Quote:
Originally Posted by adamuptownsj
This plan is deranged. Might even be worse than status quo. Homeless camps allowed on private land outside of red zones as long as the landowner doesn't personally object? What about neighbours? If I owned 6 acres in Drury Cove could I graciously set up a tent city? What about absentee landowners?
Nature Conservancy and and the Lantic Sugar site are 'yellow zones' which is horrendous. The latter will indeed remain an encampment site, per city council. There's been like four fires there this summer.
I have a feeling our brain trust at city hall are patting themselves on the back over this. The backlash will be massive.
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Do you, because I guess you could... if you do! I also wonder, would you be able to charge a "camping" fee? Or would the police actually respond to calls to evict encampments without permission on large, vacant private properties in the middle of the vast wilderness found within the Saint John city limits?
It will be interesting if temporary encampments do end up popping up out that way in Drury Cove, especially
that large 100 acre parcel that is directly on the border with Rothesay's Kennebecasis Park.
Maybe such a "development" would actually help get some major projects green lit, funded and built, across the entire Saint John region, and not just within the city of Saint John.
The residents of the outlying KV suburbs certainly do have an outsized political influence compared to us lowly Saint Johners, so if encampments did start popping up in the yellow zones within the Saint John city limits, in Rothesay's "backyard", it could actually lead to sustainable solutions to homelessness and affordable housing being funded and built quicker, across the region.
I've heard many times that homeless people that try and live throughout the outlying Kennebecasis Valley suburbs eventually get "dropped off" at the Saint John city limits. Maybe it's time for Saint John to start doing the same thing and start dropping them off near the city limits to temporarily camp out in the woods on Rothesay's doorstep?
Really though, in the long term, I hope this large, 100+ acre parcel of vacant land is made available for development.
However, in the short term, I think it would be very difficult for the city to police and disband encampments on vacant private properties like this and many other vacant properties that are found all around the city of Saint John. The more problematic people that chose to relocate "into the woods" and away from the city centre and residential neighbourhoods, the better.
It doesn't seem Rothesay, Quispamsis, Grand Bay and Hampton want to pay their fair share towards solutions within the city of Saint John or within their own communities to address homelessness epidemic and shortage of affordable housing which are regional problems. There's lots of people from KV who become homeless in Saint John... and it's our city that deals with the worst parts of this regional issue. We need to found much more ambitious solutions for deeply affordable housing, along with addressing things like mental health, addictions, violent offenders, and providing shelter space and transitional housing where it's needed the most.
Housing NB and the provincial government should be funding a massive push for affordable housing, including publicly owned projects that are built by private companies, and privately developed projects that are subsidized by public funding from all three levels of government, including subsidy in the form of 10+ year tax holidays from the city for any building built over 10 stories with a majority of affordable housing, with a tax holiday of up to 20 years for buildings that reach up to 40 storeys or above with .333 years of tax holiday added for every floor above 10 storeys up to a ceiling of 40 storeys or 20 years maximum.
Obviously, the province would beed to step in and pay for infrastructure upgrades, but Saint John has room for dozens and dozens of high rises developments popping up all over the city from the Uptown Core, to the West Side, to Millidgeville and Drury Cove, to East Point, Red Head, and beyond. If Saint John could truly work out a fair deal for industrial property tax reform, along with a fair deal from the outlying suburbs, and support from the province, Saint John could see its own type of "Little Brooklyn" projects become possible, and high rise developments could be the key to retaking the #1 spot back from Moncton... not just as a city, but as a CMA.
Look what Halifax has made possible with regional amalgamation, a growing port, and a more than fair tax situation with the province and its outer suburbs.
If the government of NB decided to make a targeted, massive investment in Saint John, its first city, its most deprived city, and modelled the new municpal model on the Halifax model as a single, regional municipality, it would become the largest municipality in NB again overnight, and the province could support it to once again become the largest CMA again. Followed by a similar investment plan for Moncton, but clearly, the money is better spent in Saint John right now, since the Moncton economy doesn't need the stimulus and infrastructure spending nearly as bad as Saint John needs it. Saint John's got wooden pipes for petes sake, and some of the oldest, most decrepit infrastructure of any city in Canada.
Saint John and its regional leaders and provincial partners should be doing everything they can to make sure Saint John has a path to surpass Halifax as Canada's largest container port on the Atlantic Ocean. Our Port CEO has said previously, one Port Saint John's biggest limiting factors is the relatively small population size of the Saint John CMA, so clearly, Saint John needs to grow its population as much as possible to sustain this rapid growth at the port. On the other hand, Saint John has a really good location for the the
entry port model, which built the economies of Hong Kong and Singapore. Obviously, Saint John isn't going to be the next Hong Kong or Singapore,
, but it does have enormous potential to take advantage of the unique geographical and geopolitical location of its port as a hub to an entire continent of commerce.
The port could get the CMA to 400k and beyond one day, especially if all three levels of government are willing to step up and embrace a big, bold vision for Canada's oldest city. All it will take is a premier and a PM with vision and an ambitious plan to make it possible. Carney is the right type of premier to make it happen, but is Susan Holt the right type of premier? If Carney wins another election, and does Holt, maybe Wayne Long
isthe mayor we will need to tenaciously pursue federal and provincial funding to realize a more ambitious future for this city?
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