"Council comes up with many excuses" Kamloops Daily News Editorial

April 22, 2011

The hard-working community members who created the Kamloops Homelessness Action Plan must have mixed emotions about the results of two recent public hearings to set aside municipal lands for much-needed affordable housing.

A third of the properties — two out of six — originally identified for such housing were removed based on protests by nearby residents.

While public input is essential, and the impact on neighbourhoods of such projects must be carefully considered, the rationale used by some council members for saying no to affordable housing is questionable.

At Tuesday night’s public hearing, every single member of council emphasized how strongly he or she was in favour of affordable housing. Yet seven of the eight decided against designating a River Street property for the “hard to house” after neighbours strongly objected. (Only Coun. Nancy Bepple voted on the side of putting housing on the property.)

Coun. Denis Walsh, for example, argued that green space should not be removed until completion of the City’s new parks master plan, the same reasoning he uses to object to the Riverside Park parkade.

Yet, he and the rest of council approved four of the six properties, all of which are undeveloped and are, therefore, green space.
The difference is that those four weren’t the subject of concerted public opposition.

Coun. Pat Wallace’s reasoning was that the River Street property simply isn’t a good location for such housing. “I feel this location is absolutely wrong,” she said, adding that it is too isolated from services.

Certainly, there are some shortcomings to the location, but social-housing advocates expressed no concerns about it. They should probably know better than council whether a property is appropriate for affordable housing.

Coun. John DeCicco voted to leave the property alone because “I think we should step back and slow down a bit.”

HAP will no doubt be interested to know, based on what Coun. DeCicco says, that Kamloops has enough housing for its homeless population. His comment, of course, conflicts mightily with what the HAP has concluded, which is that there are still a large number of homeless who need shelter, and will be for several years to come.

Coun. Tina Lange sent an interesting message on homelessness when she pointed out that, “You could put million-dollar homes there” and that tourists are uncomfortable around affordable-housing projects.

In other words, we should reserve only low-value properties for our homeless.

As a whole, the reasons provided by mayor and council for rejecting the River Street plan sound very much like excuses. Housing for the less fortunate is going to be controversial in almost any neighbourhood — it’s a situation in which everybody is right, and everybody is wrong.

If the council bailed on its original intentions for the land because of public pressure, maybe it should have just said that. There’s nothing particularly egregious about listening to the wishes of those who will be affected by change.

We Say editorials represent the position of The Daily News and are unsigned. The editorial board of the newspaper includes publisher Tim Shoults, editor Mel Rothenburger, news editor Mike Cornell, sports editor Gregg Drinnan, and associate news editors Mark Rogers, Stewart Duncan, Catherine Litt and Dan Spark.