Calgary: Dragging its feet on affordable housing.

The City of Calgary must do better when it comes to building affordable housing. Here are just a few examples of how the City is dragging its feet when it comes to utilizing its vacant land for affordable housing.

ContainerR Park Conversion

Recently, when reviewing some of my old Herald columns, I came across one from February 2016 where I challenged the City to move forward quickly on the redevelopment of the ContainR Park site in Sunnyside, next to the LRT station.  Now 10 years later, the City has engaged Attainable Homes Calgary to get something built there.  Ten years is too long when you have a perfect site for affordable housing i.e. community support, LRT station, grocery store and schools nearby.

In fact, the site was vacant for decades before 2016. It should have been a model for how affordable housing can be integrated into an established community 20+ years ago.

Attainable Homes Calgary (AHC) after their success in employing ATCO to factory build their recently completed  Downtown West End affordable housing project, will be creating a six-storey, 198 new affordable housing project using the same factory-built modular construction on the old ContainerR Park site. This will allow the project to be fast tracked, (AHC only got access to the property in Mach 2023) with occupancy expected to happen in Fall of 2027.

containR Park consisted of several shipping containers on a vacant piece of land for several years.

Finally Attainable Homes Calgary is converting an under-utilized city site next to the Sunnyside LRT Station into an affordable home village.

Trailer Park Redevelopment

This isn’t the only example of the city dragging its feet. On May 21, 2021, I reported on how the City had approved plans for the redevelopment of the Midfield Mobile Home park, unfortunately it took 5 years to start the construction of a new affordable home project. I realize the city first had to upgrade the infrastructure to convert the 173 trailer park sites to allow for the creation of a new community for 2,500 people, but five years is too long. 

City officials were patting themselves on the back recently when they announced the first project in the mobile home park (now called Midfield Heights) would add 180 affordable homes. But in reality, it will be almost 10 years from when the last resident moved out in February 2018 until a similar number of residents move into the new building in early 2028. They made it sound like the City was adding more affordable housing when they are basically replacing what existed before.

Yes, there are plans for a second “non-market (10 to 15% below market rents)” block. However, that doesn’t mean it will be “affordable housing” defined as rents that are 30% of household income.

Midfield Mobile Home overlooking golf course.

Midfield Village redevelopment of old mobile home park.

Bridgeland Place Closure

In early 2021, the City of Calgary announced the decommissioning of Bridgeland Place a major affordable housing complex near the Bridgeland LRT Station and walkable to downtown. The reason for the closure was the 50-year old building had failing heating and water systems, asbestos concerns and prohibitive operating costs. 

Note: There are several similar buildings in East Village of the same vintage which are still operating by other affordable housing operators.

It took the city two years to gradually relocated residents to other homes across the city. The city is now undertaking a $109-million revitalization of the building to create a mixed-income housing development scheduled to be complete by late 2027, with residents moving in by 2028 i.e. seven years later. The new building will have a mix of affordable housing and market housing, with the rent paid by the higher income residents used to help fund the redevelopment.  Ultimately, the City will spend $90M with no net gain in affordable housing.

Ironically, the City owns the vacant land on the west side of the building, which it is looking to sell to a private sector developer. But again, the City is dragging its feet, as there are no specific plans for the sale. Seems to me it would have been a better plan for the City to build a new tower first so the residents in the old tower could stay in the immediate area and then revitalize the old tower so that we didn’t lose 220 affordable homes for seven years.

Before

After

Village Block Success Story

On a positive note, in Parkdale, just west of Lics Ice Cream shop, the City owned a vacant piece of land for 30+ years was finally sold in 2023 to the Liberty Housing Organization (who specializes in affordable housing in partnership with Truman Homes). The Liberty/Truman partnership had shovels in the ground by November 2024 (yes, one year later) and people are moving in now. That’s execution!

The handsome brick building with its striking arches at street level doesn’t look like affordable housing. It has 57 one and two bedroom homes with rents set at approximately 65% of market rates for the next 20 years. It is expected a one bedroom will rent for around $740/month and two bedroom at $800/month.

One must wonder why it took so long for the City to finally sell the land to an experienced non-profit housing agency who could create this much needed housing quickly.    

Last Word

These are just four examples of how the City of Calgary dragging its feet when it comes to creating more affordable housing.

In 2024, the City of Calgary announced it was going to facilitate the construction of 3,000 new affordable housing home each year for the next 10 years.  Unfortunately, since then, they have only averaged 1,000/year so far.

As one experienced residential builder told me – “the City simply can’t execute on any of their plans.” Enough said!