reprinted with permission
Student precincts are the best solution
By designating high-density areas both homeowners and schoolars will benefit
R. Christopher Edey
for The Record
After living in Waterloo for almost six years, I had learned several truths: never drive along Columbia Street West during rush hour; the best pint in town is served at the Failte Pub; and the issue of student housing will never be solved.
It turns out that only one of these three givens remains so.
More than a decade after the last major debate over student housing gave us the 75-metre bylaw and lodging houses scattered in every neighbourhood west of Highway 85, our city is again grappling with how to best accommodate two growing universities in an established community.
Our previous solution has benefited no one and frustrated all. Students are paying higher rents to live in houses farther from campus, lifestyle differences between students and permanent residents are causing headaches across Waterloo and a significant number of unscrupulous operators are profiting from all of this by running illegal lodging houses. It is clearly time for a new approach.
The single biggest problem with Waterloo's current strategy is that the city has been valiantly trying to paddle up the economic creek. Survey after survey has shown that students, and there are more than 30,000 of them here, want to live close to campus. Students operate according to a very demanding schedule and proximity to campus is a necessity rather than a luxury.
Spreading housing out via the 75-metre bylaw runs contrary to this logic. It undercuts the property value of homeowners close to the universities and artificially drives up the cost of homes further from the two schools, as these are the only properties left for students to rent -- all of this for a form of housing that is expensive, far from the places students need to go and that does not support the city's other objectives (a strong uptown and decreased automobile usage).
What we need are fewer lodging houses, not more, and we need to make the economics of the situation work for us.
The solution is to introduce greater densities into these same areas, allow students to vote with their feet (or moving vans) and reduce our dependence on lodging houses. The opportunity now exists to create a revitalized student precinct adjacent to the two universities along the major transit corridors and within walking distance of our uptown core.
Such a strategy is fully compatible with the direction that the City of Waterloo has chosen. It has embraced higher densities with the approval height and density study, and it's time to put these ideas into action.
The Lester-Sunview area to the east of the University of Waterloo is saturated with lodging houses, duplexes and other variations of student living. On properties where five students are housed, we can build a home for 20, if we move beyond the single-family dwelling.
The city needs to relax zoning codes to allow for creative development, it must make it easier to assemble properties to construct larger units and it must remove every administrative and tax barrier there is to prime the redevelopment pump in this neighbourhood.
The beauty of this solution is that all the city must do is to create the conditions necessary for entrepreneurial minds to invest in this district. As long as there is money to be made housing students, there are going to be people interested in making it. What is needed is to direct this investment in a manner that benefits the entire community.
It logically follows that new lodging houses need to be restricted in order to drive growth into the revitalized precinct. In the neighbourhoods further from the universities, the 75-metre bylaw should be doubled and the fee to establish a new lodging house licence needs to be increased.
In short, the economic playing field must be tilted away from lodging houses.
It is also important to note that choosing this direction does not compel anyone to do anything. No resident will have to sell his or her home, but those who live in Lester-Sunview will finally be able to get a fair price for their home if they so choose.
All this plan asks is that we all realize that cities are dynamic, not static, and that neighbourhoods should be allowed to change and evolve. Twenty years ago, who would have imagined that the bustling Seagram's Distillery would become condominiums?
Let us consider what is possible in 20 years: a revitalized urban neighbourhood with attractive walk-up apartments within walking distance of the universities and uptown, families moving back into former lodging houses, greater pedestrian traffic and less automobile congestion.
The City of Waterloo has before it a great opportunity to solve a long-simmering local issue, while at the same time strengthening the community as a whole.
Now that Columbia Street West is finally being fixed, it looks like nothing in Waterloo is set in stone anymore, except, of course, for the fine fare at my favourite pub.
R. Christopher Edey is president of the Federation of Students at the University of Waterloo.
