A map put together by Northdale residents and compiled by Deborah Easson shows all the rental houses in red swamping the solely owner-occupied houses in green.



Expropriation an option

Everything is on the table as the city looks at the long-term future of Northdale

By Greg MacDonald, Chronicle Staff

News
Jan 06, 2010

No one knows what the Northdale neighbourhood will look like in 10 years, but everyone agrees it has to look different than it does now.
After three heated, debate-filled meetings in 2009, ward Coun. Jan d’Ailly will be opening council’s New Year seeking a new vision for the neighbourhood.

“I want staff to report back on what options we have in the neighbourhood,” d’Ailly said.

And when d’Ailly means options, he means every option available.

“It could be anything from doing nothing to the city expropriating the land,” he said. “I don’t think either will be acceptable, but it might end up somewhere in between.”

The Northdale neighbourhood, bounded by University Avenue and Columbia Street north to south and King Street and Lester Street east and west, has become a flash-point for the current incarnation of council.

The student-dominated neighbourhood has been dubbed a ghetto-in-the-making as families leave the area and more houses become rentals.

Property standards and housing safety have been issues, and recently a spat of crimes hit the neighbourhood, including a shooting in December and a stabbing on New Year’s Eve.

“We need to take the blinders off,” d’Ailly said. “We need to stop thinking about what we can’t do.

“We have to do something.”

One potential plan for the neighbourhood was presented at a community meeting in late November.

A new community group, called HUG — Help Urbanize the Ghetto in Waterloo — made up of Northdale residents as well as other citizens, presented its vision of an intensified community.

It included low-rise condominiums, shopping mews and more dense housing forms. Not only is the plan environmentally friendly, it will help diversify the neighbourhood, said Karen Earle, chair of HUG.

“We really want to see reurbanization through intensification,” she said. “Right now the neighbourhood does not work.

“It’s a blight on the city and it makes us look bad.”

Earle and her group have refined what residents have been saying for years into a coherent vision — upzone the neighbourhood. That would mean allowing for more dense building forms and removing the current restrictions around lodging house licenses.

Earle, a Waterloo resident, works as a re-locator. She helps high-tech families move into the area and find a place to live.

“I never recommend the Northdale area,” she said. “In fact, I have a hard time finding places in Waterloo. Laurelwood and Eastbridge are good for families, but there are only so many houses there.

“A lot of tech workers want to live in condos or rent. Frankly, a lot of them are in Kitchener.”

That irks Earle, because she believes the city has the potential to bring in more taxpayers with a more dense core.

HUG wants to see a special policy area instituted in Northdale focused solely on intensification.

“Forget the rest of the city in this instance and just focus on Northdale,” Earle said. “It might not be a ghetto yet, but it’s a ghetto in the making.”

HUG’s vision would mean a more diverse neighbourhood, but it would also mean fair property values, said Deborah Easson, chair of the Northdale Neighbourhood Association.

“It’s a huge issue for us,” she said.

Permanent residents in the area have often complained that lodging house licenses make some houses vastly more valuable than others. Those residents without licenses have trouble selling their homes, Easson said.

“You basically have to disclose what kind of neighbourhood this is when you’re trying to sell it,” Easson said.

She believes in the HUG plan and thinks it would quickly cure many of the ills in the neighbourhood.

“It would stop the partying, the random property damage, because it would bring in property managers,” she said. “It would change the climate and start bringing in tech workers.”

Easson wants council to adopt HUG’s vision. But she wants something else, too.

“I would like an admission that the neighbourhood is a failure,” she said. “There has to be a solution and council has to find it.”

D’Ailly agrees a solution is needed and hopes to have a report back in April on options for the neighbourhood.

“I also want to understand what tools we have in our toolbox that can help us,” he said.

Earle wants the situation addressed urgently since it’s an election year.

“We want it done soon,” she said. “We’ve worked hard on this council and if something doesn’t get done soon, we’ll have a whole new council to deal with.”

D’Ailly believes it has taken time for the vision to coalesce and said real progress was made during 2009.

He will bring forward a motion to explore the options on Jan. 11 and expects staff to report back in the spring if he finds support from other councillors.

But the Northdale issue isn’t likely to stay quiet until then. The city is also exploring a rental licensing bylaw that would require all landlords to be licensed.

The issue will come before council later in the winter.

For more information on HUG’s vision for Northdale, visit www.hugwaterloo.com