A ’90-style incentive might solve derelict housing problem

It’s easy to forget just how bleak the Edmonton economy looked in the 1990s, before Alberta’s oilsands boom really took off.

Local jobless rates were high, house prices were in a major funk, Edmonton’s population was shrinking, and more pigeons than people called the city’s dusty, desolate downtown core home.

Lawyer Robert Noce, who served for two terms on Edmonton city council from 1995 to 2001, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor in both 2001 and 2004, remembers it all too well.

“The economic times were very difficult. (Some people are) critical of councils in the ’90s, saying we didn’t do anything. Well, we didn’t do anything because we didn’t have a lot of opportunity to do anything,” he says.

“Money was tight, Premier Klein’sgovernmentcuttransportation grants, it eliminated the transit grant, the police grant and millions of dollars from municipal budgets. So the ’90s were very difficult for Edmonton.”

Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures, however. So in 1999, city council came up with a bold incentive plan to trigger new residential development in the downtown core.

The city gave developers $4,500 for every new housing unit that was built and occupied in the city centre, up to a maximum of $4.5 million or 1,000 units. By boosting the downtown population and generating new property taxes, the city hoped to recoup its investment.

The result? The scheme worked even better than expected, lighting a fire under downtown redevelopment. Although the subsidy ended in 2002, many new projects followed and the process of downtown revitalization continues apace.

But Noce says not all areas of the city are enjoying the fruits of the city’s current economic boom. While the suburbs are flourishing — accounting for most of the region’s population growth — and downtown continues to rebound, many mature neighbourhoods near the core still need a helping hand, he argues.