Housing Affordability and the Single Tax

This week saw the passage of the recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force through Calgary City Council. According to the City of Calgary's Housing Needs Assessment 2023, single people make up 57% of Calgarians in housing need. We were proud that our president, Rowan Wiebe, had a chance to speak before council about the single tax and how housing prices disproportionately affect the asexual and aromantic community. Following the council meeting, Rowan went on to provide similar statements at meetings in Edmonton and Red Deer.

Thank you to all the people who came out to speak in favour of the Housing Affordability Task Force's recommendations to stop housing poverty. Watch a video of Rowan’s speech (a transcript is provided below).

Video Transcript:

My name is Rowan Wiebe and I am president of the Alberta Asexuals and Aromantics. I speak as an aromantic asexual. We are far more likely to live on our own and that makes housing expensive, since we don’t have a partner to share housing costs the way other sexual orientations do. The single tax is something that we live with everyday on housing, groceries, and all manner of goods. This wasn’t an accident, though.

I’m a history major so here’s a fun fact about the community character so many people here are defending: one of the reasons why city councils across North America feverishly banned boarding houses and apartment buildings post-WWII is because they were terrified of people living outside the nuclear family. 2 men could get an apartment together, a woman could live on her own. By only making more expensive single family homes available, governments pushed people into respectable lifestyles. These archaic bylaws still stop people from living their lives, including perpetually single members of the asexual and aromantic community.

Upzoning and higher density is essential to affordability for us. From the city’s own data the median price for a home that has 3 other homes on the same lot sells for $585k, a single family home sells for $1.6m. That’s a dramatic difference for a single person’s pocketbook.

A lot of the focus here today has been on families but a lot of the least house-secure in this city are single people. 81% of those in housing need are single or two person households. This stat doesn’t include the people who aren’t forming households at all. People like me who would happily live on their own but is staying with their dad to save money.

This summer and fall I was beset by fellow students moving to the city, often from abroad with no place to call home, desperate to find even a room. I have friends who live with queerphobic parents who can’t afford to move out. If a person doesn’t have a safe place to call home, it affects every single thing in their lives.

We need 40-50 thousand homes. We need them now and we need to remove the barriers that drive up prices. Uncertainty around the lengthy rezoning process when 95% of applications are approved adds to the cost of all housing, including affordable housing projects, which we need. Parking minimums drive up cost, development fees that nickel and dime builders for building a public good drive up costs.

This is a housing crisis that affects everybody, but it especially affects those who fall outside the bounds of proper families, who politicians overlook. We need homes, we need them now, we need them everywhere. Thank you.