Affordable Housing
Housing in Camrose is extremely expensive for what the City is, and while high-value housing isn't a bad thing, it needs to come with a balance of more affordable options to ensure that Camrosians at all income levels have options.
The Problem
Housing costs in Camrose have a high ceiling and a high floor - meaning that affordable housing options are extremely limited in the City, especially for residents who can't or don't drive for whatever reason. This makes it extremely hard to attract people, especially young families, to Camrose - not to mention students. Despite having a university, our City has very, very little in the way of affordable housing near Augustana (or really anywhere else).
This affects the kinds of jobs Camrosians can afford to take, because the costs of housing, gas, auto insurance, electricity, broadband, and more basically necessitate that residents need a higher wage, which creates labour issues for a lot of businesses. These prices also seriously affect the ability for people to buy a home in the City, which means tons of residents aren't actually able to start building equity because they're stuck paying rent instead. It also means that, instead of being able to participate in the economy, a ton of Camrosians are losing all their money to rent and utilities, which means that even if their wages are raised, we might not see that money circulating our economy in a way that actually improves their quality of life.
The Cause
The City of Camrose has not zoned a single new commercial district off the highway since well before the turn of the century - and even mid- to high-density housing is in a similar position. However, low-density, high-value housing keeps being built out of the City in a way that's fully unsustainable, driving up the cost of housing and making the City a much harder place to justify living in. The refusal to zone more efficiently with integrated commercial and residential zones to create local economic zones, or zone for mid- to high-density housing, has made this a problem that's reached a boiling point and needs serious action to avoid a burst.
To be clear, the cause of the problem is not low density housing being built. The cause of the problem is that nothing but low-density housing is being built - not new commercial developments, not new mid- or high-density residential developments, nothing. We needed a blend of everything, and past City Councils have failed spectacularly on this front.
My Proposal
My proposal is for the City to invest aggressively in public housing - not just low-income public housing, but public housing for a range of incomes. Ownership of these properties would be a range of City-owned public housing as well as co-operative ownership, and an indissolvable Tenant's Union would be established to make sure that the City can't simply set it and forget it. I would commit to a review of the general housing costs throughout the City to ensure that public housing development is done in places that would benefit from it, and in accordance with what is actually necessary.
The fact of the matter is that the zoning of Camrose caused this problem, but re-zoning existing neighbourhoods or bulldozing houses built a decade ago to put up apartment buildings isn't the solution. We need actual solutions to this problem, especially if we want Camrose to be able to continue to function as a rural hub. This is a model that has been pursued, with great success, in a ton of other cities around the world - and often in cities with much bigger economic struggles who make the decision at a cliff's edge. Camrose is not yet at a breaking point - and if we take bold, evidence-based action today, we never will be.
The Outcome
For Camrosians who rent, their rental rates would drop quickly - even for Camrosians who don't live in the public residences, their landlords will be forced to compete against an actual competitor, rather than an oligopoly of property management companies that dominate half the City that jack up prices way beyond what they should be. The fact of the matter is that current rental rates in Camrose are simply unsustainable - a basement suite with no utilities included currently costs more in Camrose than a downtown studio in major cities like Montreal, and with this policy, that will change.
However, this does not mean that the property values of Camrosians who currently those low-density homes will drop - to be entirely blunt, those would not be part of the public housing project because Camrose clearly has more than enough supply to meet the demand for that kind of property, and I have no interest in usurping that. This policy is directed at fixing the problem that myself and thousands of other Camrosians have faced when searching for a home, where - at best - you'd be lucky if less than half your income was going to cover your rental fees alone. This means apartments, condos, and quality, affordable development throughout the City - and while this policy is focused primarily on housing, be sure to check out my proposal for a zoning review if you want to learn more about what kind of bold new ideas I want to accompany these changes to housing policy in order to make sure that public housing is a huge success for the City: wyatttanton.com/policies-1/zoning-review