Today a facebook group that I created calling on the Alberta Government to implement rent controls has reached 1000 members! This is a major milestone, as many of the members are just ordinary Albertans! Now that it is the new year, I hope to organize events from this group. These events will focus on pressuring government to have more protections for renters. More to come soon!

If you haven’t already joined the group, I encourage you to do so. If you have already, I encourage you to invite all your friends. Can we make to 10,000 members soon? Let’s see!

Click here to go to the group. 

A new report from the CMHC (Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation) shows that rental vacancies in Calgary are up a full percentage point, now at 1.5 percent from 0.5 percent last year, but the cost to rent in the city of Calgary is downright expensive!

In Calgary the average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment is $1089, making Calgary the most expensive metropolitan city to rent a home in, in Canada – beating longstanding champion Vancouver.

I am reiterating my call for the need of rent controls in Alberta. These rent controls would make it so that landlords can not raise their rent faster then the rate of inflation and limit these increases to once a year. With the average rent increase in Alberta metropolitan areas between October 2006 and 2007 being 17.2% and between October 2005 and 2006 being 13.3%, we are having a rental crisis.

Alberta is out of the norm with rental increases of 17.2% in the previous year. Other provinces are seeing smaller rental increases during this period of time. For example, British Columbia only had a 5.5% rent increase (Meaning we will be well ahead of Vancouver in terms of rent costs next year), Manitoba had a 3.9% increase, Ontario had a 1.6% increase, Quebec had a 2.5% increase, New Brunswick had a 2.3% increase… I think you get the point. Albertans are being ripped off.

Someone making minimum wage in Alberta can not or barely can afford the average 2 bedroom apartment. The minimum wage in Alberta sits at $7 an hour.

I’m going to do some calculations just to show you how difficult it will be for someone making minimum wage in Alberta to afford a place to live. But before I do I want to say that you may hear statistics that only a small portion of Albertans make minimum wage, that is true. But those statistics do not include people making just above minimum wage (For example $8/hour or even $7.10/hour). I was once one of those making $7.10/hour, in reality I was making minimum wage. So I will do these calculations at $8/hour with no tax deductions and no missing days of work.

So here it is: Somebody working 5 days a week, no sick days, at $8/hour with no tax deductions (which wouldn’t happen) will take home $16,640. The cost for their two bedroom apartment is $13,068 per year. This leaves them $3572 left, if they didn’t pay taxes, which of course they did. That leaves this person with only $297.67 before taxes per month left for all other expenses. Not even enough for suitable food and transportation. Now imagine being a single parent making that much, having an extra mouth to feed, extra body to clothe and having to pay $300 or more each year in school fees – There goes a month’s budget. Alberta has a huge poverty problem that needs to be addressed today!

Saskatchewan looks to be headed in the same direction. With a 9.1% increase in rental rates between October 2006 and 2007 compared to an increase of only 3.6% between October 2005 and 2006. Saskatchewan can stop these unfair rental rates before they got out of hand like they are in Alberta, but with a new free market Premier, it seems very unlikely.

So to conclude, Alberta has such high rents that even a full time working person struggles to stay alive. Alberta also is the home of Calgary, the city with the largest homeless population. It’s a shame being the richest province in Canada and having so much poverty. Rent controls are needed in Alberta more than ever, and a full plan needs to be implemented to make poverty history in Alberta.

Update: I’ve made a Facebook group calling for Rent Controls in Alberta. Please join it, and we can have organized action for rent controls. Click here to go to the Facebook group.

This sad story is on the front page of CBC.ca but is very difficult to find on many american news networks. The death of every innocent person should be mourned, and I am posting this today in case anyone misses it.

CBC News

I catch the Dalhousie train every morning at Chinook to get to SAIT. Every morning it is completely packed and sometimes I have to wait for 2 or 3 trains till I can get on a train. The city keeps on adding more and more stations at the end of the line, which is great because it is allowing the train to be more accessible to other people but it makes the train less accessible to existing users. Don’t believe me? Look at the two Stampede stations in the morning, maybe 5 people wait on those platforms during the morning. Most of the people I know at those stations say they walk downtown to catch the train after it unloads everyone.

So this dilemma got me thinking. How can we free up space on the C-Trains while increasing access to the trains? Some ideas that floated around my head were putting more trains on the track. The problem with this is that the trains already run 5 minutes apart during the morning, if they added anymore between it could be a safety concern. Another idea was to just add more cars to the train, but that would mean either extending the platform or having the train stop once then move up a bit and stop again. Not too realistic or practical.

Other ideas that raced through my head were overhead trains, express trains and express buses on bus only roads. All of them had their pros and cons. But none of these solutions really addressed the root problem we are facing here in Calgary. That root problem is urban sprawl. Why are we constantly expanding the borders of our city when there is plenty of room within the city to grow? This kind of city planning not only causes traffic problems in the morning on the roads and C-Train but it also affects the environment and our quality of life negatively. The farther we have to travel to work each day, the more green house gases that get emitted. Also the farther we travel to work each day, the more time we are spending commuting instead of doing many other more enjoyable and healthy activities. (Click on graphs to see more.)

So I stopped looking at solutions to fix the C-Train problem, for the time being. The problem still exists but I don’t believe it can truly be looked at until we start to fix the bigger issue, urban sprawl.

You may be asking what is urban sprawl and here is a definition that the Sierra Club (Chinook Chapter) provides:

“SPRAWL is a style of development that has been prevalent since the 1950’s. What we have come to know as suburbia, and where most of us in Calgary live, is based upon a SPRAWL pattern of growth and development. SPRAWL has three common characteristics:Car dependence Low density Segregation of various uses”

As you can probably tell by now, planning a city around sprawl is not a good idea. It causes so many problems that grow as time keeps ticking.

Some alternatives to sprawl can be seen in some Calgary communities, including Sunnyside. Whether you need to go to work, shop for groceries or go to school, walking is an actual option where in other communities it is not. If you would like to learn more about urban sprawl in Calgary, I would suggest you check out this website put out by the Sierra Club (Chinook Chapter): http://www.sierraclubchinook.org/UrbanSprawl/Sprawl.html

So back to the C-Train dilemma. How can addressing the urban sprawl problem in Calgary fix the crowded C-Trains? Simple, if communities are built in a way that work places, schools and shopping centres are near by, there will be less of a need to use the C-Train and vehicles. People will spend less times in their cars or on the trains, and instead they will be able to spend time with the family, enjoy recreational actives, and overall have more free time.

I will be writing more about urban sprawl and possible solutions in the next few weeks on this blog. I hope this will open up much needed discussion among Calgarians about this serious issue.

The cost of tuition will be tied to the rate of inflation starting in the fall of 2007, according to Alberta’s advanced education minister. This is a long-awaited, but welcomed announcement.

However I do have one question regarding this announcement, which I have written to the minister about. In the article above, it states that the minister says this move could save the average university student $3800. Now, I’m in a post secondary institution, which means I know how to do some math. I do not see how he calculates a savings of $3800. My tuition is $4200 which is for a college, but I should still see around the same savings on this plan as a University student. The average cost of tuition at the University of Calgary is $5200. I would welcome a decrease of my tuition to around $400, and I’m sure a UofC student would love tuition at the rate of $1400. However I do not see how these savings can be achieved under this plan, and unless I’m missing something, I believe the minister is trying to deceive the educated. Tieing the cost of tuition to the rate of inflation will only make the increasements in the rate of tuition smaller, and tuition certainly doesn’t rise $3800 in one year. I should give the minister a chance to respond to my letter before I criticize him anymore.

Can anyone reading my blog help me find the mystery savings of $3800?

Edited To Add: Supposedly QR770 misreported. The $3800 is savings over a total of 4 years. Still a high estimate at $900/year. And still this plan is not enough to make tuition affordable, it is already unaffordable. This won’t make it easier for anyone. - http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=7992