New Zoning: Sell Your House While You Still Can

“My significant concern is that the public has no idea the tsunami that’s coming. How are we going to make the public aware, in very clear language, the depth and scope of what we’re wrestling with and how the city is going to continue to evolve into a city that we won’t recognize?”

River Councillor Riley Brockington on the massive city overhaul of single-unit residential housing

Brockington’s concern is well-founded. Given the history of the city’s planning department and its well-honed skill at ignoring public input in planning, it’s doubtful the municipality wants you to know this is happening.

Planning is so much smarter than the rest of us that they know what is best. At the consultations, check to see if any of the planners pull a Donald Trump and snooze off. See the glazed look on our so-called public servants as they go through the motions of listening to people who are likely to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on their home when a four-storey unit is built next door.

My advice to people who live in areas such as Westboro, Wellington Village, The Glebe, New Edinburgh and Highland Park is sell while you can still get a good price for your property. Imagine trying to sell your home when two or three summers are taken up by construction next door. Imagine trying to sell after the apartment is completed with four-storey balconies hanging just beside your property. Or the open parking lot beneath the building making one great-big eyesore. Nothing like massive concrete underground-parking-style architecture above ground.

Can you say no privacy? I know you can.

Can you say ugly? I know you can.

Extensive public consultations are just PR. This council is owned by the development community and when developers say jump, the participants leap to Olympian heights. All the consultations in the world don’t change the fact that the fix is in.

Furthermore, your federal government is threatening to withhold housing money if intensification does not occur. The province has deemed that three-storeys is required in formerly R1 residential neighbourhoods.

Zoning was once, when the city government was honest and thinking of the welfare of residents rather than their career and electoral future, an informal contract between homeowners putting a lifetime’s earnings into their dwellings that their neighbourhood would stay the same, and the city government. Then the City of Ottawa cared about its traditional neighbourhoods, its citizens and their welfare.

Now the city only cares about politicians and public servants who have won the cash-for-life lottery and want to keep it that way by kowtowing to the development industry.

Homeowners don’t have a chance. They will not win this fight. There’s too much government, too much sloth, too much contempt for Ottawa residents to change this mess.

So save yourself because the city doesn’t care a whit about you.

Protect yourself.

Sell while you still can.

Ken Gray

The Stumpy: In the video you see trees and parks next door. In Ottawa, that will be your house and backyard.

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