Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
I feel like the public benefit must be there because the buildings that do have this kind of character are so popular, like the rows of colourful houses on Morris or Agricola. There just isn't much incentive for the owner aside from a desire to give back to the city or own a nice looking property.
I bet that some small competition to reward the top 10 new character renos or something like that would have an impact while barely registering in the HRM budget. Maybe there should also be an incentive and standards for wood siding and painting instead of vinyl. If half of the vinyl siding were replaced with nicely painted wood siding that alone would make a noticeable difference.
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If the city can’t bring itself to just ban vinyl siding, some kind of incentive to replace it might actually be effective. A tax break, or even a subsidy to encourage the switch. Say the city created a $10 million beautification fund over five years, paying 50 percent of the cost to install cedar shakes on the front facade of a house—or an entire house to a certain maximum. At a 10k max per house, you could hypothetically do 1,000 houses, which would have an enormous impact on the aesthetic of the city.
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