Oakville News received the following letter from reader Ron Bell in response to a recent Oakville News story.
I’m writing to comment on the May 9 article by Kim Arnott, entitled 'A bad deal’: Town council rejects federal government’s density demands.
Ms. Arnott might have done a better service to your readers by offering balanced coverage of the housing density issue discussed at the May 6 Planning and Development meeting. Had she done this, the article could have stimulated healthy discussion, leading the Council, Town planners and the public to put forward more ideas into how Oakville can achieve shared goals, regarding increasing housing density.
I think there are misleading points in the article. The claim that the Town voted against allowing extra density in existing neighbourhoods is not quite accurate. The Town voted against specific bylaw changes to allow increased density, "four as of right" town wide and four-storey apartment buildings in the Sheridan College area.
As emphasized in my delegation at the May 6 Planning meeting, the issue is not about whether we need to increase density to provide more housing availability and affordability but how to do it - and those bylaw amendments were not the right way.
They were quickly added to the HAF (Housing Accelerator Fund) application. It was a rushed attempt to get an unknown amount of the incentive funding without due analysis, public consultation, and without seeking or looking at alternative proposals. Growth has to be managed regardless of the urgency to build, otherwise you may very well end up in a mess which makes things a lot worse, as Councillor Nanda pointed out is the case in North Oakville.
It is not true that the CMHA or the Federal Housing Minister, Sean Fraser, "demanded" that these two items be added to the application. They were suggested as examples of increasing density that would make the application more competitive with other municipalities. You may find the letters between Mayor Burton and Minister Fraser under the online resources from the Jan. 22 council meeting.
The option to come up with other alternatives to increase housing density was also raised by MP Pam Damoff at the Nov. 28 public meeting. She stated "if Oakville doesn’t want to move to four [from "three as of right"], then offer other suggestions," and "Oakville’s the only municipality in Canada right now that seems to be having a problem coming up with a way to creatively build houses."
This statement prompted me to deliver my delegation at the May 6 public meeting before the vote was held, with the key focus on rejecting the two proposed items while offering feasible alternatives.
Ms. Arnott quoted three of the delegates who urged to accept the proposed changes yet omitted any details from those who spoke in opposition. These details included the numbers that support how well Oakville has been doing to increase housing, much more than it’s share (leading in Halton Region and third in Ontario).
She quotes delegate Geoffery Belcher as saying, "The reality is that you guys really oppose everything. You oppose duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, mid-rise, high rise. Are you for anything at all?"
While the quote is accurate, it is highly inflammatory and also untrue. One only has to drive around the Wards to see variety of housing that has been approved by the Town and to look at the projects approved but not started and those on the planning table.
Mr. Belcher also claims that "… people are more concerned with aesthetics than actually building housing to support the next generation."
As the delegates pointed out, there are other key urban planning criteria such as infrastructure, services, traffic, parking, flooding, upkeep of properties with absent landlords and property value.
Mr. Belcher flippantly discarded the creative alternative of building residential units above wasteful parking lots, as is being done elsewhere. He, himself, suggested the same option regarding the use of parking lots at Oakville Place and Hopedale Mall in his previous delegation at the April 22 Council meeting for Midtown development.
There were many ideas brought forward on May 6 that would lead Oakville in a positive way forward in housing.
