An opportunity for growth

Opinion

I love my neighborhood — that’s why I want more people to live here.

I love Winnipeg.

I love walking along the river to the Forks, visiting local restaurants, and having neighbours I actually know and can run into at the ice cream place or coffee shop around the corner. But here’s the thing — these places can’t thrive if we don’t let more people live in them.

The best parts of our city — the places we all love — aren’t filled with just single-family homes on big lots. Osborne Village, the Corydon strip, the Exchange District, Wolseley, St. Boniface, and many of the city’s historic neighbourhoods have a mix of housing types: apartments, townhomes, granny suites, small houses and small multiplexes next to single-family homes.

This is what makes them dynamic, affordable and walkable.

And yet, for decades, our zoning laws have prevented this kind of diversity in housing, and in turn, made these neighbourhoods a rare commodity.

The zoning changes proposed for next week’s council meeting help fix that.

There’s been a lot of fear around these proposed changes, so let’s be clear: legalizing more housing options doesn’t mean bulldozing neighbourhoods.

It simply means allowing more kinds of homes in more places.

That means young people who want to stay in Winnipeg can afford to do so. It means seniors looking to downsize don’t have to leave the community that they’ve lived in for their entire lives. It means families struggling with high housing costs might finally catch a break.

Right now, most new homes can only be large single-family houses on big lots, rather than townhomes, starter homes or smaller residences that help young families and individuals get on the ladder to homeownership.

A variety of housing helps keep our neighbourhoods lively, thriving and accessible to more people while a “monoculture” of housing makes it inaccessible over time.

In addition to making neighbourhoods more livable, gentle densification also provides numerous other benefits, including financial, environmental, and societal. Infill development increases the city’s tax base without significantly increasing its infrastructure liabilities.

Per the city’s own data, converting one house to a fourplex generates over $10,000 in additional property taxes annually. If just 0.5 per cent of single-family properties in the city are redeveloped annually, that would be equivalent to an $8-million property tax increase.

This is an ongoing benefit, in addition to the $122 million that the city is scheduled to receive from the federal government for making these and other changes to facilitate housing development.

In terms of environmental and social benefits, infill development does not consume new land, leaving forests, wetlands, and farmlands intact, and thus preserving more trees overall.

People who live in infill dwellings consume fewer resources and produce less greenhouse gases.

They are less likely to own a car and drive, and are more likely to walk, bike, or use public transit. This also helps to alleviate both parking and traffic concerns, when considered citywide.

I live in an older neighbourhood in central Winnipeg, one that is predominantly single-family, but that also includes duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, as well as small apartments and commercial buildings distributed throughout the neighbourhood.

All of these fit nicely into the neighbourhood, and for many of them, the only indication that the building contains more than one unit is the number of doors on the outside. With these proposed changes, the city could begin re-legalizing neighbourhoods like mine.

City council has the choice to move us towards a more vibrant, sustainable, and equitable city.

At next week’s public hearing, let’s take that first step.

Max Schreckenbach is an (almost) lifelong resident of Winnipeg who is passionate about building on its history for a more sustainable future.