Iqaluit council halts proposed rezoning for Apex fourplex
Proposed bylaw amendment voted down over concerns about how neighbours would react
A proposed rezoning that would have allowed this fourplex and others like it to be built in Apex will not proceed. (Image courtesy of City of Iqaluit)
A rezoning proposal to allow the construction of a fourplex in Apex will not move forward.
At Tuesday’s city council meeting, councillors reviewed recommendations made by the planning and development committee at its meeting last week.
One of those recommendations was to consider a bylaw amendment to create an exemption allowing the fourplex to be built on a lot zoned as low density. It also recommended staff organize a public hearing for residents to share their opinions about the proposal before it was considered for final approval.
The proposed rezoning would apply to the lot at 3141 Jack Anawak St., where developer Patrick Leubou was planning to build a housing complex with four units.
But when that item came up for consideration, Coun. Kyle Sheppard, who supported the plan last week, told his colleagues he changed his mind.
“I struggled with this a lot since we reviewed this last week, and talked to a lot of residents in the area and there’s a lot of opposition to this,” Sheppard said.
“At the same time, this is the type of housing that we need to see more of in our community, but it needs to be done in the right place.”
Sheppard pointed to some multiplex units built on Joamie Court as an example of where denser housing hasn’t panned out well.
Deputy Mayor Kim Smith, who chairs the planning and development committee, said she wanted to move forward with the committee’s recommendation so residents could voice their concerns at a public meeting.
“We just don’t have that opportunity very often, so that’s the main reason I want to see this move forward,” she said.
A motion to accept the committee’s recommendation and give first reading to the bylaw amendment was defeated in a 4-2 vote.
Smith and Coun. Simon Nattaq voted in favour, while councillors Methusalah Kunuk, Romeyn Stevenson, Sam Tilley and Sheppard were opposed.
Instead of moving forward, the proposal will go back to city staff for further review.
Take your time, not like there is a housing shortage…..did you ask the residents who can’t seem to find housing what they thought?
Cool down. 4 houses barely puts a dent into this crisis. It’s like spitting on a raging fire.
By the numbers yes. But I would like to be there when you tell 4 desperate families to “cool down” tho.
So let me get this straight, Councillor Sheppard changed his mind on this, and now wants listen to residents around the area. Cool. What about the Tundra Valley expansion and near the French School/AWG, why doesn’t he along with other council members want to listen to residents around that neighbourhood?
Exactly! This reads very fishy. Why jam a few houses by the parcel of green space by tundra ridge when the residents opposed but it went ahead anyways.
It’s called brown envelope
There was a public consultation for that project.
Fact: Iqaluit has a major housing crisis for over a decade. City can’t keep up with the demand. This leads to overcrowded housing or employers not being able to get enough employees or adult children not being able to move out.
Fact: Proposed development is actually not huge. It’s not a 24-plex. It’s a two storey fourplex (townhouse) style. It is not out of keeping with the Apex neighbourhood.
Fact: City of Iqaluit has to balance the rights of numerous parties and stakeholders including the developer, neighbours, employers, all citizens. The rights of neighbours are to be considered but in the grand scheme of what this particular developer is proposing is actually reasonable. Four extra families is not excessive.
Fact: Distinction between private housing versus public housing is a consideration with small number of units is less concerning than a big public housing development project with one big building or many public housing units in one area. The issue then becomes the tenants versus the buildings themselves.
All this to say that the decision does not appear to be reasonable with all considerations. A small number of neighbours who don’t want or like a small four-plex reeks of NIMBY. Also stating that the downtown area is the only place in Iqaluit for densification fails to recognize that multiplexes make development possible in many instances because the cost of the land, development and taxes are excessive and unaffordable. Multiplexes are often the only way for developers to proceed with financing and being able to cover costs plus offering residents more affordable units.
Lastly, Kyle stating on his FaceBook that Apex has enough densification is odd because there is not a lot of development there but a lot of development opportunities. Apex lots are some of the biggest in Iqaluit with most houses not taking a lot of space.
By Kyle’s standards and vision, Iqaluit is going to be screwed because developers won’t build the much needed units. His anti-development comments including one he seems to have removed which stated that developers aren’t entitled to make profit simply drive developers away. Very shocking given that his position at the bank is to support commercial customers including developers.
Maybe Kyle should go visit Nuuk, an arctic capital one hour fight away and see how beautiful that city is with all its multiplexes in most of its neighbourhoods including those not in the downtown core.
Again, the problem really isn’t the building its certain tenants are bad neighbours no matter where you put them.
Yeah except comparing nuuk to iqaluit is comparing apples to oranges. Nuuk makes iqaluit look like a dumpster fire.
Given that Apex already has a number of MURBs (multi-unit residential buildings), and given the layout and location and sizing of the site, I would say that developer Patrick Leubou’s proposed quadruplex was perfectly suited to the site.
All things considered, I think the local opposition has all the classic hallmarks of NIMBY (“not in my back yard”).
Wild.
Housing crisis so bad that LEASEHOLDS sell for $800,000, no staff housing for anyone but ACHF subletters, no space for elders, commercial space costs a fortune … and still the NIMBYs win.
“Sheppard pointed to some multiplex units built on Joamie Court as an example of where denser housing hasn’t panned out well.”
Did he literally just point at them? What did he say about them? They seem to function fine from where I’m looking.
Well, they don’t function fine. They became ghettos. Immediately. How many fires and broken windows and standoffs have there been in thoses units? They are a mess, and super loud and scary for neighbors and the actual calm, appreciative tenants in the buildings. I don’t know what the solution is, but saying it’s fine simply because they’re occupied and still standing isn’t an accurate assessment.
Then Sheppard should have said that. If he did, the author should have quoted him.
But even having said that … the place becoming a “ghetto” is not a virtue of multi-unit developments and certainly should not be toured as reason to build even less housing.
If we don’t want “ghettos” … then we need to start policing our own and fix our fragmenting culture.
I am concerned that the council voted this down before it went to the public hearing. It would seem that the public hearing is the place to hear what the neighbors and the community think about the proposal.
It seems counterintuitive to purposely not hear from the public while saying, at the same time, that you have heard and do not think that there is support for it.
Given the building that is on that lot, the proposed units would be an improvement.
The developer bought the unit knowing what the existing zoning was. They chose to roll the dice on approval of a re-zoning and lost. This is a pretty standard process and the same decision has been made in the past on plenty of other similar applications without a need for public input. Our opportunities to weigh in was when we elected the members of this council and entrusted them with the responsibility to abide by and enforce the city’s approved zoning bylaws.
uhh get your own name, signed uhhh
Very surprised of this council for this. Iqaluit needs housing and they should be supportive of business and people that are looking to provide that. Obviously there are limits, but this design would not be crazy in Apex.
If the city doesn’t want housing, then council should run on that platform in their next election and see if the people agree.
Hopefully council realizes their mistake and approves future housing
No one is saying no to more houses. But either the council or city staff (or both) seem determined to build on top of each and create higher density like the south, as if we don’t have land. We live on one of the largest islands in the world, do we not?
Land isn’t an issue, yes people should be allowed to have a home. NO ONE IS AGAINST THAT. What they are against is making us northerners live on top of each other. If we wanted to, we’d live in cities down south. Stop trying to make the north like it is in the south. We live here because we like our space, that includes green areas, and that includes living in dignity with enough room to have our outdoor equipment, which includes, boats, trailers, snowmobiles, atv’s, UTV’s, shacks/seacans, etc… we live in a rural part of the country.
Yes to building more houses! Yes to building in other spaces and expanding and creating more neighborhoods. No to building on top of each other.
exactly this! There is so much land and if the city is open to develop houses on trucked water/sewage, they can open lots anywhere. Wanting a proper piece of land with a reasonable distance between houses is not nimby! Look at the houses in Tundra valley and the houses on the plateau. I would rather live in tundra valley by a very long mile.
If Iqaluit were to sprawl even more (i.e. more and more single-detached houses), then we would end up with even more car-dependency than we already have. We already have way too many huge pickup trucks and SUVs (each of which weighs 30x more than its occupant — and most of the time there is just one person in each vehicle).
All those roads (to far-flung suburbs of rural single-detached McMansions) will then need to be maintained too. And then having even more people on trucked water and sewage, which is again more expensive on a per-household basis. Same for all the other services, including emergency services, school busing, and so on.
The biggest need, by far, is housing that is affordable to ordinary people. Patrick Leubou’s quadruplex plan was simple and eminently reasonable. But NIMBYism killed it, plain and simple. A handful of NIMBY squawkers was enough to drown out the common sense of Iqaluit as a whole.
Politicians, who should be thinking of future residents (who cannot speak because they do not yet live there) too. Sadly, this time, the politicians failed.
Politicians really should be thinking about the big picture. This means planning for future residents, who cannot speak because they do not yet live there. Sadly, this time, the politicians failed.
If you think people living in housing plexes are going to start car-pooling, you are delusional. People will continue to drive their big trucks, but then they will also need to park their boats, atvs, snowmobile, etc. The housing in question is on trucked water/sewage. If the city wants to tap into utilidor, then this will have to be at the plateau area, road to nowhere, downtown. The future residents and definitely the current residents are not saying to not build. But why build on top of each other?
I have been to Apex on foot many times, and I am fully aware that it is dependent on trucked services. (The only non-trucked utility is electricity.)
And, although Apex does have a “bedroom community” feel to it, there are some people who have employment there. For example, Nanook Elementary School is located there, and there are some small businesses in town as well.
So, although it is possible that (if the proposed quadruplex had been built) every one of its residents might be driving into main Iqaluit to work every day, it is also possible that some of the residents of that hypothetical quadruplex would be working from home or working at the school or at a small business in town. In such cases, they would not need to drive daily.
The key issue at hand here is really that of affordable housing, which can only be feasibly attained by building multi-unit buildings (MURBs). These can be in the form of townhouses, stacked townhouses, semi-detached houses, or apartment buildings. Accordingly, Patrick Leubou’s stacked fourplex proposal fitted in perfectly in the context of the ongoing (and very urgent) need for affordable housing.
(And by the way, regarding your carpooling comment, I note that carpooling is much easier to arrange with denser developments such as MURBs than with single-detached housing.)
I am not sure why the stacked or multistorey MURBs, which are the most efficient way to house people simply given the extremely high costs of providing services (roads, trucked water, trucked sewerage, garbage pickup, school busing, emergency services, electricity, and so on), are being derided as “on top of each other”. What is actually wrong with building upwards (even very mildly, such as in Patrick Leubou’s very modest proposal) and thereby gaining much-needed efficiency?
Remember, too, that public services such as roads (both the construction and the maintenance) are paid from taxpayer dollars that we all pay into. This means that someone who commutes long distances in a huge (and largely empty) pickup truck every day is effectively being subsidized by ordinary walk-everywhere types such as myself. I know many people who are content to simply get around on foot and who prefer to keep their environmental footprint small.
I am fully aware that some people will always have a yearning for big motorboats, huge pickup trucks, powerful snowmobiles, large ATVs (and maybe even a helicopter too), and thus will need ample room to store their huge volumes of stuff. But overall, these people are in the minority. Even in the existing suburban areas here in Iqaluit, there are a lot of houses where the only vehicle present is an SUV.
Housing needs to be seen as a fundamental human right, not as a luxury and not as a speculative investment. The core element here is that the emphasis needs to be on prioritizing affordable housing for ordinary, real, living people ranging from single people to families of various sizes.
The wealthy who can afford rural McMansions and their own private fleets can easily afford to find their own ways to rural utopia, for example by arranging to lease land somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and making their own arrangements for transportation and servicing.
Mark, you aren’t even from here. I can tell by the way you write. Cause if you were, you would know that what you are advocating for is for the transient population. Which means you are advocating for the folks that don’t want to stay here long-term, and what you are advocating for with writing your novels is that their wants are far more than the long-term and local folks’ needs.
You are completely missing the ball, you say the minority of residents have equipment and need outdoor space, that you mostly see houses with one SUV… Mark you are choosing to misrepresent the truth and facts. The truth is the few houses you see with only one SUV are transients in subsidized housing, making landlords rich while they buy up houses to rent out to gov’ts and org’s or folks that can’t afford more equipment. Stop misrepresenting Iqaluit. What we need are new lots targeted for single detached homes, most notably along the Road to Nowhere, Plateau and towards Apex, so that local families can start to thrive and live independently with pride and a sense of purpose. Stop advocating for building high density, which only belongs in the downtown core. There are upcoming major projects about to happen in the coming years, especially where BBS is currently located. So high density is coming, but at least in a more appropriate location.
NIMBYism gets in the way of progress, yet again. Congratulations, Iqaluit. Your elected representatives are proving that they don’t actually want to permit the housing the community needs so badly. It may be only four units, but they have proven themselves to be anti-development and thus anti-housing.
You created the storm and now you’re crying that its raining
Is Patrick Leubou a developer or an NHC employee? Or both? Why isn’t there more information about him in the article