1896 replies to this topic

[aastra]

Aug 24, 2016:

 

 

Coun. Fred Haynes, who brought forward the original motion along with Coun. Leif Wergeland, said allowing homeowners to build suites in small, separate buildings likely will go a long way toward solving the housing crisis in the region.

 

Jan 7, 1969:

 

 

"Mayoral Prescription" (editorial)

"The urgent need for housing accommodation within the reach of families of moderate and low income has been made plain in recent months."

"Housing Crisis Committee Set Up"

"One cannot deny the fact that Saanich... faces a housing crisis."

 

This has been one heck of a housing crisis for the past ~50 years, hasn't it?

 

Hmmm. So maybe it's not really a crisis at all? And maybe it's not something that could ever really be solved? When we talk about solving something there are all sorts of implications re: finality and completion. In this context is it even logical to be thinking in this manner?

 

Maybe the supposed housing crisis is nothing more than the ongoing and ever-present need for new and replenished housing stock in a living city that will never stop growing and changing? Maybe a city is really just a work in perpetual progress when you get right down to it? The ongoing creation and recreation of housing stock is a fundamental process, and to regard it as an abnormality or an ailment that needs to be addressed periodically via special measures is to miss the point entirely?

 

Think about it. Metro Victoria wasn't really even a thing until the auto-oriented suburbs started popping up in the 1940s or thereabouts. In effect we're saying there has been a housing crisis in Greater Victoria pretty much since day one? The city has been dying of the same heart attack for several decades? Give me a break.

 

If a crisis situation exists and if a crisis situation has been drawn out for so long then I'd suggest it's because of how Victorians have tried to manage it. They've mismanaged it. They continue to mismanage it.

Edited by aastra, 24 August 2016 - 08:53 AM.

[aastra]

I get concerned when people start saying the things that some people have been saying in this thread. Hey, we need a dozen more buildings like View Towers in a special zone somewhere, to respond to this crisis. We need special projects and initiatives. We need radical measures. Baloney.

 

Victoria doesn't need even one building like View Towers. It just needs to fess up and relax and allow things to happen. There are still hundreds of sites even in Victoria proper where lowrise, midrise, and highrise apartments could and should be built. But Saanich? Come on. Saanich is like a bottomless pit of potential. We're talking about a 50-year housing crisis in Saanich even though Saanich STILL doesn't have even a single highrise building? Even though Saanich STILL has only a handful of midrise buildings?

Edited by aastra, 24 August 2016 - 08:48 AM.

[Bingo]

Aug 24, 2016:

 

This has been one heck of a housing crisis for the past ~50 years, hasn't it?

Longer than that.

Right after WWII there was the baby boom and people were still living in army huts up where the present UVIC campus is now.

And before that there was a shortage of caves to protect people from Sabre Tooth Tigers.

[North Shore]

Had a job a few years back that saw me flying from Vancouver to Victoria harbours on a regular basis.  What struck me the most, as a person who grew up in Vancouver, is the amount of low-rise condos that have been built on the north shore of False Creek, and over towards Kits (say 1st to 16th, Main to Balaclava) since I was a young adult.  Lots of single-family homes have been replaced with condo buildings - how else, otherwise, to fit the people in?  Areas of Victoria/Saanich/WesternComm's are long overdue for that...

[Nparker]

...And before that there was a shortage of caves to protect people from Sabre Tooth Tigers.

I suspect the woolly mammoth might have been more of an issue for early humans in the ancient CRD.

[Rob Randall]

The Daily Colonist (1947-09-12)

 

 

Attached Images

• 

[Jables]

Victoria doesn't need even one building like View Towers. It just needs to fess up and relax and allow things to happen. There are still hundreds of sites even in Victoria proper where lowrise, midrise, and highrise apartments could and should be built. But Saanich? Come on. Saanich is like a bottomless pit of potential. We're talking about a 50-year housing crisis in Saanich even though Saanich STILL doesn't have even a single highrise building? Even though Saanich STILL has only a handful of midrise buildings?

 

In my view, it all comes down to the residents.  Say Saanich & Victoria actually did want to start densifying...how do you think the majority (or at the very least, the most vocal minority) of single-family homeowners would respond to a 5/6 story apartment building in their neighborhood, especially if it involved tearing down other single-family homes?  They'd burn Mayor & Council at the stake for even thinking about it.

 

Hell, I was at a council meeting in Central Saanich once where somebody presented his plan to buy a large residential lot on Tanner Ridge, subdivide, and build his own home.  His plan was extremely well thought out, he had all frontage/spacing calculated, comparables of other homes in the neighbourhood, and he wasn't going to be tearing down the old house at all - instead leaving it on its own property.  Lo and behold, about a dozen neighbours turned out at the meeting against his proposal, accusing him of being a 'developer' looking to flip the lot for a quick profit.  Most of their arguments against boiled down to the fact that they "didn't want to move into a neighbourhood with a ton of little lots" and they "didn't want a dangerous precedent to be set", despite the fact that the two resulting lots would have been about the same size as most of the existing lots in the neighbourhood.  At the end of the day they managed to delay the vote because one Councillor wasn't there, and they were high-fiving each other outside the council chambers while this poor guy and his wife looked absolutely devastated. It was a disgusting display and, even though I may be reaching here, I can only imagine what kind of rhetoric a larger apartment building would draw.

 

With that in mind, it's not hard for me to see why this isn't something that the local politicians would ever want to touch on.  I don't know how this problem could ever be solved unless they want to commit political suicide.

Edited by Jables, 24 August 2016 - 09:26 AM.

[VicHockeyFan]

I get concerned when people start saying the things that some people have been saying in this thread. Hey, we need a dozen more buildings like View Towers in a special zone somewhere, to respond to this crisis. We need special projects and initiatives. We need radical measures. Baloney.

 

 

 

I'm one of those people.  I don't want special zoning, I want relaxed zoning, I want to free up the supply side.  And I'm more keen on small apartments, that's where single and street people eventually go.  I'm not all that concerned about more "family housing".  If you have a big family and low paying jobs, you need to move to a cheaper town.

[Rob Randall]

The Daily Colonist (1919-08-01)

 

I could go on and on but you get the idea.

Attached Images

• 

[Mike K.]

I just want to add that with the recent run-up in land prices throughout the CRD, the numbers required to make rentals work are pretty daunting. We're looking at the end of the rental game before it even got started, according to a source familiar with the financial side of the industry. So we can expect to see the current stock of proposals move on through to completion as the land has already been acquired, but from there on out things are not looking very good.

[aastra]

 

Lots of single-family homes have been replaced with condo buildings...

 

But I'm saying there's really no need to wipe out decently dense SFD neighbourhoods. Vancouver city is still mostly SFD neighbourhoods. This is how the issue is always framed: either you need to build View Towers, or you need to do a Blanshard/Rose thing and wipe out a neighbourhood and replace it, or you need to enable people to live in backyard sheds (or even tents). Come on. These should be the very, very last options that should ever be on the table.

 

Just think of all of the apartments that could be built from the north end of downtown Victoria through to Uptown. You wouldn't need to knock down even one house. Just imagine if the Uptown area was designated for high-density residential, and if incentives were in place to make it happen. We've got a supposed housing crisis and yet Uptown is building one measly apartment block that's barely a highrise? Is the corner lot zoned for a residential tower? No? That makes no sense.

 

Hey, just imagine if you could easily add an invisible floor here or there in the freakin' old town! It's a battle whenever somebody tries to do it. But, isn't there supposed to be a decades-long housing crisis?

 

Remind me, isn't it still a battle to build a lowrise apartment building in lower Cook Street of all places? You know, in Fairfield, where there are already hundreds of lowrise apartment blocks? But, isn't there supposed to be a decades-long housing crisis?

 

Aren't they planning to demolish a historic church in Fairfield? Are they going to replace it with 6 stories, or even 5 stories? No? But, isn't there supposed to be a decades-long housing crisis?

 

We've got strip malls even on the fringes of downtown Victoria. We've got plenty of surface parking lots. Dockside Green is still two-thirds empty. Ogden Point is empty. Vast federal properties in Esquimalt are empty. Oak Bay Avenue still has strip malls that could be lowrise apartments.

 

Forget View Towers, forget sheds and tents, forget wiping out SFD neighbourhoods. These are extreme and in most cases extremely misguided options.

[VicHockeyFan]

Would I be right in presuming that all these rentals being built now can be fairly easily converted into strata homes if the market said that works, and council of the day would allow (ie. if we had a 5%+ vacancy rate)?

[aastra]

 

I'm one of those people.  I don't want special zoning, I want relaxed zoning, I want to free up the supply side.  And I'm more keen on small apartments, that's where single and street people eventually go.

 

Yeah, but there's a big difference between more apartments and more View Towers. I can show you a million examples of the former that don't look anything like the latter.

[Nparker]

... the numbers required to make rentals work are pretty daunting...

What would aid in making rental projects more appealing to developers? Borrowing money is as cheap now as it has ever been and land values aren't likely to see a significant devaluation in the immediate future. I can then only assume the answer lies in relaxing the artificial impediments put in place by our local elected officials.

[sebberry]

And the thing about replacing some of the strip malls on Oak Bay Ave or even the businesses on Douglas is that <gasp> you can build new apartment buildings with ground floor retail to replace the business space.

VHF - I'd assume it should be pretty straight forward to convert them to stratas at some point. Many older rental apartments were converted to stratas so I don't see why that'd be too difficult in the future.

Edited by sebberry, 24 August 2016 - 10:09 AM.
spelling

[aastra]

UVic has room on its parking lots for hundreds of units, and without even cutting down a single tree. Put the parking underground, build another parkade, whatever. Camosun's parking lot, too.

[Mike K.]

If you do not have an agreement in place with the City that you will maintain the project as rentals in perpetuity, you can alter them to use as strata titled properties. This is a protective measure in the event for whatever reason rental vacancy rates skyrocket and homes are sitting empty for long periods of time.

 

The majority of rental housing owners are not interested in that scenario, though. By the time they could feasibly begin the process of switching their property from a strata to a rental they are already nearing the stage when the investment is turning a profit. There's very little impetus to convert to strata titled homes unless there's a serious market imbalance.

 

@Nparker, it's not just the cost of land and low borrowing rates, there are external factors like construction rates, the cost to bring a project to the approvals stage (millions can be spent on the planning phase), and then there are unforeseen circumstances that can delay a project once its underway. It's an extremely risky endeavour to take on high-density developments and with rentals they are a very long term, slow, but usually stable investment. Condos allow all parties involved to sidestep a 20-to-25-year period of risk following the project's completion.

[aastra]

 

And the ting about replacing some of the strip malls on Oak Bay Ave or even the businesses on Douglas is that <gasp> you can build new apartment buildings with ground floor retail to replace the business space.

 

This is what I'm saying. In many, many cases it would just equate to more of the same. No big shock. No View Towers. No gutting the neighbourhood of a hundred SFDs.

 

It would still be your very same neighbourhood, but with a few more apartments. Big deal. And yet it always is a big deal. And yet the supposed housing crisis is celebrating its 70th birthday.

[sebberry]

UVic has room on its parking lots for hundreds of units, and without even cutting down a single tree. Put the parking underground, build another parkade, whatever. Camosun's parking lot, too.

Didn't the community raise a stink about UVic's proposed parkade?

[Bingo]

Didn't the community raise a stink about UVic's proposed parkade?

Yes, but now that it is there partially concealed by the trees, what was all the stink about.

I say build more parkades at UVIC and then use some of the existing (waste of land) parking lots for housing.