City council approves updated housing strategy

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on July 26, 2024.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

City council on Tuesday voted to approve the updated municipal housing strategy as a guiding document.
On July 11, a motion to have council support it was defeated by a 4-4 at the meeting of the Economic and Finance Standing Policy Committee, which consists of all council members.
Deputy mayor Jeff Carlson was absent from that meeting.
On Tuesday, the matter was pulled from the consent agenda to be dealt with again by council whose members were all present for the meeting.
The motion to accept it was broken into two parts with the second calling on council to direct administration to return to the annual operating budget review at the November Economic and Finance SPC with a proposed implementation plan and associated funding allocation request.
Tuesday’s vote to accept the strategy as a guiding document was approved unanimously by council while the second part on its implementation passed by a 5-4 vote with mayor Blaine Hyggen along with councillors Rajko Dodic, John Middleton-Hope and Nick Paladino opposed.
Dodic, who at the SPC had voted against the updated strategy, said he would support it only because he’s curious to see “what sort of strange realities” the federal government is going to try to impose upon municipalities.
He reiterated his concerns about the engagement process contained in the strategy.
“I’ve heard council members say that we allow citizens to have input as if somehow that suggests if they haven’t provided input that those who had somehow” had spoken for what he called the “extremely silent minority,” said Dodic.
“So we have this guiding document in principle with many objectives and many actions that really may sort of bind us in the sense that “‘boy, they went through a lot of work and maybe we should go along with it’ so I am not satisfied with the engagement process.”
An engagement overview of the plan showed 21 engagement sessions had 209 individuals, five city councillors and 61 organizations represented.
Paladino noted the plan identifies gaps in the city’s housing needs and “describes a variety of options along the entire housing continuum from shelters to supportive housing to home ownership eventually.
“The location of future multi-family properties should be identified early on in the planning process so that everyone is clear on what can or can’t be built on vacant parcels. And proposals for in-fill projects should still be directed through the traditional rezoning process,” Paladino said.
“I will not support anything that resembles blanket zoning in all neighbourhoods as Calgary did,” he said, because that “will disrupt existing development, puts a strain on existing infrastructure, increases competition for on-street parking and reduces the urban tree canopy and negatively impacts adjacent properties as well,” he added.
Councillor Belinda Crowson said a couple of years ago a group of nine smart people created a document that said they were going to create safe and secure housing for everyone and that they needed to review housing needs and create a municipal housing strategy.
She added “I hope that group of nine people are as smart today” and implored council to pass the plan.
“We know housing is an incredible need in our community,” Crowson added.
On the second motion, Carlson made an impassioned plea about the reason for supporting the action component of the plan.
He said having the plan is a big step and he was relieved it passed.
But the implementation “is just as important to me because it gives some direction,” Carlson said.
Without implementation, it will sit on a shelf unless council members bring forward individual initiatives, he added.
“Approving this section doesn’t commit council to anything. I want to make that perfectly clear. This plan does not commit to blanket rezoning, it does not. In fact this council already has a resolution that we are not going to discuss that until the full municipal development plan is brought forward in future years. Actually we won’t even be here, it will be some other group,” Carlson said.
“Housing is of utmost concern to our community right. Read the needs assessment. The needs assessment is pretty factual, you don’t have to do a lot of public engagement on the needs assessment. You look at the facts. How many people are here, how many people need housing? You talk to the housing providers and you say ‘what are you hearing?,'” he added.
Carlson said in orientation that some new council members said the previous one dithered, did nothing and didn’t approve a housing strategy or act on the shelter.
He said that council “chickened out” and he doesn’t want the current council to also do that.
“We’ve got a chance here to move housing forward,” Carlson said.
The Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce has supported vote, saying on Wednesday in a statement from CEO Cyndi Bester that “the Municipal Housing Strategy represents necessary progress for our city, and we thank Council for the decision to revisit this resolution. We also hope to see Council revisit the Land Use Bylaw update which has been moved to the 2026 agenda.”

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