Encourage Good Builders, Enforce Good Building

Some redevelopment is inevitable, but we don’t have to compromise neighbourliness or quality. Instead of treating all applicants the same, the City should incentivise good development that follows the rules, engage meaningfully with the community, and propose innovative and high-quality design.

GOALS:

• To provide more certainty in the development process for neighbours, local businesses and builders

HOW WE GET THERE:

• Improve monitoring of project construction and enhance enforcement of bylaw infractions related to development, such as noise, dust, detours, and construction clean-up.
• Enforce the need for developers to restore sidewalks and other city infrastructure to original condition after project completion
• Work with developers to encourage the adoption of centralized or communal waste and recycling bins (i.e. Molok bins or comparable) at multi-residential builds
• Protect inner-city tree canopy during development by:
  • Making zoning bylaw flexible enough to permit building around mature trees
  • Introducing incentives to encourage tree retention on private property
  • Enforcing existing public tree bylaws and fining non-compliant developers 
  • Revoking non-compliant developers’ development permits
  • Undertaking a representative sampling of non-complying properties to identify the root cause for why required trees were not planted or did not survive
  • Having Council request that tree planting requirements not be overridden by case managers, except in extenuating circumstances
• Investing in and improving drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure, especially in established communities similar to what is being done in greenfield communities
• Improve communication between other parties impacted by Calgary’s growth patterns, such as school boards, the province, and internal City of Calgary departments such as parks. This includes being open and transparent to council hopefuls 
• City-led rezoning to enable taller residential and commercial buildings where we already expect to see more people, traffic, and activities, such as along main streets, around transit hubs, and near commercial and employment centres.
• Pre-zoning these types of larger, higher-capacity sites can encourage redevelopment by making it faster and more predictable to build on those sites than other ones.

Requiring Early and Meaningful Engagement

Many Ward 7 residents have told me that we need a more transparent, predictable, and collaborative development process. I propose we achieve this by creating a system that incentivizes high-quality, proactive community engagement from builders with the reward of a faster, prioritized approval timeline. 

If builders want a more predictable and faster approval process, we should require a proactive, comprehensive and transparent engagement strategy. This could result in development that is more sensitive and responsive to the existing community context and reduce frustration and fear about what change may look like.

This includes deploying city liaisons into neighbourhoods and requiring developers to clearly demonstrate how local knowledge is integrated, ensuring final projects are sensitive to and enhance their community.

GOALS:

• To improve transparency between neighbours, applicants, and the City in the development process 
• Clarify how local community knowledge can be utilized to minimize potential negative impacts, and enhance the quality of developments

HOW WE GET THERE:

• I will direct Administration to pilot a tiered system for planning applications which incentivizes higher quality and more proactive engagement efforts with faster review timelines. This could include:
  • A priority process for rezoning and development permit applications where a City-approved comprehensive and high-quality community engagement plan is provided, and ongoing touchpoints with the public and the City about how feedback is integrated at various stages of the review process are required.
  • Identifying tools to and incentives to ensure that local knowledge is integrated into the development concept and final building from the outset of the project
• Pilot a program that embeds ‘field’ city liaisons in community buildings and/or at recreation centres to better understand the local context and community priorities

Encourage Design Quality, Innovation, and Resilience

We need housing policy that promotes creative housing solutions and simultaneously addresses housing needs, and enhances climate resilience. We need to prioritize project reviews for climate-adaptive designs and identify incentives for utilizing innovative, resilient building materials and methods, such as net-zero ready or modular construction. The goal is to encourage builders to propose higher-quality, aesthetically pleasing designs that add necessary housing while being durable and sustainable.

GOALS:

• Promote creative housing options that help address housing need, climate resilience, and design that is reflective of community character
• Work with developers to create unique and more adaptable housing designs

HOW WE GET THERE:

• Pilot an expansion to the City’s existing ‘priority stream’ initiative to incentivize projects that:
  • Propose more unique designs that are responsive and reflective of community character
  • Use higher quality materials that are more climate resilient and aesthetically pleasing
  • Use innovative building technology and methods, such as net-zero ready or modular construction
• Continue to prioritize the review of climate adaptive and resilient projects to encourage their utilization.
• Advocate to the province for changes to the provincial building code that mandate more climate-resilient building materials, such as hail-resistant siding
• Fund the building of community-scale green infrastructure, such as rain gardens that help to protect homes from extreme rain events
• Continue to improve the tree canopy by protecting existing trees during the redevelopment process and increasing enforcement of tree-planting bylaws for new developments
• Increase our natural spaces in and around the downtown core by converting underutilized spaces such as surface parking lots to parks and green spaces

Protecting Property Rights and Demystifying Zoning Rules

I have heard from many people that they want more certainty of how development in their community happens, but also do not want the City or their neighbours to unduly interfere with what they can do with their own property. We need to reduce overreach into personal property decisions and increase the flexibility of uses within existing neighborhoods to help allow them to become more walkable, sustainable, and complete. It’s also important that we have a zoning by-law that doesn’t require a degree in planning to understand - one that is simplified and uses plain language. There is also a need to enable small-scale, neighborhood-oriented uses like home businesses and corner stores to create vibrant communities. I believe that we need more housing options to help create a vibrant city, as well as one that is financially, environmentally, and socially sustainable.

GOALS:

• Make zoning regulations easier for property owners to understand and navigate
• Increase the flexibility of uses on personal property within existing zoning and reducing government overreach into individual property rights
• Encouraging small and home-based businesses to help build more complete communities

HOW WE GET THERE:

• Streamlining the new zoning by-law and making it easier to understand what can be done with individuals’ own property through the use of plain language and more flexible zoning options. 
  • The City is working on a new zoning bylaw. This is the opportunity for us to make it easier for everyday people to understand the bylaw and what they can do with their own property.
• Make it easier for people to open small-scale and in-home businesses, corner stores and cafes in neighbourhoods by increasing the number of compatible uses allowed in residential zones. 
  • Let’s make it easier to open a barber shop or have a home-based accountant help with your taxes.
• Continue to support the building of housing of all types across Ward 7 while ensuring that infrastructure upgrades, additional amenities, a strengthened transit network, and investments into non-market housing occur at the same time.
• Work with administration to ensure that new zoning bylaws have the flexibility to allow for site-specific designs that can accommodate mature trees thereby retaining our critical tree canopy.

A Housing First Approach to Support Vulnerable Calgarians

A housing-first model is critical for supporting our most vulnerable Calgarians, as it is the foundational step from which all other recovery and stability flows. This approach requires us to move beyond temporary shelters and work with other orders of government to expand the service capacity of frontline organizations. To truly succeed, we must build tons of affordable and supportive housing, including community-style builds with space for wraparound services, while simultaneously defending, expanding, and decentralizing vital harm reduction infrastructure like Supervised Consumption Sites and small-scale detox centers through urgent zoning reforms. By taking these comprehensive steps we can create a continuum of care that begins with a safe, stable home and offers a genuine path forward for everyone in our community. 

GOALS:

• Truly adopt a housing first model for supporting vulnerable Calgarians
• Expand the service capacity of organizations that serve Calgary’s unhoused
• Leverage other orders of government to build and support efforts alongside the City of Calgary
• Connect unhoused Calgarians with supportive housing while reducing their interaction with the criminal justice system 

HOW WE GET THERE:

• Offer operational grant funding to organizations running daytime programming, which feeds Calgary’s unhoused and onramps them to permanent housing 
• Provide city-owned space and offer operational grant funding for grassroots-led street outreach programs
• Expand the capacity and raise the profile of Calgary’s HELP Team to reduce interactions between unhoused Calgarians and law enforcement, while connecting them to housing supports
• Provide direct support for Indigenous-led street outreach efforts
• Reintroduce public water fountains and distributed heating/cooling centers to keep unhoused Calgarians safe during extreme weather events 
• Eliminate restrictions on where city partners can practice harm reduction
• Place narcan kits at distribution kiosks throughout the city, such as in libraries and train stations and provide increased frequency of training on how to use Narcan.
• Partner with homelessness agencies to pilot a free transit pass for unhoused Calgarians modeled after Edmonton’s Providing Accessible Transit Here (PATH) program
• Amend zoning bylaw to allow more community-style housing for seniors and vulnerable groups, such as courtyard-style builds with space for wrap-around services.
• Defend Supervised Consumption Sites from cheap political attacks while working with other orders of government to ensure ongoing support 
• Fight to keep Sheldon Schumir Supervised Consumption Site open, and call on the province to expand its capacity and build more decentralized supervised consumption sites and detox centers in partnership with the city
• Change zoning regulations to facilitate a decentralized model of care by allowing for an expanded network of transitional, supportive, and empathy-led supports
• Expedite the build out of affordable housing through making land available to nonprofit housing and support organizations 
  • While this requires provincial funding, the city can help support through land availability and the streamlining of zoning.
• Expand the types of housing that can be built by-right to include novel designs that can better incorporate wraparound services, such as courtyard-style, and supportive housing designs.