Ellected Ep. 59 - Calgary City Councillor Kourtney Penner on Housing - A Madame Premier Podcast

Housing, housing, housing. It’s a hot topic across Canada as we struggle with affordability, inflation and access to housing. This week Calgary City Council will chose between action on housing or the status quo and in episode 59 of Ellected, Calgary city councillor Kourtney Penner joins the podcast to talk about the decision she and her colleagues face in accepting or rejecting an 80 point plan to address the housing crisis. It’s one of the 80 recommended points in the report to update a type of zoning in certain areas to allow for more types of housing and instead of being widely applauded as innovative, some of council are rejecting the change in favour of small tweaks that won’t result in broad change. Councillor Penner walks you through what’s coming this week as well as the why and the what happens next.

More about Kourtney Penner:

Kourtney Penner was elected councillor for Ward 11 in the Calgary General Election on Oct. 18, 2021.

Kourtney Penner has roots and chose to live in Ward 11 with her family. As a community-minded leader she believes it is important to support community-building initiatives. With a strong value in relationship building, she knows projects succeed when we choose a mindset of working together, approaching challenges to find balanced, positive outcomes, and by using data to support decision making.

As a mom with school aged children and parents and grandparents in the city, Kourtney knows neighbourhoods need to balance the needs of residents across the stages of their lives. As a leader in the technology sector, she knows a thriving economy is vital to the city and creating a sustainable future is important to our global position.

As part of Kourtney’s practice with all the organizations she has served – she has brought this mindset to the table and continually asks these questions:

How can we positively affect (or least harm) the most amount of people?

What opportunities exist for different groups to come together to create the most desirable outcome which may involve compromise?

More about Sarah Elder-Chamanara:

Sarah Elder-Chamanara is the founder, creative director, designer and owner of Madame Premier, a feminist, political and activist clothing company and community based in Calgary, Alberta. With the underlying principle of seeing more women and diversity in politics, elected and in backrooms, at every level, Sarah and Madame Premier create opportunities for conversations about how politics works, why it needs to change, who it needs to change for and how the time for that is now.