A near capacity crowd came to the Burlington Performing Arts Centre Monday (May 27) to attend the inaugural Mayor’s Speaker Series with keynote speaker, urban planner Jennifer Keesmaat.
Titled Innovation to Action: Making Housing More Affordable, the event was presented by Mayor Marianne Meed Ward and Councillor Kelvin Galbraith, deputy mayor for business and red tape reduction.
Shawna Stolte, deputy mayor for housing was not present, nor did she endorse the Mayor’s Speaker Series due to concerns she had.
Meed Ward differentiated her series from that of former mayor Rick Goldring’s Mayor’s Speakers Series by saying, “He brought speakers in to talk about the issues. That’s what this is. The difference is that I really want it to lead to action. The whole idea is bringing people together, having a conversation, hearing from innovative speakers who are doing different things and then turning that into what works for Burlington.”
Galbraith – both before and during the presentation – outlined the huge growth that Burlington, and specifically Aldershot, is experiencing with new developments.
“We have almost 40 buildings in our (city-wide) pipeline with over 10,000 units and it seems to be the Aldershot MTSA that’s going first,”Galbraith said. “What I do on an almost daily basis is deal with developers.”
Burlington’s new CAO, Hassaan Basit, also spoke to the audience on the main stage, explaining what the City of Burlington has done and is doing to bring more housing to the city.
Before the presentation, attendees were invited to chat with staff from various city and regional departments and a few non-profit organizations involved with housing issues such as Habitat for Humanity, Indwell, Home Suite Hope, and the West End Home Builders Association.
Keesmaat, president and CEO of Collecdev Markee and principal of the Keesmaat Group, returned to Burlington with a modified version of the presentation she made at the Burlington Climate Change Council event held on May 7, to be more focused on attaining affordable housing.
“It’s all about land use,” admitted Keesmaat. “I’ve actually titled my presentation ‘Dreaming the Dream’, because I think that the foundation of any society is having access to housing that is safe, is stable and is affordable,” she said. “So I’m going to be talking tonight about dreaming the dream again. What is it like to have access to great housing. Then I’ll be talking about things that all levels of government can do to deliver on that dream.”
One of Keesmaat’s slides, The Housing Continuum, showed a vision of how society views housing. The ideal (ie. dream) is that everyone has ‘market ownership’. Whether that be a detached house on a large lot or a spacious condo close to amenities but something that doesn’t cost 12 times a family’s annual salary.
At the other end of the spectrum are the homeless. In between are ‘Market Rental Housing’; ‘Affordable Rental Housing’; ‘Social Housing’; ‘Transitional Housing’; and ‘Emergency Shelters’.
Keesmaat explained, “A lot of people are feeling a lot of despair around housing, and access to housing and there’s a tremendous amount of insecurity in our society right now, whether it’s young people or newcomers or seniors. Even people who have homes are worried about hanging on to the homes that they have”.
According to Keesmaat, the sweet spot would be to expand affordable rentals together with a mixture of housing with a diversity of amenities such as well appointed parks, services like dentists and doctors, activities such as dance studios and art classes, and plenty of coffee shops, grocery markets and places for people to meet all within walking distance.
Keesmaat stated that good transit can save money and replace the need for everyone to have a car if these amenities are close at hand and easy to get to. She explained that the second largest expenditure for a family is the car, plus gas, plus insurance, etc, that people need to get to most services today.
Through examples that Keesmaat and others have developed, the former Toronto chief planner demonstrated not only that it could be done, but that it has been done around the world and in Canada – but not enough.
Because the Speaker’s Series is titled Innovation to Action, Keesmaat then turned to what needs to be done - with slides, bullet points and suggestions that we (including the public) need to put aside our different approaches and concerns and work together to find solutions to affordable housing and a liveable city.
“We all have someone, one degree away, in our lives that is experiencing insecure housing or unattainable housing” Keesmaat observed. “Building just a series of tall buildings around transit stations will not work.”
“Collaboration is hard,” said Keesmaat. “Starting points for all levels of government should be to unlock suitable government-owned lands for development; invest in and build infrastructure to support smart growth; and revise redundant processes that elongate approvals and drive up costs.”
So it would seem that the challenge has been laid down by Keesmaat to have Burlington work with the public, the private sector and other levels of government to spring into action by developing a complete approach to community planning, something hinted at by the name of the series “Innovation to Action.”
No word on when the next in the Speaker’s Series will be or the topic to be discussed.
