Although perhaps not a visible as the issue of snow removal, which appears to be the concern du jour, the seemingly innocuous issue of secondary suites has emerged as one of the more lengthy debates down at City Hall.
Often providing an affordable housing alternative for new Calgarians, students or just those on a tight budget, secondary suites (also referred to basement suite, mother-in-law suites or granny suites) can be found in many of Calgary’s more established communities.
However, due to a council which finds itself rather divided on the topic, and the tragic death of three Calgarians who died when a fire erupted in the secondary suite they were renting, the issue of secondary suites and the regulations surrounding their application and permission is not one that appears to be going away anytime soon.
Much of the difficulty, at least in Calgary, when it comes to homeowners gaining proper permission from the city for secondary suites they have installed in their homes surround the fact that, as it stands, most applications requite the rather onerous process of changing the land-use designation for the residence.
“It’s certainly a much simpler approach in most North Canadian cities,” said Ward 7 Ald. Druh Farrell, who sits firmly on the pro-secondary suite side of council. “We’ve been discussing this for some years now, and I believe one of the reasons it’s so complicated is council. We’ve made the rules so difficult that it’s virtually impossible to get [secondary suites] through.”
The result of this complication, according to Farrell, is that many of the owners that may have otherwise gone about securing the proper permits for the suites in their homes simply operate them on an illegal basis. Although the city is quick to point out that illegal suites (those which are not properly permitted) and unsafe suites (the type evidenced in the three deaths last January) are completely different entities, the trend for owners to not even attempt to gain permission for suites in their properties is rising.
“With the message that we’ve been giving, it’s burying the issue again,” said Farrell. “It’s pushing these units underground, because why would anyone want to go through the process of legitimizing their unit when you’re pretty much guaranteed a failure at council?”
Proof of just how tricky it is to gain permission for a suite can be seen in the votes down at City Hall. In a process that requires each individual suite needing to be approved by council, a December vote on three applications saw two of them (including a proposal from city-owned Calgary Housing) rejected, largely on the basis that allowing the quite would create a secondary suite in a neighbourhood where only single family homes exist.
One of the biggest supporters of that very argument is Ward 2 Ald. Gord Lowe. During his time on council, Lowe has been very vocal on the issue of secondary suites, and believes that the surrounding community should be consulted before any secondary suite is given the go ahead by the powers that be.
“The biggest single commitment most people make in their lives is their house,” said Lowe. “In the established communities, people buy a house doing the due diligence knowing what’s going to happen around them, and I don’t think that government should change that without consulting the community.”
One of the ways that Lowe believes secondary suites can be implemented into more communities is through the use of area redevelopment plans (ARPs). In the city’s newer communities, ARPs are introduced in the planning stages, but in established communities where everything is already in place, altering zoning laws and designations is a far more arduous process.
Lowe suggests that a more streamlined ARP process could take the concerns of community residents into account while proving to be far less restrictive than the measures currently in place.
In addition to the city’s concerns of zoning and land use designation, Lowe says that the more tangible concerns of those residents already in place must be taken into account when contemplating allowing secondary suites in a given area. One the applications turned down by the city in December was for the community of Rundle, where 72 per cent of the homeowners on that cul-de-sac signed a petition against it.
“Very often in the developed communities, because of the way they’re laid out, you can have parking and traffic problems. Plus the fact that if you built your house anticipating living in a single-family area, before we change that, I think government has a duty to ask what you think about it.”
However, Farrell believes that the concerns stated by Lowe are simply masking the same “not in my backyard” mentality that arises amongst some Calgarians anytime a change, however small it may be, is proposed in any community.
“Council is having a very knee-jerk reaction to a very small group of people who don’t want [secondary suites], and the people who don’t want them usually aren’t very specific about what concerns them.”
Citing a recent poll that suggests that as much as 85 per cent of Calgarians support legal secondary suites, Farrell says that by making it so difficult for homeowners to gain permission for secondary suites, the city has encouraged the growth of the those very same illegal suites that draw the ire of community residents.
“The community in Rundle has a lot of illegal suites that are in very poor condition, so that’s the issue for Rundle. How do you solve it? You can’t shut all those suites down. If we’ve got an affordable housing problem now, it would be exacerbated [by doing so], but we should shut them down, because they’re not safe. But we must replace them with something. There’s a need for them, and somebody’s filling the need.”
Whatever the cause for all the complication and confusion, from the standpoint of those who actually enforce the laws down at City Hall, it’s up to council to figure it out.
“The decisions really rest with council,” said Laurie Kimber, land use bylaw coordinator for the City of Calgary. “Council looks to us for advice and recommendations, and certainly administration is going to respond to that.”