Grassroots campaign to stop sprawl in Hamilton gets city councillors’ attention

A grassroots campaign to freeze Hamilton's urban boundary as the city considers its growth options has kicked into high gear.

You might have noticed the lawn signs - roughly 1,300 so far - Stop Sprawl HamOnt has deployed to sway opinion amid a public consultation on the question.

The campaign urges residents to select the no urban boundary expansion" box rather than the ambitious density" option in a city survey mailed to homes late last month.

Concerned some households didn't receive the surveys or tossed them out, Stop Sprawl's website includes a portal to send responses via email to the city and council members.

Every day, it gains momentum," organizer Nancy Hurst said. However many people we're able to reach, they tell a bunch of friends."

With the surveys due July 23, Stop Sprawl took out a full-page advertisement in The Spectator over the weekend after holding an online pep rally" with supporters, advocates and politicians.

In Ontario, land use is our oilsands. Land use is the largest driver of our climate pollution. It's the largest driver of our climate destruction," Dianne Saxe, Ontario's former environmental commissioner, told the group.

Hurst noted the rally generated about $30,000 in pledges toward the cause, which is tied to the city's growth-planning studies that focus on land needs.

The effort to update the municipal plan springs from the Ontario government's prediction that Hamilton's population will reach 820,000 by 2051, adding 236,000 more residents to the city limits.

The province has told municipalities to direct at least 50 per cent of future housing into built-up areas through intensification and denser housing types over the next 30 years.

Rather than the no-boundary-expansion option, city staff have recommended the ambitious density" approach, which would fold 3,300 acres of rural land in Elfrida and Glanbrook into the urban area for housing.

This would involve an average rate of intensification - housing created in the existing built-up area - of 60 per cent over 30 years.

A static urban boundary, meanwhile, would require 81 per cent intensification. Over the past 10 years, the city has created new housing units at an average intensification rate of 39 per cent.

Preservation of farm land and curbing emissions amid a climate emergency are chief motivating factors in holding the rural-urban dividing line.

But Akira Ourique, an inner-city resident nearly all of his life, also notes sprawl can suck the life out of the core with more municipal funds siphoned to service newly developed outlying areas.

The social impact is that our tax dollars get diverted away from where we actually live," he said, noting empty storefronts and inadequate housing in his Barton and Wentworth area.

Ourique, a 19-year-old Niagara College horticulture student who spoke during last week's rally, noted Stop Sprawl's email generator tool streamlines the process" - especially for younger people - to reach municipal decision-makers.

Coun. Brenda Johnson says she has fielded tons and tons and tons" of emails from the campaign in recent weeks, while Coun. John-Paul Danko notes he has been flooded with thousands" of missives.

The west Mountain councillor and Johnson, whose Glanbrook ward has potential expansion lands, also noted developers, their agents and paid lobbyists have been calling.

That includes the West End Home Builders' Association, which represents 300 companies and argues the city must expand the urban area to meet market demand, not only for denser forms of housing, but also single-family homes.

Mike Collins-Williams, the association's chief executive officer, questioned the value of the survey results.

I believe that democratic processes are important, but an overreliance on public hearings or a survey with a flawed methodology to make land-use decisions tends to favour certain voices over others," he said.

This can result in perceptions of majority opposition to new housing supply, especially when the citizens and activists groups most motivated and available to participate in the process generally oppose the development plans."

Staff are expected to give city politicians an update on the growth planning exercise on Aug. 4.

Council backed colleague Brad Clark's call for the mail-out survey in late March after complaints consultation on the land-needs question hadn't been extensive enough.

The city says Canada Post delivered more than 230,000 surveys but acknowledges reports that some households didn't receive them, which could be due to residents opting out of flyer delivery or throwing them out inadvertently.

To address that, the city has updated the project's website with a link to the survey and instructions on how to send responses by email to GRIDS2-MCR@hamilton.ca.

Teviah Moro is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: tmoro@thespec.com