Recently there was a Tim Bousquet editorial in The Coast about St. Pat's Alexandra and Gottingen:
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/upfro...ategory=957825
I don't want to get into the Africville stuff but there's an interesting part about the redevelopment of Diamonds and Mitchell's Enviro Depot:
Quote:
Meanwhile, the organization that is trying to build actual affordable housing for working poor people in the neighbourhood is fighting tooth and nail against a city bureaucracy that won't budge from outdated planning policies.
Last year, the Nova Scotia Housing Trust bought the dilapidated former Diamonds bar and Mitchell's Environmental Treasures buildings on Gottingen Street and tore them down in preparation for building two apartment buildings. Each will have about 100 units, half at market rates, half with subsidized rents affordable to people working low-wage jobs.
Housing Trust president Ross Cantwell tells me that he's faced nothing but frustration for 14 months from city hall, which insists on applying planning rules cobbled together in the 1990s and which contradict the regional plan adopted in 2006. City staff wanted the trust to wait three years for new plans to be adopted, but Cantwell is hopeful he can start construction ---in the summer of 2013, maybe.
For Cantwell, true affordable housing in the north end is an economic development issue. The low-wage service workers necessary for a thriving downtown need to live close to work, otherwise taxpayers will have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for increased transit and bigger roads necessary for the workers to commute, and businesses will have to pay higher wages to compensate for increased commuting costs and time.
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I completely agree about the need for low-cost housing and I think mixed market/sub-market buildings are a good way to provide it. Does anybody know specifically what the problems are holding up the development?
It's one thing if there's no funding or financing but it's just sad to have projects like this on hold due to red tape. Unfortunately the city does not have a good track record when it comes to facilitating good development (see: Jazz site a couple blocks away).