Edmonton councillor talks infill debate, increasing housing options across the city

Edmonton city councillor Michael Janz speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about the city’s infill debate.

Edmonton city coun. Michael Janz speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about the city’s infill debate.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length

Michael Higgins: Why is infill suddenly such a contentious issue? What drove the considerable degree of tension we saw heading into the summer break?

Michael Janz: This issue is a big issue in many, many municipalities across Canada when you talk about how we grow and how we rebuild our cities. Our cities are changing. There’s more and more people moving here. Premier Smith’s Alberta Is Calling campaign has been wildly successful. We’ve added 150,000 people in the last three years and where they live and what housing choices are provided, these are big questions that not just Edmonton but Calgary, Toronto, Winnipeg, even Fort Saskatchewan and Sherwood Park are trying to wrestle with.

MH: Blanket rezoning. Your Calgary counterparts, their decision on that, it is considered by some to be their most contentious of last year. Were there lessons that you took from what Calgary went through on the infill issue?

MJ: There’s always challenges with how you deal with growth. I think generally, Edmontonians know that we need to build in, not out. That we can’t keep doing more and more suburban sprawl. It’s financially ruinous. It’s environmentally ruinous. Everybody kind of agrees that more density should be concentrated around more LRT stations, but that’s challenging when you live on those blocks and there’s a building going up next door, that’s where we really get the rub.

MH: You proposed a policy change that would have cut the number of units from eight to six at the end of your sitting, though council voted six to five against that. Why did that fail? Why did that not go through?

MJ: It’s funny when we talk about these numbers, because even in Edmonton, a lot is not a lot. Many of our lots are very different, and the point I was trying to make is that there is no universal lot size.

We should be talking more about what is the appropriate amount of housing on a lot. That’s a conversation we should be having when we say eight units anywhere. That’s not actually true. The vast majority of lots, they’re not big enough to even fit the requirements for eight units.

There’s a number of important changes we made. We made the architecture of the infills better. We made them make sure they’re facing the street, not facing the neighbours.

There’s many of them that already exist in our communities. You go to Bonnie Doon or Richie or others, there’s many infills that are unrecognizable. They just look like new homes and that’s sort of what I’m trying to get towards.

So the eight to six was more of a communication saying this is what you could fit anywhere, especially when we constrained the size of the box, we shrank it to half the lot.

MH: Surprised it didn’t pass though? Six to five was the vote.

MJ: I think part of it was a recognition that in some cases where you may be able to do eight closer to an LRT, closer to another location, my colleagues still wanted to preserve that opportunity, knowing that at the end of the day, when you get out your tape measure, in most cases, you may not be able to do more than six.

MH: Where do you weigh in on the issue of members of council dropping off the radar before the voting is finished? Before you’re done debate on issues as big as this one?

MJ: I can tell you, we knew this was a hot one. I had told my colleagues back in the June 3 Urban Planning Committee and before. I’ve been door knocking a lot and I can tell you, Edmontonians are very sour at a couple of councillors who were not present for the vote, in particular one who’s running for mayor. I think I wouldn’t be surprised if skipping that vote caused irreparable damage to their campaign.

MH: Water under the bridge where council is concerned, or do you see more coming of this? Might this even be something where the province kind of leans into the conversation?

MJ: The province, in the past, has said that they want to see more housing. Minister Nixon has said to me that he’s very impressed with how Edmonton has been trying to welcome more housing and build more homes, especially around transit. That Edmonton City Council is very focused on affordability, that we want to see more homes with more transit choices and more housing choices where you can live, maybe with one car, maybe not required to have two or three cars. Having options for families that are more affordable and in better locations where people want to live.

The province has been very favourable to this. Pierre Poilievre and Prime Minister Mark Carney have both said they want to see more housing across Canada. The two biggest issues in poll after poll, it’s not infill, it’s housing and affordability. Those are the big issues.

We’re taking action in that at the city level where we can. Edmonton has been on an infill journey for almost 20 years. We will continue to be. There’s always going to be refinements, there’s always going to be changes working on it.

MH: Where does that leave the conversation then on Edmonton growth? Calgary as well? The need for housing supply, housing affordability, when you know that when you come back, there’s an election coming?

MJ: I was talking to the other city councillors, and for me, I have 20 neighbourhoods that have infill under construction, but almost seven or eight councillors don’t have any infill in their wards.

This is a very hot topic for three or four councillors in the city, but citywide and province wide, the main topic is still the housing crisis, where we’re going to build homes, how we’re going to build a more affordable city and more affordable province.

This is what this is about. It’s about more affordability and more housing choices for more people and no matter who the mayor is of Calgary, Edmonton, we know that we need to keep building homes, and we need to keep building them in places where people want to live.

It’s figuring out how to do that better, and that’s what we’re trying to do.