Calgary secondary suite rules are laughably second-rate

Never mind the relative performance of our two hockey teams. Never mind whether the Edmonton Fringe is better than the Calgary Stampede.

No, if you, as an Edmontonian, ever wish to engage in a little Calgarian-inspired schadenfreude, secondary suite day is for you.

Once a month, Calgary city council goes through the painful ritual of hearing individual applications to develop secondary suites. One at a time.

According to Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, these public hearings on secondary suites take up a truly astonishing 20 per cent of council’s meeting time.

Here in Edmonton — and in every other major Canadian city — people who want to develop rental suites in their homes or over their garages simply apply for development permits, which are approved, or not, by civil servants.

Edmonton liberalized its secondary suite rules 10 years ago. Here, you can build a suite in any part of the city as long as you have a detached home and your property is larger than 360 square metres (3,875 square feet). That includes garden and garage suites, as well as suites within a house.

Since 2007, when Edmonton changed its rules, the city has granted development permits for 3,400 suites.

Calgary has a very different system. It only allows secondary suites in a handful of neighbourhoods. If you want one someplace else, you have to appeal to city council for special dispensation. Then, councillors debate the individual merits of your case to decide whether you warrant an exception. The result? Families end up quite literally in tears, begging to build suites for their in-laws or other family members while their NIMBY neighbours wail about secondary suites ruining neighbourhoods or causing parking woes.

On Monday, for example, Nha Wong and her husband, Danny, had to go before Calgary council to plead their case. Nha suffers from lupus and kidney disease, complications of which meant that she recently lost both her legs. The couple wanted to build a wheel-chair accessible house with a separate suite so Nha’s parents could live with them and help look after her. Neighbours opposed that request, arguing the new home would somehow destroy property values.

“Many homeowners on this street have invested in significant redevelopment of their homes, all predicated on the existing zoning,” was the complaint.

In the end, the application was approved. But the couple had to share painful and private information, abasing themselves in a very public forum, just to get what would, in any other city, be a fairly modest concession.

Calgary’s system embarrasses applicants. It pits neighbour against neighbour. It’s wildly inefficient and eats up one-fifth of council’s time. And of course, it actively discourages the development of suites.

Secondary suites give multigenerational families the flexibility to live together. They offer affordable housing for post-secondary students. They provide useful revenue to help buy, maintain or renovate a house. They encourage density and heritage preservation. They make cities more livable for more people.

So let’s compare. In 2008, the year after Edmonton council liberalized secondary suite rules, the city issued 42 permits for secondary suites. In 2011, it issued 325 permits. In 2016, that number jumped to 613. And in the first seven months of 2017, there were 337 approvals.

In contrast? Calgary council has dealt with just over 150 secondary suite applications to date this calendar year. One by one. In day-long hearings. And not all of those were approved.

Edmonton’s thousands of suites might not be where you’d think. Alberta Avenue, in the low-income urban core, has the largest number of secondary suites. There are also a goodly number of secondary suites in neighbourhoods near the University of Alberta, including Allendale, King Edward Park, McKernan and Ritchie.

But the neighbourhoods with the second-highest number of suites are in the far-flung suburbs: Chappelle, a brand-new area in the city’s far, far southwest, where suites are being purpose-built into brand new homes; and Oxford, a familyfriendly neighbourhood in the far northwest, which benefited from an earlier city grant program to encourage secondary suites. Two new southeast neighbourhoods — Laurel and Walker — also have dozens of suites.

Edmonton’s example has done little to change hearts and minds in Calgary, though. We’ll have to see whether Nenshi, now in his third term, can finally get his council to see reason — and rob us of our chance to snigger.