I Support Blanket Up-zoning

Hello council, my name is Phillip Meintzer, and I am a 33-year-old resident of Renfrew, and a relatively recent home-owner. I’m speaking to you today in favour of blanket rezoning, because in order to tackle the housing crisis we need to mobilize every available tool at our disposal.

Up-zoning isn’t a silver bullet, and it will need to be combined with other mechanisms to make housing more accessible for everyone — such as non-market housing and rent caps. But eliminating the need for a hearing for every instance of rezoning should certainly help speed up the process of densification, which is desperately needed.

Some of the other speakers have called this a one-size-fits-all approach, and I would push back against that, because all this does is enable a few other options, and allows them to happen more quickly. That doesn’t sound too scary to me.

A recent news story showed how Austin Texas just experienced its largest year over year decline in rents after they streamlined permitting and up-zoned most of their city. This created an oversupply in multifamily housing which has been responsible for the drop in average rents. That’s what we should be trying to do here.

It’s disappointing to hear so many people talk about impacts to community character when people are struggling to find places to live. I’m less worried about how my neighbourhood looks or feels than I am about friends who face housing insecurity.

Community character arguments come off sounding grossly similar to anti-immigrant rhetoric where people feel like they have the right to “police” who qualifies as a desirable Canadian (or a desirable neighbour in this case). It’s not as if Calgary has always looked the same way throughout its entire history. I look forward to having more neighbours from diverse backgrounds.

As someone who recently went through the miserable process of finding and buying a home in this city, I wish there had been a greater diversity of options available to me within already established neighbourhoods nearer to the city centre. We ended up finding a small, 112-year-old single family bungalow, but I don’t have any problem with duplexes, fourplexes, or row homes being bult next door to us. You can’t claim to be pro-densification but against densification it when it’s next door.

I ask you to please vote in favour of up-zoning, and I thank you for the opportunity to speak today.