Quote:
Originally Posted by Cage
The ultimate goal of Nenshi's Better Idea #1 was to have safe, affordable, legal housing for all Calgarians. However better idea #1 falls apart on detailed examination.
Safety runs in direct competition with the other two reasons for BI#1, increase the safety factor and affordability decreases, the landlord/homeowner must increase rent to cover their additional costs. Legal contrasts with safety as its cheaper to remain illegal secondary suite.
Legal housing would require more than just removing the redtape barriers. Current illegal secondary suite landlords will not convert to legal suites if the costs are too high, no matter how much the administrative burden is reduced. Similarly, new secondary suite homeowners will not go the legal route if costs are too high.
Affordability is where BI#1 really falls apart, for all the reasons I have highlighted above. Everything BI#1 increases the cost of secondary suites, to the point where costs for secondary suites would be equivalent to regular apartments. This really points to Nenshi's weak spot, he is very intelligent policy wonk but cannot cost out his proposal or minimize the unintended consequences. Result is that Mayor Nenshi will get a great secondary suite policy framework enacted that will do nothing to improve affordable housing, increase public safety, or provide a tangible benefit to Calgarians.
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I have to disagree. The ones that want to provide safe proper secondary suites are caught up in red tape. I agree that illegal secondary suites would be expensive to redo and owners would not be inclined to do it. Would a fine of $10,000 on first offence (assuming major safety violations, zoning issue could be a smaller fine) get them moving? It wouldn't be that hard to sting people either. A team of 5 bylaw officers looking through ads, checking ads online and in the paper cross referencing the location with the zoning to find potential violations wouldn't be to hard. Then publicize it to put the fear in the landlords of illegal suites.
But, the city doesn't want to make the secondary suites ridiculously expense overnight so there has to be lots of safe secondary suites on the market. So yes the first step is to cut red tape. Second get as many up to code secondary suites as possible on the market and then third step is to crackdown on existing suites.
On a side note, the candidates in my ward have suggested amnesty for existing illegal suites that are brought up to safety code (or already but not correctly zoned).
So in my view there are two major factors to the equation. Availability and safety. If people of Calgary want to improve safety of these units and keep prices stable then the availability must increase. The biggest problem with the red tape is that even honest people get caught with illegal suites because something small (interconnect the smoke detectors, drywall needs to be 3/4" not standard 1/2") gets missed that would have been noticed on inspection. These small things are not overly expense if done from the beginning but to fix it afterward is big bucks.
Edit:
I saw Cages response to others on this afterward. I don't quite understand how the better idea falls apart. Most of the things you mentioned are inline with how I see things. But zoning issues and how the things are determine to be up to code is really all red tape. What is considered safe and want isn't is really all words on paper. Tomorrow the building code could change to say the 3/4" drywall in not good enough, it needs to be 1" or 3/4" is over the top and 5/8" is enough. Don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to gut the building code to make illegal suites legal but I'm sure there is thing that could be modified. The number one thing that residents object to with secondary suites it parking.
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