Build higher
Why we need taller homes, less parking and more neighbourhood pubs.
This October, Edmonton City Council passed a renewed Zoning Bylaw that would – amongst other things – permit the construction of three-story apartment buildings, townhouses/rowhouses and duplexes in any residential zone in the city. In so doing it ended decades of restrictive zoning that made it very difficult to build anything other than detached single-family homes in a huge swath of the city’s neighbourhoods – including the one my family and I live in. There were a lot of reasons for this change: increasing density in existing neighbourhoods reduces sprawl, which in turn reduces infrastructure costs to the city (no new roads to plow); it allows more alternatives to transportation by car; it creates conditions that support smaller local businesses like small retail, café’s and (my personal favorite) neighbourhood pubs. But a key part of the rationale is one that doesn’t just concern Edmonton but most urban and suburban areas throughout the country: increasing the supply of housing.
A Canadian problem
That we have a housing crisis in Canada is no secret and it’s not restricted to the Greater Toronto Area and the B.C. Lower mainland. Housing costs and rents have increased faster than incomes for a long time. For home buyers, while median wages have increased by 10 percent since 2019, the median home price has increased by 26 percent. For renters, the annual change in average asking price has been between 8 and 12 percent for over two years (so, while the average asking price in Canada in October 2021 was $1766, it was $2178 in October 2023). The wages of renters have not kept up with these increased costs. Many financial analysts are abandoning the old guideline that a reasonable limit for your housing costs should be about 30 percent of your income; that’s just not feasible for huge numbers of Canadians.
We’re in for changes that feel like sacrifices.
There are a lot of reasons for these changes and no simple solution, but there’s no getting around the fact that we need to increase the supply of housing quickly. Much (or even most) of that new supply is going to be market-housing, but we also urgently need more non-market (“affordable”) housing supported by governments, non-profits and co-operatives. This is the context in which changes like Edmonton’s Zoning Bylaw renewal happen: we need to clear away obstacles to building a wide variety of new housing in existing neighbourhoods.
What we give up
This is where we encounter a significant part of the challenge. That new housing isn’t always going to fit seamlessly into those neighbourhoods as they are; it will look different, it will affect the light, the traffic and the demographic composition of those neighbourhoods. There might be more noise, fuller schools, fewer trees, more renters. And those of us who live in these neighbourhoods already aren’t going to be able to control those things anymore. Homeowners who once had a de facto veto on new development (and hence on new neighbours) in their neighbourhoods will lose that power.
In other words, we’re in for changes that feel like sacrifices. We are going to have to examine carefully and honestly how much our concern for our rights – our right to determine what our neighbourhood looks and sounds like; our right to protect the value of our homes; our right to live in a neighbourhood with readily available street parking – is actually a concern for protecting our interests and our power to remain in our “comfort zones.” We are going to be tested in our commitment to the common good, when that common good might come at the expense of the value of our investments, or at the expense of some of the things that we’ve treasured about our homes (so quiet, so leafy, so much parking).
We need to do this kind of reflection now because one of the underlying causes of the housing crisis has been our own attitudes. When we have demanded that our governments not pursue any policy that will risk lowering the value of our homes (which are often key capital investments for us), or risk compromising the “character” of our neighbourhoods, or risk us having renters as neighbours, we have pushed them into either taking no action or to taking actions that only fuel the problem. Subsidising first time home buyers, for example, this inflates demand without impacting supply.
The blessing of busy
Christian social thought has long insisted on the priority of the common good over the interests of those with political or economic power. Even the Israelites in exile were abjured to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer. 29: 7). This passage is important because it does more than demand that we sacrifice our interests or our preferences for the common good; it comes with a promise of blessing when we do.
Our neighbourhoods are going to have to change. Some of those changes will look like sacrifices for some of us. But our new neighbours are just as likely to be a blessing; the new sounds and the newfound busyness are as likely to be a sign of joyful community beginning. The noise of buses might herald a day when we can save money by going down to one car (or maybe none.) And maybe you’ll get a pub you can walk to! I, for one, would consider that a blessing.
