Archie Campbell
The Dalhousie Community Association (DCA) held its first Annual General Meeting in nearly two years on April 7 by Zoom call. More than 70 persons joined the meeting.
The highlight of the evening was two presentations about the Dalhousie community, one by the Somerset West Community Health Centre (SWCHC) and the other by Ottawa Community Housing.
The meeting concluded with the election of a new Board of Directors, over half of whom were new recruits.
Under the DCA bylaws, the board elects its president and other executive members at a subsequent meeting. However, Michael Powell, the current president, announced that he was stepping down after being at the helm for the last eight years, although he will continue to sit on the board.
Report shows less affordable housing
Emilie Hayes, SWCHC’s manager of Community Engagement, told the meeting about the centre’s recent “Building Community Together” report, which she edited. The report was produced with the aid of urban planning students from McGill University who analysed census data from 2006 and 2016.
Hayes highlighted trends in the West Centretown (Lyon to the O-Train) area, which would be familiar to observers of most urban areas – growing gentrification, a small population decline due to the conversion of multiple unit dwellings into single-family ones, and less affordable housing available for single renters and even less for families.
The report is available on the centre’s website (swchc.on.ca).
550 new housing units
This provided a perfect segue into the next presentation by Robert MacNeil and Cliff Youdale for Ottawa Community Housing showing plans for the construction of over 550 new housing units approved for the city-owned lands on the Rochester Heights and Gladstone Village areas. (See the March Centretown BUZZ: “A new diverse community takes shape in Dalhousie”.)
These units will be built on the site of recently torn down public housing and new areas recently acquired by the city, notably the Canada Lands area south and west of the Plant Pool Recreation area.
While housing density will be greatly increased, city developers and planners have taken great care to design townhouse housing for families that would normally be deemed too large and suburban for a downtown area, as well as larger high-rise buildings along Raymond Street.
Though some worried about increased traffic these developments would bring, especially along Booth Street, others welcomed these proposals as an initiative to reverse the decline in affordable housing.
With more families moving into the area if the intentions of these plans were realized, many expressed optimism that such an influx might even keep Cambridge Street Public School open.
DCA influence significant?
Just before the board elections, Michael Powell delivered his final President’s Report. For Michael, the main insight of his tenure was that, although the DCA suffered many setbacks in disputes with developers and city officials, the DCA’s influence as a local residential association was significant.
He then assigned to the DCA an influence value of 10 percent. Ten percent may not seem like much, but it is better than nothing.
Moreover, by being persistent and putting ideas out there, the DCA had proposed a plan of action for others in the community to follow, such as the hoped-for lane reductions on Albert Street.
Small victories over time can lead to bigger changes down the road (to coin a phrase.)