Calgary News Watch

Want to get a lot of negative press? Buy an apartment building. Jack up the rent 150%. And when everyone moves out, you don’t have to make notice or wait a year for permits and such, you can just go ahead and convert to a condo.

Residents of a Mission area low-rise apartment building are facing such a predicament. The building was recently sold and the new owners, a company, have increased the rent from $700 to $1900 without any advance warning to the residents.

A new law requires tenants a one-year notice when their apartments will be converted over to condominiums. However, there’s a loophole. (more…)

The newest in Not-In-My-Back-Yard trends is low income housing. Who wants to live next to the stereo-typed poor families, theft ridden, noise radiating, dirty eye-sore? The stereotype itself brings up images of mud-smeared toddlers running around in diapers and bare feet. Of porches falling apart in decay. Of litter blowing around the front stoop and spilling onto the neighbor’s porches.

The residents in Eau Claire are faced with these mental images the words “low income housing” provide. But not so says James Robertson, a city employee.

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Everyone is aware, sometimes painfully so, of the housing shortage in Alberta, particularly here in Calgary. The answer?  Bring in more government legislation and throw more money at the problem.  What would we do without task force recommendations!   

Premier Stelmach’s plan to improve the housing situation has two important components — incentives for homeowners to take on boarders and limiting rent increases to once a year.  There is also a promise to create 11,000 affordable housing units in Alberta within the next five years. (more…)