Urban hen enthusiasts watch as council cranks pluck their chicken dreams
City Hall | Paul Dechene
Here’s a quick online blurb to update everybody about 2024’s Top Council Topic: Backyard Chickens!
As you know — because it’s been hard to miss — a motion came to council to kick off the process of making backyard chickens legal to own, raise and love!
The original December 2023 motion called on staff to draft a bylaw to enable a backyard hen pilot project starting this summer. But! Ahead of the Jan. 31 meeting where it was set be debated, the mover of the motion, Ward 8 Councillor Shanon Zachidniak, significantly reined in its original ambition so it wouldn’t overtax city staff and thus — hopefully — make it more palatable to her council colleagues.
The revised motion delayed the contemplated pilot project summer 2025. The only work the redrafted motion asked of city staff was a report in October that would outline options for how the pilot could work and how much it would cost.
Despite the longer timelines, the pro-chicken lobby was still enthusiastic and well organized. Fourteen delegations submitted to speak in favour of the motion. There was a petition with 2,000 supporters’ signatures. Zachidniak noted she had received 134 e-mails from across the city on the chicken pilot, 132 of which were in favour. City admin said they received 54 e-mails on the subject and 46 were in favour.
“I’m just as surprised as you may be at the amount of positive feedback that we’ve received on this small pilot project for Backyard Hens in Regina,” said Zachidniak. “In fact, I haven’t seen this level of positive engagement with council since getting elected in 2020.
“I’ve certainly seen plenty of negative feedback at proposed policy but nothing even close to this level of support for a potential policy initiative. I think residents are looking for a good news story from our council,” she said.
In other words, public opinion was decidedly Team Chicken. No surprise! The Backyard Hens Pilot is all anybody’s been talking about for months!¹
(Don’t even look at that footnote! It will take you nowhere you want to go. It does not lead to chickens. What are you even doing reading footnotes anyway? Footnotes are for NERDS! You’re here for chickens. And did you notice that the footnote is longer than this chicken blurb? That’s a LOT OF WORDS! Do you REALLY want to do that much reading today? No, you don’t!)
But it shouldn’t take an alectryomancer to tell you that wouldn’t be enough.² The number of times Regina has filled Henry Baker to speak on an issue only to be sent home disappointed, why! I could fill a book. A very boring, very frustrating book.
And, sure enough, due to concerns over cost and administration capacity, city council said ‘cluck you’ to backyard chickens.
The vote was five in favour of the chicken pilot report (Zachidniak, Cheryl Stadnichuk, Andrew Stevens, Dan LeBlanc, Jason Mancinelli) and five against (Bob Hawkins, John Findura, Lori Bresciani, Landon Mohl, Mayor Sandra Masters). And in the event of a tie vote, a motion fails.
So: no chickens for you, Regina.
“I think at this particular point in time, we’ve got some pretty big issues as a city,” said Mayor Sandra Masters in response to press questions after the meeting.
“Earlier you heard some of it in terms of trying to accelerate getting more housing units into market. We have rezoning to do, we’ve got financial reporting issues to focus on. When we look at service requests, nothing beats snow removal. “I appreciate some of the comments on having backyard chickens.… But in order to balance in terms of who I’ve heard from, I think folks are focusing in on our core businesses and how we get our priorities straight right now,” said Masters.
“I’m not opposed to [a backyard chicken pilot] in the future. I just think right now, through this year, we have some big things we need to move.”
After the meeting, Zachidniak vowed to bring the chicken pilot back after the election — assuming she gets re-elected, that is.
And yes, that did count as a surprise announcement that the Ward 8 councillor would likely be running in the fall municipal election.
“I hadn’t formalized that but I’m feeling a bit of fire right now,” said Zachidniak. “I’ve heard a lot of support about this. And I think that there’s lots of important work that council still needs to undertake that I would like to see advanced. I guess I’ll just say I’m strongly considering it, and even more strongly today.”
Chicken lovers take heart — The fight isn’t over!
FOOTNOTES
1. Welcome friend to The Most August Order Of Footnote Followers & Endnote Enthusiasts! Imagine with me that we are passing through an numeral-emblazoned door and entering a wonderland of citations, digressions and suggestions for further reading!
Although, today, as we enter the Order’s Most Distracting Chambers, we are digressing directly into the blazing heart of that Jan 31 council meeting: CR24-1, Housing Accelerator Fund – Expanding Citywide Housing Options – Phase 1, a report which recommends council approve the amendments to The Regina Zoning Bylaw as outlined in its Appendix E.
And as we flip to the back of report CR24-1, we discover that Appendix E is one hell of an appendix.
In short, the changes it proposes will allow for more densely populated residential neighbourhoods. It accomplishes this by permitting more housing units and taller buildings on residential lots; it also gets rid of parking minimums.
More specifically, it says developers will be able to build up to fourplexes — without community consultation or council approval — on any residential lot within the Intensification Area. Developers will also be able to build duplexes — again, without community consultation or council approval — anywhere within greenfield developments.
These changes alone will have widespread effects as the Intensification Area covers over 87 per cent of the city. Only the west side of Harbour Landing, the newest subdivisions in the southeast and developments in the northwest such as Coopertown lie outside that Area.
Next, the report recommends that within mid- and high-density residential neighbourhoods, developers should no longer need to seek council approval if they want to build buildings above 11 metres tall. In fact, buildings up to 15 metres will be permitted.
Finally, on parking, the report recommends doing a ‘Find & Replace’ in our bylaws for the words “parking requirement” and turning them into “parking recommendation.”
In other words, parking minimums are now optional. Which means they are effectively gone.
Council looked at all this and voted to pass CR24-1.
Unanimously.
Appendix E just needs to be written in formal bylaw language and pass a confirming vote at the next council meeting in February, and all these changes will come into effect.
This is massive. In fact, the fewer people who know about it, the better.
This Time, Change Is Actually Happening
Residential density, ending parking minimums… these are ideas that have bopped around Regina’s policy-scape for a very long time. They are contemplated in nearly every ‘master plan’ we’ve passed in the 21st century. The Official Community Plan, the Downtown Neighbourhood Plan, most of the newer neighbourhood plans, the Transportation Master Plan, the list goes on, all of these gesture towards “density” as a planning goal. Meanwhile, council and administration have acknowledged repeatedly that our city’s excess of surface parking has become a blight that’s obstructing housing development.
And yet, when it has come time to implement and enforce legislation or devote resources to making this vision of a denser more accessible city actually happen, council tends to throw up obstacles:
“Density is good but just not in this case!”
“We have too much parking but we need one more parking lot!”
“We have too much density already!”
“If we don’t build mansions on big lots, people will move to White City!”
“Regina doesn’t actually have sprawl.”
“We need more consultation with taxpayers!”
“We need a Made In Regina solution!”
For FIFTEEN YEARS, I’ve watched progressive urban policy proposals die at city council.
But on Jan. 31, they all passed. At once. Unanimously.
Did I mention? This is massive.
And it’s not some toothless, performative masterplan that will get name dropped for a few years then gather dust on a shelf. This isn’t like the Rapid Housing Initiative where we’re doing a one-off project that will build a couple dozen housing units — a drop in the bucket compared to the larger housing crisis.
When people look at the inadequacy of our housing initiatives up to this point — the tax breaks, the grants — and lament that this is all evidently inadequate and, if we are to fix the housing market, we’re going to need to implement structural change, well… this is what structural change looks like. We are literally changing the structures that have governed how much and what kind of housing is built and where. We’re breaking down obstacles to housing construction.
Assuming these bylaw changes get final approval in February, they could result in more housing getting built this year.
As long as word doesn’t get to the NIMBYs, that is.
RIP Jalopy Defence League
Making this vote even more remarkable is that some city councillors were taking Regina in a decidedly different direction just this past summer!
You might recall that in June, council debated a motion from Ward 4 Councillor Lori Bresciani to increase parking minimums for multi-family residential developments in greenfield areas. Multiple delegations and some councillors spoke against that motion but, in responding to those critics, Ward 2 Councillor Bob Hawkins wondered aloud, “What kind of alternate universe are you folks living in?”
Hawkins went on to strongly defend Bresciani’s motion like so:
“Every one of you knows a family that if you have a couple of teenaged kids, you might get up to three cars. One for dad who goes to work, one for mom who goes to work and one for the teenager who buys a jalopy. That’s the reality that I think exists and it’s certainly the reality the people in Harbour Landing suffer through because of the chaos, because of the poor city planning, that didn’t leave enough space for parking. It is because I support density that I insist we must have enough space for parking. Otherwise, we have chaos. So for me, density means minimum parking spaces and as Councillor Bresciani has pointed out, 1.5 stalls seems to be a reasonable minimum.”
That motion succeeded at council’s June 21 meeting with councillors Bresciani, Hawkins, John Findura (ward five), Landon Mohl (ward 10), Terina Nelson (ward seven) and Mayor Masters voting in favour while councillors Dan LeBlanc (ward 6), Jason Mancinelli (ward 9), Cheryl Stadnichuk (ward 1), Andrew Stevens (ward 3) and Shanon Zachidniak (ward 8) voted against.
Now, just three weeks later at council’s July 12 meeting, Bresciani’s motion to increase parking minimums ultimately failed on second reading of the bylaw. But that only happened because Mayor Masters flipped her vote. Five councillors still voted in favour of raising parking minimums.
You might also recall (because I’ve harped on about it quite a bit) that it was just back in 2019, that city administration revised the zoning bylaw and recommended that single-detached residential zones be up-zoned to permit duplexes — not fourplexes, just duplexes — but, council caved to public pressure (and their own inclinations) and voted to maintain our exclusionary zoning regime and block infill construction of missing-middle housing. (Voting in favour of exclusionary zoning and against density: councillors Bresciani, Mancinelli and Findura and then-councillors Barb Young, Sharon Bryce, Jerry Flegel and Mayor-of-the-day Michael Fougere.)
Here we are at the dawn of 2024 and the script has completely flipped. Council has set all their anti-density oratory and pro-parking talking points aside, and voted overwhelmingly and without caveat or quibble in favour of density and missing-middle housing.
Don’t You Just Hate It When Trudeau Gives You Money?
What a difference a few months make.
Oh… and what a different $36.2 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund makes. That helped too.
I don’t think it takes a genius to recognize that if the federal government hadn’t attached really short, unsnippable strings to their HAF funding program, our 2024 would have been more likely to feature a reworded parking minimum increase motion, or a motion reducing our density targets, than what we saw passed this January.
These changes were never going to happen without the federal government dangling tens of millions of dollars in front of council’s eyes and saying, “You can have this but only if you prove you’re serious about updating your housing policies.”
Thus, if council wants to take a victory lap for voting for density, fine. But you can’t really say they wrote these recommendations.
They are very much acting in accordance with the federal government’s housing policy vision. That would be the federal government led by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and propped up by Jagmeet Singh’s NDP — the same one Saskatchewan loves to hate and yet seems to have given cities, even Saskatchewan ones, an awful lot of money over the last eight years.
And Regina is merely following in the footsteps of nearly every city in the country. Everybody is making the same changes to their policies and having their housing goals supported by the $4 billion allocated to the Housing Accelerator Fund. And cities that have attempted to go their own way and create a “Made In <Insert City Name Here>” Plan have been threatened with missing out on the HAF money and changed direction.
The age of municipal shenanigans is over.
Money: The Root Of All Evil! (Where Evil = Progressive Housing Policies)
Okay, we make these pro-density changes to our zoning bylaws, we get the HAF money from the federal government. But that begs the question, is that necessarily a good thing? I mean, money is always good, right? But is it good for Regina to make these specific changes to our policies?
I am not going to get into why these bylaw changes matter or how they will contribute to more housing and a more vibrant city. I feel like I’ve already written that explainer a dozen times over. I have been writing screeds against sprawl and surface parking, defences of density and vibrant streets for 15 years! Consider The Collected City Hall Scribblings Of Paul Dechene as footnote to this footnote.
And here’s the thing, I expect I will have plenty of cause over the next three years to revisit those writings.
So far, these HAF-inspired changes to housing policy have sailed through council. Delegations on them have been overwhelmingly positive.
But public opposition is going to form. You can bet that as these bylaws come into effect, designs for multiplex housing and low-rise apartments are going to be proposed for neighbourhoods unused to such forms of development. And those applications will be approved, because our bylaws will say they’re allowed. And residents verging on these properties are going to discover that there is no opportunity to submit letters or fill in an online form with angry comments about traffic and parking and how renters don’t keep their yards nice. There won’t be an opportunity to organize community-wide opposition. They’ll e-mail city hall and discover all those neighbourhood plans that are supposed preserve 20th century, car-focused suburbs in amber are worthless.
People are going to be pissed.
And then they’ll call their councillors.
I think you’re going to find some councillors will be very much uninclined to take a victory lap for what they did last week.
When those angry e-mails start filling up council inboxes, that’s the moment the way these changes have happened will be politically valuable to local politicians. They will be able to say, “It’s not my fault. Justin Trudeau made us do it. Our hands were tied.”
I don’t know what happens next.
Test Cases Are Coming… Soon
Many cities have a head start on Regina with these housing policies. I think we’ll get a really good idea from places like Hamilton and Calgary on how they go over and what strategies are used to undermine them.
Locally though, I can point to one project that will be a very interesting test case.
I’m thinking of 535 Douglas Avenue. It’s a five-storey, 90-unit apartment building with a daycare proposed for some unused school land in Douglas Park.
Massive community opposition has formed against this project. The organizers boast meetings of over 200 people and Dan LeBlanc, councillor for the ward, who has typically been a housing advocate even when facing massive political headwinds, has expressed that while he hasn’t made up his mind on the project, the democratic will of the neighbourhood seems to be clearly in the ‘not wanting it in their backyard camp.’
The housing development is additionally complicated by the fact that the lead developer on it, The Winchester Group (TWG), is owned by Joshua Bresciani, the son of Ward 4 Councillor Lori Bresciani. As such, allegations of favouritism or nepotism have swirled around the project on social media. This is probably why Councillor Bresciani has been scrupulous about recusing herself from all discussions of the HAF program.
The specific bylaw changes that are moving through council right now will not enable this Douglas Park project. However, more changes are coming. City administration is working on bylaw changes that will allow six-storey multi-family residential developments within 200 metres of main transit routes and up to four-storey developments within 800 metres. Depending on how you define “main transit route”, TWG’s building could either be allowed as-is under the new rules. At worst, it would be allowed if they remove the top floor from their designs.
And, without a doubt, the project fits the spirit of council’s newfound affection for dense infill housing, even if that housing dramatically alters the character of the surrounding neighbourhood.
And, again without a doubt, saying “No” to this project is exactly the kind of thing the federal government could interpret as a sign that Regina is unserious about making the structural changes needed to address the housing crisis and thus imperil our HAF application.
If this had come to council for discretionary approval last year, I would have assumed it was doomed.
Now? My office pool money is on it getting the necessary approvals whether all the HAF changes have been made into bylaws or not.
I doubt Douglas Park will be stoked if I win the pocket change in the coffee tin.
This is just the beginning.
Coming soon, Holy Rosary School in the heart of Cathedral is slated for demolition and the land it and the adjoining Catholic School Board offices occupy will be sold (if they haven’t been already). Currently, that area is zoned institutional but the southern corner of that lot is roughly 350 metres from the transit-friendly 13th Avenue corridor; meaning, it will soon be within the 800 metres that would allow for four-storey, as-of-right multi-family developments and thus very valuable if council were to rezone the lot as residential.
Again, that’s the kind of change that a housing-forward council will be inclined to make. But Cathedral’s NIMBY inclinations are so pronounced they’ve become legend across the city. It’s unlikely the community will let a development like that through without opposition.
In other words, even if all the Housing Accelerator Fund changes come to pass without significant debate at council, there is still a crucible of opposition waiting for it.
What Is This Strange Sensation In My Chest? A Heart Attack?
At any other point over the last few years, if there were a pro-density report coming forward I would just assume that it was going to fail in some way. “You want to pass laws allowing multi-family infill? Fine. They’ll never get the necessary discretionary process.” “You want to investigate removing parking minimums? Fine. But watch me jiu-jitsu that report request into a motion to increase parking minimums.”
With council’s density aspirations, failure has always been an option.
But you know what? Right now, with the federal government arm-twisting city council to implement the density measures they’ve known they’ve needed for 20 years and have been promising to make for almost that long, well… it’s early days, but I think these changes might happen and they might stick.
I’m feeling… what’s the word?
“Optimistic”?
What an odd feeling.
2. The editor had to Google it so you do, too.