Condominium owners need economic justice
By Lethbridge Herald on July 15, 2023.
Editor:
Regarding Nathan Neudorf’s column ‘MLA for Lethbridge East committed to serving the city”:
I read with interest Nathan Neudorf’s column of July 12 that he heard loud and clear during the campaign that “affordability, including of powering and heating our homes, continues to be a top of mind issue for many in our city and province” and that he plans to “ continue the work underway to fight inflation and keep Alberta affordable.”
July marks just over one year since the government created the Alberta Affordability Action Plan, protecting homeowners and small business owners in Alberta by giving rebates on electricity, protecting against increasing costs of Natural Gas and creating the disastrous Regulated Rate Option (RRO) amongst other affordability measures.
The Condo Owners Forum Society of Alberta and other condominium organizations have been in touch with the ministry for more than a year trying to get economic justice for the more than 600,000 condo owners in the province, including many in the city of Lethbridge, that were excluded from all or part of these programs because the government didn’t do their homework before they initiated the program.
We feel it is at least a $72 million problem just for the estimated 150,000 families that didn’t get their $500 per family electricity rebate that the majority of homeowners and small businesses have already received.
So a year later, after presenting a petition to the Alberta Legislature and having commitments from both Premier Smith and former minister Jones offering many promises to fix the situation we are left with no economic justice for condo owners or any other resident of a multifamily building with the ministry still saying this is a difficult problem to fix.
So once again, we’ve extended congratulations to Minister Nuedorf and asked to meet with him and his department for an update and hopefully a solution and time frame in which his department can address this issue. We look forward to speaking with Minister Neudorf soon.
Phil Rosenzweig
Vice President, Condo Owners Forum Society of Alberta
Lethbridge
12-11
Are there not a lot of condo owners whom through their monthly HOA payments have utilities included. If so it is certainly within the realm of possibility that you would not receive a rebate.
You’ll have trouble convincing a conservative government to take condos seriously. The UCP doesn’t care about people who don’t have sprawling detached homes.