[pmuhar]

Funny, just saw this on reddit

Infill Housing Myths & Realities

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There continues to be a great deal of debate at City Hall and in the media about infill housing. It is worth commenting on the accuracy of some of these claims. Firstly, I wish to commend Mayor Bowman for his consistent and balanced approach on increasing the size of the City - that is , we need both infill and greenfield development. We need to offer choice. We need to have the view of "one big city" rather than "inner city vs. suburbs".



1. COSTS “There are no costs to the City from infill housing”. This is simply not accurate. There can be heavy costs in terms of replacing old pipes. More generally, many city expenses ( eg expanding the north end sewage treatment plant) increase whether new development takes place at the edge of the city or as infill. The CBC claims in a true whopper that infill housing saves the City the cost of building new suburban schools - when in fact it’s the province which builds new schools (although the City has put money into upgrading both old and new schools) . The Free Press claims that adding more infill housing won’t increase costs of garbage and recycling - when in fact the collection companies charge more for each additional door they service.



There appears to be a belief among some that the City budget is overwhelmingly devoted to building new suburban facilities and servicing them. In fact the City budget is heavily weighted to updating and maintaining older facilities (eg $1.3 billion due over next 27 years for combined sewer separation; $20 million plus each year for each of water main and sewer main renewal; $80 to $120 million annually to repair old roads). There are also many City costs that do not depend on location of population (eg 311 services, 911, Assiniboine Park, debt servicing).



2. REVENUES Residents of infill will just use existing services, and all of the new property tax revenue can be used for new community centres or tax cuts......

full blog post
https://www.brianmayes.com/monthly-blog