A reasonably sensible letter from Jonathan Tinney, the CoV's director of sustainable planning:
...At the City of Victoria’s planning department, where I work, we spend a great deal of time looking not only at what is happening, but also why it’s occurring. Housing affordability is a complex issue, but at its core is some simple arithmetic. Over each of the past five years, the city of Victoria saw 1,300 new residents call the city home. This created the need for between 600 and 700 new housing units annually to accommodate them. But we saw only an average of 450 units get built. This annual shortfall ate into the vacancy rate and other available supply, but we’ve now reached a point where that cushion is no longer available. The only way to solve the problem is to increase the number of units entering the market to meet the demand...
http://www.timescolo...enge-1.22012156
Of course, the real problem lies with trying to convince the NIMBYs of this. Every time a project with even the slightest increase in density is suggested in practically any neighbourhood, almost without fail, it is met with anger and pushback.