A young Asian woman washes her SUV ahead of me at the car wash.
Unusual. Not because she’s pail washing (not allowed), but because my neighbourhood has no immigrants. Research from city hall showed that not one person from India, China or Pakistan immigrated to my neighbourhood at last census count. Our housing costs rival Silicon Valley.
I was one of 100,000 people who downloaded these neighbourhood reports from the city of Calgary website, where John te Linde oversees the social research unit.
After 25 years, he notes a disturbing trend.
“When we first produced community reports, there was less concentration of rich and poor. Now, we’re losing our social mix in communities.”
Can you feel it?
Wait, that Filipino woman at the car wash. She’s not alone. There are two well dressed people waiting in the SUV. They watch her polish within an inch of her life.
I try to speak to her. No English. Their servant? Perhaps this serves as a metaphor. Our neighbourhoods are separated into washers and those comfortably watching the washers. And our housing policy is to blame.
Take a look at the much ballyhooed PlanIt, or TOD plans. Sure, they call for a housing mix, but no price mix. Sure they provide more density – for the really well off. The city says the province won’t let it tell developers to include lower-priced units in new developments.
But Noel Keough of Sustainable Calgary thinks there’s wiggle room: “Affordable housing allows people to live close to work without owning a car and to have some choice about where to live.”
He thinks the city could:
- Require affordable housing units on land it owns
- Set percentages of affordable housing in Calgary neighbourhoods
- Permit secondary suites city wide. Right now, many rich neighbourhoods are exempt.
Sure, we can carry on like this, but we can’t say we know Calgary is growing more unequal.
Sustainable Calgary and the public library have a Feb. 16 book club on The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Cities Stronger.
Inequality, the authors argue, causes stress – for everyone. Even those watching someone else wash and buff their SUV.
