It seems neighbourhood groups are constantly fighting bad reps. Dispelling stereotypes isn’t always easy. Take the experience of Active 18, for example — despite repeatedly saying they’re open to good development in their neighbourhood, they haven’t been able to escape being called NIMBYs in the media.
Active 18 have now taken to calling themselves YIMBYs (Yes, In My Back Yard) and they’re inviting other neighbourhood associations from across the city to join them this Saturday at the Gladstone Hotel to help drive home the message that community organizations aren’t always anti-development.
Though admittedly, there are some bad eggs (take, for example, those groups who have fought much needed social housing), a good number of neighbourhood associations are often full of good ideas. It’s often these groups that question why the City doesn’t stick to its official plan and zoning bylaws. And while politicians and media critics seem to be overly focused on shadowing effects and architecture (important components of development, but only a fraction of the overall picture), residents are asking questions such as, why such a large percentage one-bedroom units are being built and whether there’s enough park space for all the people a new development will bring into the area.
Called the YIMBY festival, Saturday’s event is an opportunity for neighbourhood organizations to mix, mingle and share strategies, and for municipal candidates, as well as developers and the media to come out to hear different groups’ ideas and concerns.
From the YIMBY festival website:
As Toronto continues to densify and our neighbourhoods get larger and more complex, how does the citizen express hope, dreams and new ideas for the city? Through the neighbourhood group!!!
The focus of this festival is on positive change. The upcoming election brings galvanized energy and ideas to municipal politics. As much as neighbourhoods get unfairly labeled as NIMBY, we know YIMBYs to be the instruments of some of the best urban policy and ideas.
The event is family-friendly and open to all. Here are the details:
Saturday October 28, 2006
11am-5pm
Gladstone Hotel, 2nd Floor
Free Admission
If you’re part of a neighbourhood group who would like to sign up to have a table at the festival, email magda@gladstonehotel.com.
Photo from the YIMBY festival website.
7 comments
As if there isn’t already enough to do on Saturday! Because it is across the street, I may drop by in the morning… if I’m still awake from the night before.
I note the Active 18 website, features a move to designate 48 Abell Street as a heritage building. If followed through, this would block, or at least substantially delay, a project by St. Clare’s Multifaith Housing (the housing arm of Toronto Action for Social Change) to build 199 units of affordable housing.
John Spragge,
This is true, but even now that 48 Abell will not be saved, there’s no guarantee that those 199 units of affordable housing will be built. The developer that wants to build them is applying for a subsidy from the city. If they don’t get it, they likely won’t be able to afford to build those units and, as far as I know, they haven’t made any promises that they will if the funding doesn’t come through. The City has only set aside funds for somewhere around 600 units city wide. For them to fund 200 units in this one location would be great, but seems unlikely when there are plenty of other applications across Toronto.
The thing about 48 Abell is that the units it offers are affordable already. It provides wonderful live-work spaces and the building as a whole has grown into the kind of place ArtScape works years to create — an affordable place where creative workers can live and work and network and eventually, if they want, start showing at the AGO or touring the country with their band, or creating an inspiring film or novel, or starting a small business. We are losing these kind of places all over the city. Just like affordable housing, they are difficult to create, yet, without them, the artists that bring so much to Toronto economically, etc., will move elsewhere. We are investing so much into places like the AGO and the ROM, but were not investing in places for our aspiring artists to grow, which is hypocritical.
If the City had any power or guts, it would bring all the developers in the Queen West Triangle together to work out some sort of deal that would see each one of them build a certain percentage of affordable and family housing. It could be a great mixed-income community if everyone took the time to sit down together to plan it right.
Mr. Duncan:
To quote from the article:
In that context, allow me to point out that the current building at 48 Abell contains only spaces designed as work spaces, and that makes the current live/work units there illegal.
A couple of other questions come to mind:
Has anyone applied to renovate 48 Abell as it stands in order to upgrade it to provide legal live/work units? Does the building have the necessary infrastructure to allow that?
Roughly how many artists actually live and work in 48 Abell right now? If Abell currently provides less than 199 units (even illegally), it seems to me that it would make sense to work to provide a larger number of legal units. I support artists’ live/work spaces as much as anyone, but not at the cost of having fry cooks sleeping on the street.
How much effort has gone into the campaign to retain illegal live/work spaces at 48 Abell? If Active 18 had made common cause with St. Clare’s Multifaith housing from the start, how much farther could you have gone with plans for the mixed-income, mixed-use housing we all agree Toronto needs?
To be fair, what is afforable? I wanted to apply for one of the live/work spaces at 48 Abell with my partner, a musician, and the price was way too hefty for me.
You can find the proposed rental rates here.
John,
I was referring to Dale’s comments on how the units are afforable already and as of now, the rates are nowhere near the proposed rates you are going to offer, which is definitely affordable.