OC Transpo: you know it, you love it—and perhaps more often than not, it drives you up the wall. But for the residents of Manor Village and Cheryl Gardens—whose homes are at risk of being demolished to make way for a new train route in the Barrhaven area of Ottawa—there are more significant reasons to dislike Ottawa’s transit system.
Given the alternative options available, as well as the city’s recent declaration of a housing crisis, the fact Ottawa city council is even considering a tear-down of these homes—especially during a pandemic—is unacceptable.
In 2019, OC Transpo unveiled a new and shiny—albeit slow and unreliable at first—light rail transit system. It was supposed to be one step of many in making transit across the city a little more bearable.
As part of installing the LRT (affectionately dubbed the Confederation Line), bus routes going east from Tunney’s Pasture to downtown were discontinued.
This worked perfectly fine for some people, but for many older folks trying to access the Good Companions Seniors’ Centre, it posed a problem.
Before the train, there was a bus stop right in front of the centre. Now that this bus route no longer existed, anyone wishing to commute to the centre would have to walk 300 metres from Pimisi station, the nearest LRT stop.
Add in some snow, below-freezing temperatures and inconvenient wait times, and these elderly members of the community—many of whom have mobility challenges—would have quite a go of it.
As part of Stage 3 of the LRT, the city is proposing an extension that would cut through some homes in Manor Village and the adjacent Cheryl Gardens complex in order to resolve the above problem. However, this is a significantly problematic solution to an issue the city could solve without having to displace over 500 families.
However, the route currently preferred by developers is only favoured simply because it is the shortest, and thus would cost the least. However, prioritizing the city’s incurred infrastructural costs over the lives of these 500 families is absolutely unacceptable, given how this demolition will be thrust from their rent-controlled homes into a dangerously inflated housing market (with no monetary bursaries yet announced by the city, might I add).
In order to temporarily solve the Good Companions Seniors’ Centre’s accessibility issue, OC Transpo ended up reinstating a few routes to continue running past Tunney’s Pasture in order to accommodate this error. This is a fair and viable solution that works for the people along these routes, and one that does not require a destructive move on behalf of the municipal government. And yet, because the city is prioritizing a bus-less Ottawa over people’s homes, this is not considered an acceptable fix.
The proposal to tear down these homes highlights the significance of Ottawa’s issues with affordable housing. Earlier this year, Ottawa became the first city in Canada to declare a housing and homelessness emergency. Emergency shelters are overcrowded, and the waiting list for people seeking affordable housing grew nearly 15 per cent from 2017, with nearly 12,000 people waiting to get into affordable housing at the time of the declaration.
In addition to Ottawa’s pre-existing housing problems, COVID-19 exacerbated this issue soon after it was made public by the city. While the government recently announced funding in an attempt to stem evictions amid the pandemic, this does not bode well for the city’s compassion for the quality of life of its inhabitants. Therefore, if city council thinks displacing 500 families—many of whom are low-income—for the sake of better transportation is a legitimate move to make, it needs to seriously reevaluate how much it prioritizes the well-being of these civilians specifically.
Since there are clear alternatives to destroying Manor Village and Cheryl Gardens in order to solve the area’s public transportation issues—specifically busses and alternative routes of construction—demolishing these homes should never have even been considered in the first place.
If Ottawa wishes to make itself an example of a municipality that cares for its residents, city council needs to seriously reconsider its priorities to better reflect the interests of the people who live here.
Featured image by Julien Gignac.
