Concerned citizens are fighting to stop an unsafe development in Lowertown Ottawa.

We need to raise $25,000 for legal fees to argue our case at the Ontario Land Tribunal. 

The reasons

Social implications: We are challenging the decision to locate transitional housing beside Ottawa’s busiest supervised injection site and the City’s largest homeless shelter. This location is ground zero in Ottawa for street crime, people suffering severe mental distress, property damage, open prostitution and drug use. Residents are routinely harassed and assaulted. This is the most dangerous area in Ottawa.

 

There is vacant land available nearby and in many other parts of the city where safer and better housing could be provided. Simply put, this is bad planning.

 

Planning implications: The rezoning will affect the future development of other properties in the area.

 

The proximity of the site to the heritage district on the other side of the street makes it subject to legislated building restrictions which have been ignored. The extra height allows the building to intrude into the protected viewshed of Parliament Hill from Beechwood Cemetery. If we do not take a stand here and now, then the results will be repeated in the coming months and years on properties along Murray Street and elsewhere in the Heritage Conservation District.

 

The lawyer representing our group has filed an appeal with the Ontario Land Tribunal setting out how this project contravenes numerous bylaws and sections of the City of Ottawa Official Plan and the Provincial Policy Statement. We are waiting for the Tribunal to set a date for the hearing.

 

The rationale

 

The city is using the need for affordable housing as an excuse to remove critical zoning restrictions in the community when other, better sites and solutions are available close by.

 

We believe we have been ill-served by the city planning department which seems ready to jettison aspects of the Zoning Bylaws, and the Official Plan whenever it is convenient, knowing that few citizens will take on the large expense of challenging their decisions.

 

Thank you,

 

We hope that we can count on your support to show them that they are wrong.

 

Citizen Coalition for Compassionate and Safe Communities