For many years, infill housing has been a key discussion in Kitchissippi. The demolition of older homes to make room for new dwellings at a more intense scale is changing how our neighbourhoods look and feel, adding pressure to street parking, removing trees from the urban canopy, and made stormwater management more challenging. It is adding new residents and neighbours. The construction of it frequently results in conflict on hitherto quiet streets.
Virtually all infill requires variances from existing zoning, and bi-weekly Committee of Adjustment hearings are a flashpoint week in and week out.
My thanks to staff for responding quickly to an inquiry about infill statistics I made recently. I've posted that here for quick access by residents. Click on the .pdf below.
On October 5, I held a Facebook Live session looking at infill in Kitchissippi. I'm not sure this is a format I'd use exactly again, but I do hope it was helpful for those who tuned in. The slide deck I used is available by clicking on the .pdf below.
As I just posted this morning, one of the considerations we're asking the Ottawa Public Library Board to take into account in their deliberations about the potential to build a larger replacement for Rosemount is population growth. Kitchissippi is growing quickly through both infill and the big apartment/condo towers. Recently, I asked for the number of building permits issued in the past five years in our ward, broken down by type of housing. Below is some of the data that's come back. This data is for "net new" permits. That is, these are the number of units for which a building permit has been extended, subtracting the number of demolition permits that were extended in the same timeframe.
We'd need to finesse any use of this data. But, intuitively, I think it bears out what many of us are seeing in our neighbourhoods.
