City to use 11 surplus school sites to tackle housing crisis

February 5, 2025 Canuck

Edmonton city council will forge ahead in using surplus school sites to build more affordable housing.

Councillors expressed concerns ranging from acting swiftly in reducing red tape and making use of the sites to proceeding with caution to ensure that community concerns about individual sites are heard.

At issue was council determining whether to approve and grant city administration delegated authority to sell land below market value.

The motion, put forward by Coun. Anne Stevenson on Tuesday, to grant delegated authority passed 9-4.

Tim Cartmell, Sarah Hamilton, Jennifer Rice and Karen Principe all voted against the motion.

In 2009, the city received 20 surplus school sites from school boards, who determined at the time that the land was not needed.

City council approved the use of 14 sites for affordable housing in 2015.

During Tuesday’s meeting, city administration received approval for below market sale or lease of 11 city-owned sites located in established Edmonton neighbourhoods to expedite the development of affordable housing units in the city.

for sale or lease sign — Wedgewood Heights Park, in the west end, sits on one of 11 city-owned sites located in established Edmonton neighbourhoods. (Scott Neufeld/CBC)

Cartmell, for Ward pihêsiwin, had attempted to put forward a motion amendment that would have administration go back to council for each sale or lease of a site.

Administration told council this work would have added weeks onto the timeline of getting affordable homes built as individual reports would need to be developed and presented to council when schedules aligned.

The effect of doing additional work would have had the domino effect of impacting federal funding through the Housing Accelerator Fund.

City administration noted that, “uncertainty is like kryptonite when it comes to development projects,” adding that developers become skittish when the future of a project is not clearcut.

A lack of decisiveness on the part of council may result in projects being put in jeopardy within provincial and federal review processes, administration said.

“Over the past three years, we have been working hard to build more homes and build them fast,” said Mayor Amarjeet Sohi.

“Our efforts are being noticed. Edmonton has become a national leader in increasing the supply of both market and non-market housing.”

Administration said that if school surplus sites were utilized for housing, 1,800 new units would be created including 900 which would be affordable housing units.

An amendment out forward by Cartmell, which did pass unanimously, was to ensure a minimum of 30 per cent of housing units for a project be affordable.

Coun. Ashley Salvador supported Stevenson’s motion citing the alarm data available that shows how many Edmontonians are in need of housing.

More than 56,000 households are anticipated to be in need of housing by 2031 with about 40,000 expected to be renters.

The city’s four-year affordable housing investment plan calls for 2,700 new affordable housing units to be built by 2026.

“Last year, the majority of council declared a housing emergency, and Edmontonians expect us to be doing everything we can to ensure that everyone has a safe place to call home,” Salvador said.

“In order to deliver on that and to meet those urgent housing needs, we need to be taking every opportunity we can to leverage available funding from other orders of government.”

Contentious future

The topic of what to do with surplus school sites has garnered significant debate and provoked strong community reaction.

One of those communities includes the west-end neighbourhood of Wedgewood Heights.

Residents of the neighbourhood attempted to have the designation of surplus reversed citing concerns over the loss of a well-used park and green space.

Resident Leah Widynowski was among several who voiced their concern over a lack of meaningful city engagement with the community.

“Today’s decision to sell it — but not just sell it — sell it under value is incredibly disappointing,” Widynowski said.

“The Municipal Government Act protects against things like this. When you sell municipal reserve land, the intent is those proceeds from the sale would then go flow back into the community to help replace the benefit of losing parkland.”

Widynowski acknowledged there is a need for housing but that the city should have explored other avenues that did not come at the expense of the community park.

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Canada News

City to use 11 surplus school sites to tackle housing crisis

Contentious future

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