Business organizations demand council legalize secondary suites in Calgary.  By Legalizing secondary suites in Calgary can potentially help renters and homeowners in a big way. The Calgary Herald covered this potentially good news story.

Five business organizations united Tuesday to demand council legalize secondary suites throughout Calgary, create logic out of a now-illogical system and provide more safe affordable housing for their employees.

The joint appeal of the development and property-sales groups comes a day before a city committee mulls a proposal to drop zoning restrictions that prevent legal basement or backyard apartments in most single-family neighbourhoods.

“We have a solution for affordable housing in the city under our nose and we’ve buried it,” said Sano Stante, president of the Calgary Real Estate Board.

“The city has a tendency to try to throw money at this kind of stuff, to buy apartments. Those aren’t solutions. We have a solution that exists.

Currently, most secondary suites don’t conform to strict city rules, creating a black market of tens of thousands of technically illegal low-rent units. Right now, landlords have no incentive to maintain them or keep them safe, for fear that a neighbour’s complaint and inspector’s visit could force a suite’s closure.

The system puts renters at risk, warned John Marotta of commercial property-development group, NAIOP. Current land-use policy prohibits Calgarians in many parts of the city.

“There’s some fundamental basis there for just protecting those people, making sure slum landlords aren’t take advantage of them, making them live in substandard facilities and putting their lives at risk,” he said.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi has become one of council’s most forceful advocates for a new policy that provides nearly all suites with a pathway towards legalization. But several council members have signalled they’re opposed to the massive change, since many homeowners warn that residential streets would be overrun with excess curbside parking and tranquil neighbourhoods would become shabbier.

“Let’s not talk about misperception and uncertainty about what could happen,” said Calgary Chamber of Commerce head Adam Legge. He also urged council to avoid phasing in suite legalization.

“If you don’t do it all in one fell swoop you kind of get into the game of who’s first, and who’s second, and who’s third in terms of communities and areas and districts,” he said.

The local branches of the suburb-developing Urban Development Institute and Canadian Home Builders Association also spoke out Tuesday, saying they favoured all sorts of housing choice for new Calgarians.

The leaders of both associations argued that suite reform will not only protect and expand choices for Calgary’s most vulnerable citizens – a plea echoed by anti-poverty groups – but they also want to ensure the industry’s own workers have quality rental housing.