Dear Editor:
We expect a reasonable amount of affordable housing to come out of Bill 23. I can’t see a strategy that will achieve affordability for middle class and struggling families, and no way for municipalities to be able to provide infrastructure to support these ill conceived developments.
Right now, cities can draft their own Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) policies and mandate developers to set aside 20 to 30% of units as affordable. But with this new bill, the developers will be required to set aside a mere 5% of units in new developments as affordable.
This will also mean less energy efficient construction. It will increase the number of cars on the roads. It will require car dependency or greater public transportation expenses. It will increase property taxes.
There will be 11-room houses denying the ability of average folks to own homes and unnecessarily blowing energy consumption through the roof!
It is likely to result in fewer and more expensive homes, and higher costs for services paid by the taxpayers – us!
It will enable wholesale destruction of wetland habitats and conservation lands – and expose us all to a much higher risk of floods and other disasters.
It cuts conservation authorities off at the knees and weakens their ability to maintain stewardship over our fragile ecosystem.
This ill-conceived plan waters down or ignores required zoning reforms, creating barriers to constructing new affordable housing. The government’s own documents admit only 50,000 of a total 1,500,000 homes would be created province-wide.
When will this secretive, haphazard decision-making with calculated advantage to private companies over the public good end?
Please do what you can to fight this awful decision. Write letters, call your MPP, call anyone who has influence over what happens here or we can say goodbye to our beautiful and previously-protected green spaces.
Gerry Walsh,
Erin