EDITORIAL – Forcing more cars onto street won’t solve housing shortage

FROM SHIPPING CONTAINERS to allowing multi-family development in commercial areas, it was an action-packed committee-of-the-whole meeting yesterday. That’s the meeting where the entire City council sits as a committee to spitball ideas without making immediate decisions.

One of the more interesting planks in a staff report on updates to the City’s zoning bylaw had to do with increasing housing opportunities.

Among the proposals is to reduce parking requirements for multi-family developments. Councillors have varying views on that one.

One is that City Hall needs to shake things up to in order to create a more diverse range of housing. Another is that increasing densities in certain areas makes sense but not at the expense of parking.

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Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.