Bureaucracy run wild in Calgary costs a homeless charity $350,000 per year.

homeless

Examples abound but this one is a truly magnificent demonstration of the anti-car idiocy that has taken over  in Nenshi’s city hall. It is hard to write anything about the actions of Calgary city hall without the word ridiculous being used too much.

The Mustard Seed is one of the most respected charities in all of Calgary in helping with homeless people. They expanded to a large new building downtown. The new facility provides 228 affordable housing units and three stories for education and employment services. Due to city regulations, the building had to contain 79 parking stalls and 60 secured bike racks.

Due to the reality that homeless people typically don’t need parking spaces, 70 of the parking stalls and all of the bike racks are languishing empty.

Thanks to years of city hall’s anti-auto strangling of parking spaces, Calgary is second only to New York city in all of North America for the highest prices for downtown parking. These rates will only be going up as hundreds of downtown stalls are going to be removed for a bicycle track “pilot” program. This has the side-effect of making downtown parking spaces a very lucrative possession, that is if you are allowed to rent them out.

The Mustard Seed could make $350,000 per year renting out those empty and wasted parking stalls. Unfortunately adding parking goes against the anti-auto ideology of Calgary city hall these days so they refuse to allow the spaces to be rented out. The volunteers and staff at the Mustard Seed get to look at those empty spaces every day and wonder what charitable works $350,000 per year could be dedicated to if only Nenshi’s city hall transportation could drop their ideological agenda and let a little reality creep in.

According to this story, the Calgary Transportation department told the Mustard Seed that letting them rent out their parking spaces would encourage traffic.

Essentially a charity like the Mustard Seed will be paying $350,000 per year to remain in keeping with the anti-auto agenda of city hall councillors such as the Flakey Four (Pincott, Farrell, Woolley & Carra) and their leader Naheed Nenshi. Anti-auto ideology trumps simple common sense and Calgary’s charities are paying the price.

Ward 4 Councillor Sean Chu has thankfully been speaking up on this issue.

chu

Evan Woolley, the councillor for the ward that the Mustard Seed is in has so far remained utterly silent on this issue.  In the next week, I hope we see some more city councillors questioning transportation bureaucrats on this latest idiocy. I expect we will hear nothing but silence from the usual anti-auto suspects. I wonder how good they feel knowing the homeless get to subsidize their anti-auto agenda?

 

8 thoughts on “Bureaucracy run wild in Calgary costs a homeless charity $350,000 per year.

  1. Sure they feel good. First order of duty for a Progressive is self-gratification. It goes hand-in-hand with their self-importance. As long as they feel all superior the means don’t matter.

  2. C’mon Cory, public policy that affects charities isn’t supposed to be about actually helping the less fortunate. It’s all about making making affluent white “progressives” feel good about themselves!

  3. The Mustard Seed isn’t a city-run charity. That, in and of itself, makes it “persona non grata” (sp?). Add to that the fact that the Mustard Seed is a “Christian” charity and you’ll start to see why Nenshi and the “flakey-four” are trying to make things so hard for them…

  4. just how stupid does one have to try and put bicycles ahead of cars in any city in Canada. very stupid it seems. does Calgary have more stupid people than Toronto?

    • “does Calgary have more stupid people than Toronto?”

      After our last civic election, I would have to say “yes;” residents in Sean Chu’s district exempted.

      • “does Calgary have more stupid people than Toronto?”

        Toronto’s tap water (like virtually every other first world city) still has F- in it… so…

  5. Pingback: Bureaucracy run wild in Calgary costs a homeless charity $350,000 per year. | Castle Downs is a beautiful area in North West Edmonton that consists of eleven distinct neighbourhoods.

  6. I see this article was dated only 2 months after the opening of the 1010 Centre St building, at which time I believe we had less than 40 tenants. I have been here since March 2014. After a year they barely had 100 occupants as they (at that time) were intent on being selective and interviewing prospective tenants. So your conclusions of March 2014 were very premature. However im glad it probably sped up the process as many parking stalls have been rented for awhile. I have a car and pay $135 per month to park. Most of the bike racks are being used. Occupancy hovers near full.

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