EDMONTON – The City of Edmonton is giving residents an opportunity to give their input about inner-city housing.
On Saturday, the first of four consultation sessions was held at Queen Mary Park, as the city works to develop a housing roadmap for five neighbourhoods: Queen Mary Park, Alberta Avenue, Eastwood, Central McDougall, and McCauley.
“We all know it doesn’t work to come out and say ‘this is what we’re going to do.’ The new city council has really put a focus on doing excellent public engagement and participation for housing,” said Jessie Singer, City of Edmonton.
The major questions during the first consultation: How to improve housing? How to diversify housing? What types of housing are ideal?
Since 2012, five inner-city neighbourhoods have had a non market housing moratorium.
Critics say there are disproportionate amounts of social housing developments in those areas compared to the rest of the city, with no input from the community.
“Our neighbourhood, it’s one of the neighbourhoods that’s been strongly impacted negatively by bad housing policies, by negative non market housing, and so I think its nice now for the city to come back and say ‘What do you want?,'” said Randy Shuttleworth, Queen Mary Park resident.
“We want to hit the reset button and take some time off, allow some space to breath and start to have a conversation,” explained Christel Hyshka, City of Edmonton. “I think tensions were getting a little heated. It wasn’t a good environment for collaboration.”
City staff believe it’ll take until at least next summer before everything concludes, with new policies and directives expected to follow.
Sandra Maygard – who’s a resident of Queen Mary Park – is just happy to have a voice.
“Sometimes I have issues with the way the city does consultation because I’m not sure how much of what is heard is actually incorporated,” says Maygard. “But I do think it’s important that people have the opportunity to speak.”
The next consultation session will happen Monday night at the Ital-Canadian Seniors Association.
With files from Global Edmonton’s Eric Szeto