Brentwood Development and Transportation
Committee
Council Public Hearing on Blanket Rezoning
by Melanie
Swailes on behalf of the Development and Transportation Committee
By the time you read this, the Blanket
Rezoning Public Hearing will be long over, but Bugle deadlines mean that
I often have to submit an article before knowing what the outcome will be. On
March 27, I spent an entire day at City Hall, ending at 9:30 pm as the last
speaker of the day.
After
spending almost 12 hours at Council, I have great respect for the Councillors
who were on their fifth successive day, but were still attentive and asking
questions of presenters. Even though the rezoning hearings lasted for weeks, it
is so important that each citizen who wishes to speak can do so.
It was
impossible not to feel empathy for some of the presenters who spoke about their
difficulties in finding housing they could afford. Some speakers talked about the
hardships their families have faced or about their immigration experiences. Some
have been the victims (sometimes several times) of unscrupulous landlords, of “reno-victions”
(renovations so the rent can be raised significantly) or evictions (because the
landlord is tearing down the house or simply wanted to double the rent and gave
them notice). Many people were genuinely struggling and viewed blanket rezoning
as an opportunity with no downside for them: build lots of housing, anywhere
and everywhere, and hopefully some of it might be suitable or affordable for
them.
But
it is clear that the Blanket Rezoning experiment didn’t succeed in providing
“affordable” housing. As noted in the January column, only about half of one
percent of 2024 housing completions were non-market units reserved for
households meeting low-income thresholds (Ed.). If a household can afford to pay, say $1200 per month, then we
can’t expect the free market to provide that price point if the average rental
rate is $1800. If the goal is income-specific housing, simply building more
densely is not the solution: that would be like suggesting that since grocery
costs are so high, the solution lies in building more Co-ops or Superstores.
There
were many presenters opposing blanket rezoning based on their lived experience,
who were really upset about what had happened next to them. Some shared
poignant stories and showed photos of very large developments next door, some
with 12 dwelling units replacing what had previously been a single house. One
person shared an awful story about how the extensive excavation next door
subsequently ruined her backyard trees – an arborist confirmed that too many
tree roots had been severed, which the large trees couldn’t survive. The
homeowner then had to pay to have her trees cut down and to grind out the roots.
It is not NIMBYism to oppose bad designs that negatively impact your home or
the community.
Blanket
rezoning granted new rights to developers, and many took advantage by designing
over-scaled projects that few could have anticipated – it has become all about
maximizing the number of bedrooms for rent. The need for housing should not be a
reason to allow building forms with suites that are completely below grade,
dark and depressing, or dwellings that replace one bungalow with 29 separate
bedrooms on a single lot.
We
seem to have lost the “Planning” part of Development Permit applications. Start
with the existing community context. Does this DP make sense in this location?
Ask the residents; they are the experts in their own community. On three recent
DP applications, nearby residents have told us that a “City” tree on the boulevard
would need to be cut down, and we will fight to retain our public trees.
Developers should respect the site constraint of the context of what is already
existing next door and on the street. If the proposed project is too large to
“fit in”, then this isn’t the right lot for that building. If the plan involves
paving over most of the property and removing boulevard trees, then scale back
the proposal. Don’t suggest that “change is hard”; instead recognize that “bad
change is hard.”
Many
of the speakers at Council stated that they were not opposed to increasing
density in their community. But they emphasized that it had to be thoughtful,
contextual, and sensitive to existing homes. We can have both more housing and
good urban form.1 Noted Urban Planner Patrick Condon put it best when
he wrote “we must move beyond the blame game that pits so-called NIMBYs against
YIMBYs2 and frames local democracy as an obstacle to progress. Local
residents and their elected officials are not enemies of affordability; they
are essential partners in crafting sustainable, inclusive urban policies.”3
We
can reach some common ground. Start with the premise that the neighbourhood
matters, and that in urban planning, the “customer” is the community.
Larry Beasley4, a respected
Canadian Urban Planner, states that “You start from one basic principle as a
planner: Citizens are as smart or smarter than you are, and they have a lot
more information at the local level than you can ever have.”
If
you want a say in how Brentwood evolves, please provide feedback on any DP near
you and get involved with our Community Association: email [email protected].
References
1.
https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/3/31/we-can-have-both-more-housing-and-good-urban-form.
2.
YIMBY
refers to “Yes in my Backyard.”
3.
https://macleans.ca/economy/why-canadas-housing-crisis-is-not-just-a-supply-and-demand-problem/.
4.
Author
“Vancouverism,” one of Canada’s most respected Urban Planners.
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