STRAWBERRY HILL DEVELOPMENT DELUSIONAL

It seems HRM has become crazed with development.

The Strawberry Hill proposal is the most recent example of this, with plans to build a series of highrise towers crammed into a small area that will be home to 3,600 or so renters. There are no single-family houses planned that I can see, or at least very few. In fact, most developments in Halifax being built are apartments.

Shouldn’t we be encouraging our residents to move out of apartments and buy houses. Where are the banks in all this?

After all, if you can afford to pay $2,000 to $3,000 a month for rent, surely a bank will lend you the money to buy a house.

Our government should be encouraging this and not suggesting, as they did recently, that regularly paying rent will be added to your credit score.

I believe a cash incentive to renters would be a more tangible benefit. This could be like a carbon rebate without the tax. That would help with the affordability issue and get people hopefully buying houses.

Our population is aging and therefore the need for these kinds of developments may no longer be feasible. There needs to be more retirement places, such as what Parkland is building off Larry Utech, to be known as Bedford Place. This is the first retirement gated community in Atlantic Canada and one of the first in Canada. This development makes sense.

Our beautiful city is descending into a development quagmire. It could become a huge mass of towering concrete apartment buildings looking bleakly at one another all in the name of high density. This could happen if left unchecked. That’s not the future we should want for HRM; at least I hope not.

John Moore, Halifax