Imagine you make minimum wage (it isn’t hard if you try).
In Saskatchewan minimum wage is $9.50/hour. For an 8 hour work day, a worker will gross $76. For a tax rate of about 26%, this leaves $56.24 before other deductions like CPP and EI.
Multiply by 5 workdays in the week. $281 per week.
Multiply that by four weeks in a month. $1125 per month.
Multiply the $281 by 52 work weeks to get a rough estimation of minimum wage income for the year that someone could have in their bank account. $14622 per year.
It’s the opinion of Regina City Council that “affordable housing” is defined by rental units “at or below market” rates. It’s quite common to now to see people paying $850/mon for a 1 bedroom apartment, or $1000/mon for a 2 bedroom apartment.
The 1 bedroom, at $850, costs 850/1125 = 76% of monthly income for housing.
The 2 bedroom at $1000, costs 1000/1125 = 89% of monthly income for housing.
CMHC says:
“The first rule is that your monthly housing costs shouldn’t be more than 32% of your gross monthly income.”
$76 * 5 * 52 = $19760. If you chop that into months / 12 = $1647
$850 / $1647 = 52% of gross monthly income.
“The second rule is that your entire monthly debt load should not be more than 40% of your gross monthly income.”
What does 32% of 1647/month look like for rent or mortgage payments for people with $0 in debt?
$527
UPDATE: Jessica writes:
“Just so you know minimum wage is $10.00/hr in Saskatchewan. As of Dec 2012.”
I was working from an old Google result it seems.
This weekend, next to the Sask Fashion Week tent is the Regina Public Library. A completely different sort of cultural experience awaits this weekend in the Library basement, where the film theatre is.
One Canadian film premieres in Regina this weekend, at the Public Library Theatre, the powerful documentary Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children, which follows former Romeo Dallaire (who had been UN Force Commander during the Rwanda genocide in the mid 90s) on his current global mission to end the use of child soldiers.
Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children
Thursday, May 9 – 7:00 pm
Friday, May 10 – 9:00 pm
Saturday, May 11 – 7:00 pm
Sunday, May 12 – 9:00 pm
Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children: the filmmakers of Shake Hands with the Devil again join Romeo Dallaire, who continues to be haunted by the Rwandan genocide. Now Dallaire returns to the conflict front lines of Africa to meet recently demobilized child soldiers, and to confront their commanders.
Please forward this email to anyone who you think might be interested in signing up for First Weekend Club notices about Canadian movies opening in Regina!
To be removed or added to this email list, please contact Robin at: zima@accesscomm.ca
To learn more about the national First Weekend Club, and Canadian movies in release across the nation, visit the FWC website: www.firstweekendclub.ca
Many thanks,
Robin
Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children – 2012 – 83 minutes – Canada – Rated PG
I watched Shake Hands With the Devil on plane flight once. There are not many other movies that can make you proud to be Canadian, and ashamed to be human, at the same time. I have a high level of respect for Romeo Dallaire.
Most of #YQRcc is from a generation of people who have NO idea what it's like to live in #YQR with not enough money for rent. #HousingCrisis— John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) May 07, 2013
A lawyer in Regina posted this to their social media:
WOW! A homeowner cannot have roommates because of… parking??? City hall is living in an alternate universe. What a ridiculous bylaw.
It’s a part of a bylaw that needs to be amended this month. In a time of less than 1% rental vacancy, the City of Regina cracks down on… safe places to rent. As the Mayor prepares to host a “housing summit” the City launches an effort to crack down on affordable housing in order to satisfy the parking fantasies of a few well-off people living in quarter-million dollar homes. This is not the sort of heartless city I think Regina should be.
This bylaw hurts people living in our City right now. If the City and some residents are really concerned about parking problems, fix Regina Transit now. If the City wants to create a need to find thousands of people new accommodations within three weeks from today, then proceed with enforcing this ridiculous bylaw.
UPDATE: The Mayor backs off, and says he regrets the Administration sent out four threatening letters about what they viewed as illegal Rooming Houses. A review is underway until at least July.
Tuesday evening about a hundred people gathered at the Conexus Arts Centre to discuss Regina’s culture, and how to ensure it thrives in the Official Community Plan’s outcomes.
People were greeted by two young people, and beautiful music. And gargoyles.
There’s another session on Thursday coming up for “stakeholders”. The general public can still email in responses.
I ended up in the local neighbourhood culture room. A lack of common space is a hinderance to building culture and community. Roads are an often used public space, but people cannot communicate while on a road, if they are in a single occupant vehicle. Accomodating cars can be a real hinderance to changing Regina’s culture to better serve people instead.
There was a decided lack of young people there. No one was in their teenage years, or early twenties in my room, and no teens at all at the entire event. Few comments about needing skate parks are likely to have been recorded. I did bring up the need for swimming pools, and possibly more of them, but don’t know if it got recorded/captured in the City’s note taking.
Culture of biking. Walkability.
Access to local stores is vital. Without a business in a neighbourhood, that can be passed onto the next generation, neighbourhoods change as a generation leaves.
Community Gardens promote sharing.
Combine senior homes with kindergartens.
My notes with some keywords included:
Bike culture
Connect neighbourhoods
storefront activity
Community Associations
Schools, Community buildings (with bulletin boards), gardens, libraries,
Perma-culture
Pools, sports grounds
Age friendly communities, wheelchair accessible
signage
Walkabillity
Measure success by guaging the happiness of children. If there is low vandalism, that’s another sign of good culture and strong community.
In the recently passed report on Transit in Regina, the council committee “recommend that Council consider further enhancements to conventional transit routing in the 2014 budget (requires 2014 budget increase).”
At the Community and Protective Services Committee meeting on April 10, 2013, Councillor Young wondered if there may be some way for the Summer construction season to be used as an opportunity to convince employers in the Downtown area to encourage their employees to use Regina Transit and reduce parking and traffic congestion. This is a serious possibility. The Regina Transit Employer Pass could be heavily promoted, or even adapted after the Boulder, Colorado Eco-Pass http://www.bouldercounty.org/roads/transit/pages/ecopass.aspx
Additional incentives for employers who buy their employees a pass for the year (or maybe just this Summer) could improve traffic and parking downtown, while increasing Regina Transit revenue immediately so additional buses could more easily be purchased sooner rather than later. Employers with parking spaces that are not needed would realize additional income from people outside of their company, as they rent them out to those who choose to drive.
What role did public transit play in Boulder, in 1990? “Essentially a social service for people who had no other choice.” -Will Toor, former mayor of Boulder. By 2008, it was estimated that more than 25% of people from the area rode the bus. That’s more than six times, per capita, the number of people riding the bus in Regina today. Clearly we have a long way to go to catch up with only 4%. If Reginans saw more prominent people using public transit, that would help to dispel the social stigma created here that the bus is not intended for everyone to be able to use it. Councillors Young and Fraser recently rode ParaTransit in order to gain experience, and I applaud that effort.
“What would make you want to ride the bus?” That’s the question Boulder politicians asked people in order to learn what the system had to look like, and they made that happen, rather than using a top-down imposition of service onto people. In Regina many people I know don’t feel the bus system they would want to use will ever be available here. I’m not so pessimistic.
Design Regina, and the Transportation Master Plan have given transit users and other citizens a chance to tell the City want they would like to see in order to create the ideal bus service. It falls on Council’s shoulders to find ways to implement those ideas this decade, preferably during this term in office so they’ll have vast improvement to point to when potential political challengers ask just what they’ve done to make Regina a more liveable and greener city.
–
Comments I had made to me following the CPS Committee meeting included these:
“Not investing in transit due to low ridership is a self-fulfilling prophecy.” – Chad (Not the Chad you’re all thinking of.)
“You’ve got to spend money to make money.” – Naomi
Could the “city talk with the province about getting more staff on @YQRTransit?” – Luke
“1) Eliminate parking requirements [for new building construction] and expand parking metering; use the [meter] revenue to fix sidewalks and otherwise beautify downtown. ; 2) If public employees receive free parking (which they almost certainly do), make them pay; 3) Get an express bus from the University, up Albert, all the way North (or possibly to the [Galaxy] movie theatre). The current focus is backwards, putting more emphasis on feeder routes than on major transit routes. Arms aren’t much good without a spine.” – Steve
And in response to a photo of me on a completely full bus, where I asked rhetorically if Regina needed to put more money into Transit, Mervin said, “The proof is looking right at them.”
People are asking you to spend their tax money on improving transit service. You’re unlikely to hear from any delegation or other engaged citizens that they’d rather you not build a world-class public transit service here. You have everything to gain by focusing a little on this issue. And if you do hear from anyone who is against better transit, beware the costs and consequences that flow from their position which includes:
Traffic jams. Each bus removes multiple cars from the road.
Parking congestion. Parkades can be built at an approximate cost of $33,000/stall. Parkades will not solve the air pollution problem that cars present us with. Parkades are also regarded as ugly buildings, by most people I know anyway.
Reduced air quality. Motor vehicles produce air pollution that create smog and shorten lives.
Reduced economic opportunity. Many young professionals and ‘Millenials’ choose to live where they can live a complete life without owning a car. Having an unsuccessful transit system in an unwalkable city will cause some people to choose to live where they have that service provided.
The City of Regina officially recognizes the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in many of its present, and long-standing policies.
My hope is that more effort will be expended now that over two decades have been used up finding only minor efficiencies and reductions in greenhouse gas production. It’s time to get real about the danger our civilization is facing, and stop pushing the problem onto the next generation. They will have a harder time bringing extinct life back than we face by not causing extinctions in the first place. An ounce of prevention is required in very short order now. The City’s half-measures are not the problem, it’s failing to apply the other urgently needed half of the solutions already partly here.
Our City website fails to mention Transit as an important factor in determining how much energy is consumed in our city. The City of Saskatoon suggests citizens there consider using Transit to reduce their environmental impact, and thank the City of Regina for some of the information contained on that webpage.
“For the average person, vehicles are one of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Think about car pooling to work, starting a walking school bus for your kids, taking a City bus on your errand or walking to the local grocery store.”
–
Berry Vrbanovic, President of FCM describes Transit this way:
Public transit isn’t a luxury; it is the key to a strong economy.
The following are requests for service improvements from nearly the number of people who provided comments to the Regina Transit survey earlier this year. That survey was the basis upon the changes recommended by the committee earlier this month. It is my hope that the petition’s respondents will encourage Council to act more boldly in the much needed directions outlined here:
-More frequent stop times after 9PM for routes serving major streets.
-Sundays and Holidays use the Saturday routes and schedule.
-Express routes on major roads including but not limited to Albert St., Broad St., Victoria Ave. & E., Dewdney Ave., and Rochdale Blvd. Where possible, bus-only lanes will be created, and strictly enforced to reduce Transit delays. (As an aside, this fits with the Mayor’s recent interest in investigating Snow Routes.)
-Enough Para-Transit resources made available to reduce by half or more, the 2011 monthly average number of stranded users requesting service, by the end of 2013.
-Bus or Shuttle service to the Regina #YQR Airport.
My petition identified five areas of improvement. The last point mentioned was to create a bus to the airport. Since there is no sidewalk or bike lane connecting the rest of the city with the airport, a bus is urgently needed for public safety and convenience. Also, Regina’s tourism industry and national reputation will improve if we don’t force people newly arrived to our city to pay for a cab ride or require friends or family to pick them up if they are not renting a car.
- Day passes could be bought on the buses. The transfer printers are capable of doing this. This method doesn’t require a tourist or other user to find and attend the Transit office when it is open, then buy the pass after already travelling specifically to get a pass for travel.
==
REFERENCES:
-A short video that explains how Boulder rejuvenated their transit system in the early 1990s.
On my way to #yqrcc committee meeting about transit. On a bus completely full. Comm. suggesting no new $? FTS. http://t.co/3ar7OIK8Wq— John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) April 10, 2013
Here are the notes I used, and they are in the video, as are questions and answers from the committee members.
When I asked the room to informally identify if they arrived by @yqrtransit, mine was only hand raised, as I predicted. (2 in room really)— John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) April 10, 2013
“If we want people to switch to transit, which I do, (I think 4% usage is excessively low) then what we’re planning for has to be different from what we’re doing now. It can’t be the same to get a different result. What the report has suggested is that we can do more with the same amount of money. And I think that is overly optimistic, even delusional.”
They weren’t too impressed when I suggested that their approach, which is expecting Transit to improve with no additional money, is “delusional”. I wanted to use stronger words. I only regret its use if it prevents Council from recognizing the absurd situation, where there is no urgent action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also no way to deal with the parking and traffic problems that will only grow worse this year.
As I explained to Councillor Young after, I was inspired by the Einstein quote that says to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result, is called “insanity”.
Cost recovery is an issue. But what does it have to be? @FreePublicTrans has a theory that would shock Chair Flegel. #YQRcc— John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) April 10, 2013
Not investing in transit due to low ridership is a self-fulfilling prophecy. @JohnKleinRegina— Chad (@Chad4Mayor) April 10, 2013
