City council hopes to ease Calgary’s tight rental market

CALGARY – City council has passed a motion to look into fast tracking affordable housing and rental space throughout the city.

The motion was put forth by councilor Druh Farrell on Tuesday, who says recent flooding in Calgary has wiped out the city’s rental market, leaving hundreds if not thousands of people displaced with nowhere to turn.

“I do know in Sunnyside, as one example, there are a number of secondary suites that are non-complying. They are not illegal, but they do not fit into current bylaw. If they rebuild them, they would be illegal – so how do we help these people comply with the bylaw?” asks Farrell.

She wants administration to do quick work to find solutions by changing zoning to allow back alley suites and even exploring the idea of using so-called ‘Katrina style’ housing – small cheap and easily assembled.

But others warn against making quick decisions.

“Be careful what you do, and what you build… and what you put in place,” says Gerry Baxter, Executive Director Calgary Residential Rental Association. “It’s costly to develop it, and how long are you going to leave it there? You don’t want to be interfering with the market place… the market will look after itself.”

Baxter says there is no denying it’s a tight market place, and the flood couldn’t have happened at a worse time, with thousands of students set to come to Calgary for fall semesters at local post-secondary institutions.

However, he argues the market was even tighter back in the ‘boom years’, and within a year it had sorted itself out

Council voted to have administration bring solutions to the table, in September.