Edmonton landlord raised concerns about the transitional housing proposal

City leaders gave the okay about the sale of a piece of land in Edmonton’s downtown for just $1,000 for a non-profit to build transitional housing.

At least one landlord challenges the City’s move. He tells CityNews he has more than 50 affordable housing units in the area, and no one from the City ever contacted him about whether that was a good idea.

“Zero community engagement … there is zero because you know what, they don’t care,” said Amedio Pagliuso, a low-income housing landlord.

RELATED: Multi-million dollar piece of land in Edmonton sold to non-profit for $1k

Pagliuso owns and operates more than 78 housing units in the Quarters District and 51 of the units are located just within the block of the proposed land. The landlord raises concern that the project could impact, or in his words, “up-end the progress of the community.” 

“If we look at where other homeless shelters exist, basically there’s a homeless shelter there and then there’s an entire series of cottage industries and encampments that surround homeless shelters, there are full of people that don’t wanna be inside the homeless shelters because they can’t do drugs in the homeless shelters, they can’t have weapons in the homeless shelter,” said Pagliuso.

The land beside Kinistaw Park was valued at $3.4 million, and selling it for a thousand bucks has been unknown to some residents, and stakeholders including Amadeo.

On October 31st, CityNews reached out to the non-profit asking for a statement saying, “We are truly grateful for our neighbour’s support of our proposed building and look forward to continuing our journey as a neighbour in the community.”

But for Amedeo, it’s a different story.

“Not a single person that I know of, and I’m very familiar with all the stakeholders in and around there. Not a single person was consulted about this development.”

However, according to the ward councillor, the City reached out to the stakeholders and community league surrounding the area and gave them the opportunity to voice their concerns which mostly supported the proposal, adding that the city government doesn’t need to put any information to the sale according to the municipal government act.

“The MGA doesn’t require advertising or notice for below-market sales when it’s going to a non-profit, there were no formal requirements … what I do know is that E4C as an organization has been reaching out to stakeholders in the area to make them aware of this,” said Councillor Anne Stevenson.

The councillor added that there is no safety risk imposed on the proposed building as she believes this will entice more office and administration workers to the facility. 

“Which will just increase the foot traffic and the number of people out and about which definitely supports safety,” said Stevenson.

Stevenson added that the non-profit should develop a public engagement as a part of the condition to provide an open discussion from the surrounding residents as the proposal progresses.