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Renting, on the other hand, is seen in the same light as adolescence or a bad haircut: a stage one is expected to grow out of as quickly as possible. And no matter what their means, renters are often treated with the same mixture of pity and contempt that spinsters once faced. But this narrative has done more harm than good, and nowhere more so than here in Calgary, where the negative attitude towards renters has transcended garden-variety disdain and begun to negatively impact the way this city operates—and is operated. “There are massive financial, social and environmental costs because of that,” says Ward 11 councillor Brian Pincott. “Now, you can get into chicken-and-egg here, but suburban sprawl is a growth pattern that favours single family ownership. And we know there are huge financial, huge social and huge environmental costs to suburban sprawl—a pattern we’re trying to change in the city of Calgary.”

That’s why it’s long past time for us to push back. It’s time for the city’s renters—those who choose to do it, understand the costs and benefits of their decision, and are tired of being treated like second-class citizens—to demand some respect. It’s time for the Renters’ Manifesto.



We will not pay Peter, Paul and Mary

Renting, according to the current orthodoxy, amounts to a waste of money, or, as it’s often put, a decision to “pay someone else’s mortgage.” It follows naturally that the people who would be willing to do that are feckless, reckless or just plain stupid. Right? Well, not exactly. There was a time when owning was self-evidently a better decision, but that time is located in our collective rear-view mirror, right alongside the death of the compact disc. In 2015, even with the banks practically giving away money, the numbers tend to add up in a way that makes renting the better economic choice for most people. And that’s without factoring in the intangible benefits, which include ease of mobility, the lack of transactional friction, and the absence of any unexpected costs. “When you’re paying somebody else’s mortgage, at least you’re only paying one person,” says Artem Bytchkov, a former CIBC and RBC banker who now runs a business offering independent financial advice (and who says he quit in part because he was tired of being told to sell mortgages to people he didn’t think could afford them). “When you own, you’re paying your realtor, you’re paying your lawyer, you’re paying your bank, you’re paying your insurance company. You pay so many other mortgages, and you still owe money at the end.”