Editor: This letter to Mayor Borrowman, council and Dougal (CCHC) is long overdue. I felt a significant reluctance to address this particular issue due to the apparent intimate relationship council has with the Bow Valley Builders and Developers (BOWDA).
Ultimately, I couldn’t remain silent.
A recent article highlighted once again that PAH is not the answer to our perceived housing crisis as evidenced by the slow reaction to the most recent development (MacArthur Place), and the poor response to renting one, two and three bedroom units. Eventually, September rental rates were reduced; weak demand?
I’d like to take a minute to highlight the experience my daughter faced when moving back to Canmore in May of this year. For the record, she is not one of these young people in her early 20s who thinks she is entitled to be a homeowner and we are not the parents who purchase PAH in order to rent it out to Calgary weekenders.
She and her boyfriend decided to move back to Canmore with the intention of working here until resuming their studies in September. They had a selection of no fewer than 12 places to choose from. Some were nice, some were dumps, some were affordable and others were not.
The main problem was a requirement for a one-year lease. Nothing prepared them for that challenge and it shed a whole new light on the problem of our housing issue. Many people, like our daughter, arrive in our community looking for seasonal work. The challenge of committing to a one-year lease precluded them from all but one of their numerous choices.
It appears to me that the real issue of accommodating our young people, seasonal workers and those just looking for a place to call home, is very different from the perception that council has on pushing forward the idea that we are a community desperate for PAH.
We have become a community fuelled by greed and I would love nothing more than to have a council that inspires our community to work toward providing a sustainable, liveable Canmore and stop reducing our green spaces to accommodate the unrealistic desires of BOWDA, and the bank accounts of some of our greedy landlords.
I implore you to review the true concerns of the Bow Valley housing crisis and work with the developers and big business to ensure they provide or subsidize appropriate and affordable accommodation for their seasonal staff and other members of the community employed by them, while respecting our MR lands, personal taxes and the neighbourhoods affected by your decisions.
Wendy Johnson,
Canmore
