Being dictated to by a Regional Council who are totally responsible for any housing issues that have evolved over many years now is a bit rich. Council is still following the advice and recommendations of their growing army of bureaucrats.
Doesn’t anyone think it a bit strange that our councillors, who we citizens elect to serve our best interests, are also the ones to employ staff to also act in our best interests and are both funded totally by the taxpayers of Niagara? Yet they still demand that we ‘have to pay developers’? Whatever happened to any idea of democracy?
But at least it would appear that in Niagara Region our politicians and bureaucrats are honest enough to admit that whilst we elect them and employ our Regional staff, whilst also picking up the total tax tab for them, we are no longer permitted to have any opinions other than to freely and happily pay higher taxes to try to fix their many, and growing, failures.
So, let's hear it for those poor developers.
I guess they went into business knowing there would be tax-funded incentives for developers to make even more profit than they were planning on. That’s pretty good for the developer, I suppose, not so good for the already overtaxed citizens.
Pelham resident Herb Sawatsky was quoted on two comments he made in front of council, the first, “it’s not a developer’s job to build affordable housing,” a comment made in a previous committee meeting on this subject. His second, “It’s not my job as a taxpayer to guarantee their profits.”
Was there any meaningful attempt to seek genuine public input into all their discussions before they chose to join the development lobby? With all the near hysteria from politicians bemoaning the lack of ‘affordable housing’ it seems they have no problem with supporting the idea of anything but ‘affordable' housing, Five hundred thousand new high-end homes having to be approved and built without a single, sober report showing just where the folk who will buy them are coming from, or, even worse, what guarantees they have that they can even afford to buy them.
To give these tax-funded handouts to developers, without any common sense rationale, based on any and all previous development shortcomings in the past, makes little or no sense.
And as to claiming support for current affordable housing projects, they are a myth. Whilst there have been developers committing to affordable housing projects, there have been few success stories as developers realized they couldn’t afford it anymore.
As for the current crop of contentious developments proposed within the Niagara Region?
Many of them by development companies that have no ties to the communities they wish to profit by, all of them approved without any regard to existing provincial, regional and municipal policies and existing Official Plans and Zoning Bylaws, and few, if any, actually welcomed or supported by the current and longtime communities, many taxpayers, who are not NIMBYs, merely homeowners who chose a community and neighborhood to invest in to be their home for themselves and their future families.
If any developer’s consultant, with their shiny, inspired brochures about 20 and even 50-storey developments, being planned for a community primarily of single-family homes, can actually believe that these can enhance that formerly happy, humble community, perhaps he should consider a career change.
As for affordable housing, I’m afraid the only rational solution is for it to be solely tax-funded, there is no economic alternative. Politicians continue to pretend they care and believe that whilst subsidizing developers to build anything they want to make a profit, just maybe a couple of them might include a few affordable homes in their mega-priced condo developments. Trouble is, of course, by the time construction begins, no one will know what the final development will look like and what price will be put on an affordable house.
As a final thought, I’m wondering just how many of our Regional councillors, and those among the 12 municipalities, are a part development lobby groups?
