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Kelly-Ann Callaghan for Cumberland–Colchester | Green Party of Canada

I guess I should start in the beginning, this is me, on my trike with my Uncle. He was my favourite Uncle. He would teach me how to paint with Bob Ross on the TV and try to teach me Kung fu. He loved me like any free spirited Uncle would. He was the best. When I was 8 his world and our world around him completely shifted when he suffered from a psychotic break. As a family we would get an inside track on how the emergency shelters systems worked as he would come back and forth from reality. Often lost and then gathered to the emergency shelter and then back home. But once we were able to get him on the proper consistent medication and have him housed he was able to contribute to society again. He taught me that your value isn’t necessarily in the monetary value you bring home but what you invest your time in and your attitude on life. He was the reason why I started fundraising for the Coldest Night of the Year. To support the shelter that supported him all those years ago. Most of the time, when people are hurting they often just need a moment of help to get back on their feet. Their worth is not an accumulation of the financial gains in their stock portfolio but sometimes it’s sitting down with a child and investing in little one on one connection.

 

Year after year I would join many others in raising funding for our homeless shelter and the situation would only get worse. I started to notice a correlation between how many condo buildings there were and how many people were chronically unhoused. I found it interesting how building more seemed to equal a bigger issue. By 2019, I was also experiencing housing insecurity. My husband and I worked (usually more than one job at a time) and were waiting for the housing market to calm so we could own and it felt (and still feels like) we will never own in our hometown of Kitchener, Ontario. We had two boys four years apart. The housing we were in needed a structural renovation, the back wall of the basement was coming off with the older addition that wasn’t properly anchored to the main house. I started researching into the missing middle of the housing continuum to better understand why. We did everything ‘right’ and we were still struggling. Why was this happening? Why could we not have safe attainable housing?

This is where I dove deep into zoning. I discovered how the Municipal and Provincial legislation have multiple barriers preventing a wide variety of housing options. I realised that there was a study happening on how people were pushed out of urban centers. Ironically, if you do not live in that city anymore you do not get to vote on what housing types they allow. Therefore if you cannot afford to even rent you have no voice to turn your hometown around. It’s a win-win system for developers while future generations of middle class are cut out. 

Before we left I spent any extra time I had harassing my City Council to do better and advocating for safe attainable housing. At the same time my husband completed his Mortgage Agent license so he could work as a Marketing Manager for a small mortgage brokerage. That is the only way we figured out how to own. Through a private mortgage, which I am not publicly endorsing. It is risky and it all depends on the terms and who your mortgage is with. But even then we couldn’t afford to live in our hometown or our home province.

In 2020 we started looking in Nova Scotia to raise our children because we loved Nova Scotia, and if it couldn’t be Kitchener we wanted to be here. Our journey to find housing, the move, all through a pandemic I will talk about another time. It was a rollercoaster but we made it safe, quarantined and kept our small town safe in the process. Now we are fully involved in the community and when we visit Kitchener we do not recognize it anymore. But I do not want what happened to us to keep happening to future generations and pushed onto Nova Scotians to be burdened with. No one should be pushed out of their hometown if it can be helped. There are gaps kept in the housing legislation that need to be addressed and the only way to do so is through federal law. That way we ensure there is an even playing field in every city so there are not sudden ebbs and flows of who shoulders what costs. I am often asked how. To begin with we need laws that housing in large urban centers must be occupied. We need to look at the income levels of the people who work in the city and calculate what they can afford (30%-40%) of their take home income and fill in the gaps with housing options. That could include; land leasing, more co-ops, mobile homes, prefabricated modular homes, additional dwelling units and tiny home communities.

Fast forward to today, I have been recognized for being loud about safe attainable housing but very little is being done without proper federal legislation. This is my main initiative. To fix housing. Start with allowing what is available to be used, and then setting expectations for the Municipal Planning departments to rezone and allow more small footprint homes to be built in large urban areas, and then the process of fair equitable housing can begin. Otherwise we will only have more of what we already have, and what we have is not working. I have listened to the two big parties talk about building more condos, which is nonsense if the starting price is only what the rich can easily attain and they can keep for investment purposes and hold onto without allowing anyone to live in them. These policies are only creating more financial investment opportunities and cutting out the middle class while simultaneously pushing the middle class into poverty.

My other motivations for running in the federal election are to create more support systems for small business owners, and help farmers and fire fighters who are essential for Canada to be self-sustaining, vibrant and properly prepared for crises when they arise. My platform is based on leaving no one behind and I hope you will see what value I can bring to the Cumberland – Colchester community to be your voice in Ottawa.