Our city is in crisis.

• Did you know that the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has highlighted that the lowest incomes in Calgary can only truly afford 5% of housing in the city?

• And the University of Calgary’s residences team has been flooded by over 5,000 applications for housing?

• Students, recent immigrants, young families starting their lives, youth, and our neighbours are facing extraordinary pressures due to the rise in cost of housing?

• Increasingly, it is becoming hard for business to attract attract and retain talent they need to start, build and expand their businesses in Calgary because of the cost of housing growing faster than the market can keep up.

In our listening campaigns, from 2020's listening effort to the several listening campaigns since, housing and precarious living conditions have been a consistent trend that we've heard from our members and their communities. Every neighbourhood, community and corner of our city is threatened by housing precarity, with dramatically increasing rents, unaffordable mortgages and lack of non-market supply to our most vulnerable.

This cannot stand.

That's why, in 2022, Councillor Walcott initiated a process to bring together experts in the Housing Affordability Task Force, to gather experts and public policy professionals to highlight what tools we can add to the discussion to create a city where all can live in dignity.

Sadly, when these recommendations were brought to council in spring of 2023... our city council rejected them. It took the entire city, clambering for solutions and demanding better, for councillors to re-examine the proposal after rejecting them. Now councillors are reviewing the recommendations, before they head to council, and we're asking for our community to take action:

1. WRITE: Writing your councillor with our letter-writing tool - www.calgarycommongood.org/housing
2. PARTICIPATE: Join us on the steps of city hall with other organizations and friends to pressure a yes vote for all of the recommendations as presented - www.calgarycommongood.org/rally
3. JOIN: Take a moment to read through the stories we've been sharing in our newsletter - team.calgarycommongood.org/newsletter