Intensification pushes up housing prices out of reach of the young middle class.
The Citizen invited candidates in the Oct. 24 municipal election to share their thoughts:
“I’ve known Dan to be an effective organizer and project manager, with a heart-felt commitment to our community, especially good government, human rights, and the environment. Born at the Civic Hospital, Kitchissippi is in Dan’s DNA.” — Vera Gara, Westboro
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A new era began for Kitchissippi eight years ago with the promise of taming the Intensification tiger and bringing us an improved public transportation system. Are we better off now than we were eight years ago? I don’t think so. Actually, the situation has gotten much worse.
My fight against “densification”: Intensification pushes up housing prices out of reach of the young middle class. The excerpt below is important.
“Research in Vancouver, Canada and other locations has shown an association between densification, on one hand, and higher land prices and diminished housing affordability on the other … In the U.S., meanwhile, higher density urban areas have substantially higher housing costs. Around the world, more severe housing and land-use regulation has been associated with losses (in housing affordability)… Nor does densification have any of the purported environmental benefits now being pushed by the permanent DC urban-centric establishment … The pro-density Terner Center projects that if California’s cities followed the density guidelines, the impact on emissions would be at best one percent … promoting at-home and hybrid work reduces greenhouse gas emissions without embracing a density mantra which is widely unpopular in most communities.”
— From Serfing the Future by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox in Quillette
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One person I spoke to while canvassing caught me off guard. Karen asked me what was the single most important issue for which I was running. Perhaps I was tired but I choked up a bit as I replied “The Ottawa River.” Ottawa Council should speak out more in its defence. Below is a reflection I posted on Facebook.
The Ottawa River is Family to me. The Kitchissippi/Ottawa, where my father paddled upstream, climbing the Rocher Fendu, and down beyond Montreal to New York City, in the ’30s; where my brother and sisters swam with me at Norway Bay, catching minnows with our towels in the ’50s and where Lavalin and ‘friends’ now want to store nuclear sludge, el cheapo, above ground, threatening our bathing and drinking water for generations. City Council has done next to nothing. Vote me in and we can work together to save our future.
My instincts are to protect the river, while restoring it as a transportation route. City council should lobby the provincial and federal governments to establish an Indigenous supported agency to build and operate a series of locks, each with an eel ladder, along the Ottawa and French Rivers to Manitoulin Island on Lake Huron for personal leisure boats. First Nations peoples should get the construction and operating jobs from the locks system.
City councillor is a continuation of my community service, using my problem-solving experience. I will give 25 per cent of my take-home pay as your councillor to a different local charity every payday. It is actually your money anyway.
— Dan
