Calgarians… //
That would be about 45 hundred people who sat down & wrote a letter.
// the city received 6,101 written submissions, with roughly 75% //
Calgary, like most Canadian cites is a sprawling low-density hard to service suburbia:
The city of Calgary has an area of 825 km² and a population of 1,096,833 million (2011).
The City of Paris has an area of 105 km² and a population of 2,241,346 (2014)
Spoken like a true pod dwelling, central planner. If you don’t live in a concrete box (pod) you are also a hypocrite. “hard to service suburbia” – have you been to Calgary? Drop a bulldozer blade and in two weeks you have another subdivision in the works.
// Drop a bulldozer blade and in two weeks you have another subdivision in the works. //
These metastasizing subdivisions are what they are trying to temper.
By increasing population density.
& it doesn’t take a ‘central planning” bias to know that 4500 self-selected letter writers
are not 75% of Calgarians.
A real survey: https://www.calgary.ca/research/satisfaction-survey.html
homelessness, poverty & affordable housing
Whatever you do, don’t sell people what they want, just point that gun of the state at them and tell them what they get and it’s what the enlightened Jacobins know is best for the serfs. You personify Kate’s title above.
You sound like a bureaucrat sitting in an office looking at irrelevant data thousands of miles from the issue.
Totally devoid of any knowledge of the issue but confident in your opinion.
The City makes the decision and holds sham public consultations afterwards. It’s been doing it that way for decades.
Seems to me they’re laying the groundwork for a 15 minute city. It’s happening in Edmonton right now as we speak. Next it’ll be corralling rural folk into urban areas.
People had better wake up.
I’m not sure I understand the Calgarian opposition to this zoning. Surely, they aren’t nuanced enough to understand the social engineering aspect to it. By blanket zoning you are ultimately favoring a rental cost reduction by saturating the market with available apartment space. At the same time it submarines the housing market by reducing available single family homes.
So, what’s the opposition here? Why are the residents of Calgary so against this decision? This question is highlighted by the fact that in the last two years rental costs have risen significantly in that city. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this is a good thing because I understand the eventual result. I’m just curious why the “seemingly enlighted” gentry of Calgary would be so against it.
People are against it because a lot of people’s savings and retirement plans are in the value of their house if all else fail. This will devalue R1 homes depending on how severe multifamily units get built in a neighborhood.
It is incredibly disruptive.
Wouldn’t it be just the opposite? By doing a blanket zoning it encourages people to take a single family home and turn it into multi-family apartments….thus lowering the number of single family homes available on the market and increasing their value.
I tend to think that the opposition might be related to the tenants that will be attracted to suburban neighborhoods. In other words, those who scream the loudest about others committing bigotry are now in a position to show their true colors and their own bigotry is now on full display.
I believed it’s called “blanket rezoning” because it will cause the streets to be filled with people wrapped in blankets.
Corrupt Globalist politicians all over the country… They are in the PMO they are in the “opposition” they are in the Provincial Capitals and they have infested Municipal politics for over a decade.
They are waging war on the citizenry. If they are not carpet bombing your neighbourhood into dust they are poisoning you with deadly
vaccines”.
I certainly do. In my area we have one street filled with connected multi family homes and heavily subsidized “row houses”, for lack of a better word, and rightly or wrongly has been coined “No Daddy Alley” by locals. Cops are always there. I wouldn’t want to be the poor sap across the street trying to sell his beautiful single family dwelling he spent years making improvements on.
May as well burn it down and collect the insurance.
Thank God I’m rural.
Go wexit.