Calgarian urges City Council to take measures to make life more affordable

"Not a wage issue": Calgarian urges measures to make life more affordable for renters

Calgary resident Arthur Gallant holding up a Ziploc bag with some dollars and cents in it. (Omar Sherif/Daily Hive)

Holding up a Ziploc bag with only a few dollars and cents, Arthur Gallant addressed Calgary City Council on Monday morning during a public hearing, urging them to do more for residents.

The money in that see-through bag, he said, was all he had to spend on a daily basis after paying his monthly rent and for living necessities.

But it wasn’t always this way.

Calgary was a different city when Gallant first arrived here with his cat from Hamilton, Ontario, two and a half years ago.

“Rent was affordable, groceries were affordable, I was able to go to Flames games once a month,” said the inner-city resident.

“With the rapid increase of rent, that’s all gone down the toilet.”

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Gallant moved across the country for a better quality of life. He had a dream of living in a bigger city with more amenities where the money he earned would afford him more.

Despite making $10 above the minimum wage in Calgary — an increase when compared to what he made in Hamilton at $2 above minimum wage — he’s living paycheque to paycheque.

“I don’t think I have a wage issue, I don’t think it’s how much money I’m making,” Gallant said.

“It’s how much of it is going towards rent.”

Since moving to the city, his rent has increased 39%. Out of fear of an even higher price hike, Gallant just locked himself into another lease that he says is still unaffordable.

His story, however, isn’t unfamiliar. Rent across Calgary has skyrocketed in pricing over the years, with some agencies highlighting a spike of at least 26% from this time last year.

The spike in rent has often been attributed to a number of factors, including, among other things, immigration, in-migration and record population growths that have led to a lack of housing availability and the knock-on effect on affordable living.

But for one councillor, affordability goes beyond that.

Calgary’s municipal building is pictured. City Council’s budget deliberations kicked off on Monday with a public hearing. (Omar Sherif/Daily Hive)

“Affordability is more than just a low-income cutoff, but it’s all the people that are below that and all the people that are within a few dollars of it who don’t qualify for services, who don’t qualify for this and that just because they make $1000 extra than someone else,” said Ward Eight Councillor Courtney Walcott.

“That’s not the cutoff for what it means to be okay in this city.”

The City has put in place a number of initiatives and projects, including the approval of a new housing strategy with several specifications intended to make living in Calgary more affordable for everyone.

A bylaw to fill the missing middle gap was approved as part of that housing strategy. Hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the federal government dedicated to constructing more houses was announced just last week.

Gallant, however, says City Council needs to do more — specifically for renters — to tackle the affordability crunch.

“What I’m hoping to see from Council is some subsidization when it comes to transit or recreational facilities,” he said.

“I’m asking for those to be subsidized specifically when it comes [to] renters.”

And Walcott agrees.

“Most often, you’ll hear the same story that low-income supports are mostly a provincial jurisdiction,” he said.

“But we’re in a place right now where if you have the power to do it, it’s a fair ask. And the honest answer is we do, we do have the power to just drop several million dollars to make sure that our fair entry programs [are] accessible to people to change the requirements.”

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