Like many, when my wife and I purchased our first home in St. Albert in 1974, we purchased it because it was affordable and, even so, we had to scrape up every cent we could to provide a down payment for the house. At that time St. Albert’s taxes and service costs were reasonable.
St. Albert during the 1970s and earlier was clearly a working-class city, the expensive subdivisions came later. One of the main reasons that we chose St. Albert over Edmonton and other locations was because of St. Albert’s attractive use of abundant green space. Over the years as the taxes and cost of services increased very dramatically, we never complained since we considered St. Albert an attractive city to live in. Now we find that the major asset that makes St. Albert unique will no longer be an asset. The majority of council now believes that the density of established communities needs to be increased significantly.
Alfred Nikolai states that the 70 Arlington Dr. project will take about $6 million to complete and Habitat for Humanity will depend on donations from St. Albert to provide the necessary funds. When you add in the $840,000 for the property, the cost of each of the 24 units to build will be about $285,000. They won’t come cheap! The problem is that the $6 million in donations will have to come out of St. Albert’s charitable contributions.
Councillor Bracko states that this project will save 24 of St. Albert’s young families, and seniors from having to relocate to Edmonton. Obviously a tragedy that is much more serious than the over 20,000,000 people displaced in Pakistan or the homeless multitudes in Haiti. I can not help but wonder how many thousands of homes could be built in either country with the $6,840,000.
Edmonton’s Habitat project of 47 units will take three years to complete. Edmonton has 10 times the residential population and 100 times the commercial and industrial base to support each of its Habitat units than what St. Albert has. What happens if the donations are not forthcoming? Will this project take 30 years or more to complete, if ever? To date, Habitat has built about 300 homes in New Orleans; it was primarily this effort and the support of Jimmy Carter that resulted in millions of dollars in donations to Habitat.
However, in 2005, Habitat ousted its founders Millard and Linda Fuller. The end result was that Habitat moved away from its Christian roots to a more corporate environment with a greater emphasis on sustainability. This is why we are now seeing large projects being proposed in areas that do not have any devastation or economic depression because these areas, such as Toronto and Edmonton, can afford to pay for such projects and thus the initial investment will be easily recovered. Think about it, between Edmonton and St. Albert’s major projects, Habitat will build 81 units in the Edmonton area without a single hurricane or earthquake. Amazing!
Dave Evans, St. Albert
