Nenshi celebrates end of 'inhumane' secondary suite system after 8 years

Calgary mayor says he's hoping new secondary suite rules will push out slumlords and free up time in council.

Naheed Nenshistarted pushing for secondary suite reform in his first campaign platform eight years ago and this week, council approved the new application process.

"Every single individual suite had to come to council which was ridiculous and was taking up a ton of council's time and was just sort of inhumane," Naheed Nenshi told theCalgary Eyeopener.

"So now you have to apply for what we call a development permit."

The secondary suite applications took up roughly 20 per cent of council's time. Now, they'll be processed by planning department staff.

The city also has launched a secondary suite registry, which renters can search online to verify their unit is legal.

Nenshijoined Calgary Eyeopener host DavidGrayon the show Wednesday morning to discuss the new system.

Q: Is this the solution you've been looking for?

A: It is most of it. I've been saying for many years, every single time we talk about this, I think I say, well, we managed to make another first down, we're going for the touchdown. We definitely got the touchdown. We may not have got the conversion. We got the touchdown.

I mean, to be technical, I would have preferred for this to be a permitted use. Now it's a discretionary use. What that basically means is you have to apply for one extra permit.

And there is a right of appeal.

Q: What if my community association doesn't want that in my neighbourhood?

A: If thereason to appeal is because you've been granted, say, a relaxation or you don't meet all the criteria, they can then appeal. It doesn't have to be your community association; it can be any neighbour.

Q: There are those who would say, great, city hall's managed to take something that was an open and public process and find a way to hide it behind closed doors with some bureaucrats making the decision. What do you say to those folks?

A: Well, it wasn't a very good open and public process. It was a process that was incredibly arbitrary.

City council ended up approving [83]per cent of all applications after spending a ton of time and wasted effort doing it after people had to come in front of city council and tell us about their recently disabled spouse and why they needed this. It was so horrible.

• Secondary suite success rate higher for white applicants or those whotold personalstory, analysis shows

And those that we didn't approve, there was no rhyme or reason. It felt completely arbitrary, and so this way at least it is a consistent, clear process and, quite frankly, why should I have to be totally public in front of my neighbours if I want to build a place for my mother-in-law in the basement?

Remember, my mother-in-law's still allowed to live with me. I'm still allowed to rent my house or room to anybody. It's just a matter of whether there is a stove in the basement or not.

Q: Why would somebody who has an illegal suite in their home now go through this process to make it legal?

A: This is actually a really good free market argument because now that we have a registry and we make it easier for those illegal suites to be legal, it means more and more legal suites will come on the market.

As more legal suites come on the market and renters have a choice, they will crowd out and we've seen this experience in every other city that's done this it crowds out the really bad, illegal ones. It crowds out the slumlords, if you like.

No one wants to live in an unsafe suite. It's just nothing else is available. What are you going to do?

Yes, there will still be some unsafe. There will still be some illegal suites on the market. But the goal here is to increase the supply of legal ones really to crowd those out.

So we have a two-year amnesty for anyone who wants to bring their illegal suite up to code. They won't have to pay any fees. They can get on that registry, and we anticipate some pretty big take up of that.

Q: There seems to be a mindset in some communities that, frankly, there are two kinds of citizens in this city there are renters and there are people who own their houses and that people who own their houses often don't want renters in their neighbourhoods. Wedon't talk about it openly enough in Calgary but that sense has certainly been there, if you listen to some of the opposition. How will this change that?

A: I sure do talk about it openly and I will say that the conversation on Monday during that long public hearing was sort of unpleasant.

But I will also say that the vast majority of community associations in the city have made a huge shift over the last seven years on this issue. The vast majority are neutral or in support now. There are still a few that aren't.

It was funny for me because there was only, I would say, maybe a half dozen neighbourhoods represented in the opposition that we heard on Monday.

But one of them, which had several reps, kept talking about how suites will change the nature of their particular neighbourhood.

I was thinking to myself, my first experience in illegal basement suites was when I was in university. Many of my international student friends lived in illegal basement suites all of which were in that neighbourhood.

So we got to open our eyes to what's really going on and remember, this is not about renters. This is about a stove in the basement.

I could rent my house, my nice double-front-garage house in a very nice residential neighbourhood, to a university fraternity tomorrow. Totally legal. The only thing I couldn't do is give them an extra stove in the basement.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

With files from theCalgary Eyeopener.

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