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Affordable housing in Victoria


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#1801 spanky123

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 08:32 AM

Hopefully, after voting for empty words enough times, the Isitt Cult voters will eventually question why nothing ever gets better and start to question the Supreme Being.

 

Well unfortunately for that theory a developer just offered up $1M for the affordable housing fund to get their development approved which in Isitt's supporters' minds is validation that what he is doing is working. 



#1802 spanky123

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 08:34 AM

Oregon's communities of 10,000 or more people will no longer be able to permit the construction of single-family-dwellings.

 

Oregon Legislature Votes To Essentially Ban Single-Family Zoning

https://www.npr.org/...e-family-zoning

 

Exactly what Helps is proposing for Victoria. A few months back to stated that all applications for duplexes and triplexes should automatically be approved on every lot in Victoria. At the time city staff stated that allowing duplexes and triplexes would not impact the value of the land, but I don't believe that anyone has validated that theory. Seems to me like a lot of developers are wasting their time rezoning properties for higher density if it has no impact on value.


Edited by spanky123, 02 July 2019 - 08:37 AM.


#1803 RFS

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 08:37 AM

The best line from that TC editorial: 'Let’s go all Langford on new development. We know that cutting red tape works, after all; we have proof, just up the highway'


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#1804 spanky123

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 08:39 AM

The best line from that TC editorial: 'Let’s go all Langford on new development. We know that cutting red tape works, after all; we have proof, just up the highway'

 

True but at what cost. Ever tried get from one side of Langford to another during the day?



#1805 aastra

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 08:47 AM

This is a win-win thing, right? If a developer proposes a 240-unit rental building on (for example) the Gateway Green property, that would translate into ~50 units of new affordable rentals. If the motive here is to get a bunch of affordable rental units built ASAP then a proposal like that should be a slam dunk. Right?

 

Right?

 

(more crickets chirping)



#1806 aastra

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 08:48 AM

But aastra! That would be too many new affordable rental units!



#1807 Mike K.

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 08:51 AM

True but at what cost. Ever tried get from one side of Langford to another during the day?

 

Yes! And it's much easier/faster than trying to get from one side of Victoria to the other. Even on this rainy, post-Canada Day Long Weekend Tuesday morning when half the region isn't working and school is out of session, Victoria is congested. Langford is free flowing.

 

Langford, right now:

 

Screen Shot 2019-07-02 at 9.49.55 AM.png

 

Victoria, right now:

 

Screen Shot 2019-07-02 at 9.50.08 AM.png


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#1808 RFS

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 08:56 AM

^and Bay st would be red too if the bridge was open

#1809 Mike K.

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 09:04 AM

Indeed it would be. Langford does not have a traffic problem that is particularly noteworthy. Like in any city anywhere, vehicles cue up at major intersections, but crosstown travel is not particularly drawn out because of that. I think Langford's traffic woes are more-so the result of an expectation of there to not be any impediment whatsoever.


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#1810 Victoria Watcher

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 02:57 PM

There is no question that Victoria needs more affordable housing, more high-end housing and everything in between. With that in mind, council should be doing all it can to encourage developers to go ahead with new developments as quickly as possible.

 

Instead, the members of council — who have, individually or collectively, no experience in creating housing — have made a decision that will push developers into other municipalities. That decision will be good for Saanich, Sidney, Langford and all points between, and it will help ease the housing crisis in Greater Victoria, but it will only exacerbate the problems in the downtown core.

 

 

https://www.timescol...sing-1.23872992

 

 

that's a good line.


Edited by Victoria Watcher, 02 July 2019 - 02:58 PM.


#1811 Sparky

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 03:54 PM

This gag has to stop.

“Affordability is in the eye of the beholder.”

Victoria became unaffordable a long time ago even before the internet informed the rest of the planet that the existing residents live here in a world class environment for world class peanuts.....and they are moving here by the truck/bus/train/boat/plane/cart load....partly because the weather is nice and partly because nobody shoots at them.

What the Together Victoria members of this council (see what I did there Geoff?) doesn’t realize is that despite the socialist dreamweaver hankering that they picked up on campus in their youth.....it just won’t work. It can’t work. It never will work. They are legislating “subsidized” housing under the guise of “affordable” housing.

The feedback that I get from the people that build the facilities for those that do not have the wherewithal to build their own is.....good luck.

For the rest of you click on the link below and have a look. It is my personal opinion that anyone that wants to wake up in the morning and contribute to their own well being....can figure out a way to keep the rain off of them when they sleep.

https://www.rentfast...WsaAvVsEALw_wcB
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#1812 Victoria Watcher

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Posted 02 July 2019 - 04:12 PM

there is no crisis.  everyone that's not a substance abuser or has mental challenges is housed.  full stop.



#1813 Mike K.

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 07:01 AM

In a rental market given over to bidding wars, Gallant says he only managed to get the unit because the landlord thought his son, Logan, 3, was cute.

 

...

 

“I would love to leave this island,” he says.

- https://nationalpost...-housing-crisis

 

He's speaking about PEI, where the rental vacancy rate has come crashing down as the island's economy has gone "on a tear" (according to the premier). Charlottetown has a vacancy rate of 0.2%. The average rental rate for a 2BR apartment is $921.

 

Sound familiar?:

 

Working four blocks away, Hannah Bell is the provincial Green Party critic for housing and social development. She says the city should share the responsibility but has dragged its feet by doing two years of surveys. They know two per cent of units are used for AirBnB, and they know that the “twin sister” to a housing crisis is food insecurity, whereby people sacrifice their food budgets to pay rent. She says she has met constituents who cannot find pet-friendly units so are considering putting down their cats and dogs.

The housing shortage is challenging the very identity of the Island. It markets itself as “the food island,” when in fact it has one of the highest rates of childhood food insecurity of any Canadian province. Its slogan is “the mighty island,” when some constituents, Bell says, are left living in their cars.

The bridge to the mainland costs nearly $50, paid only in that direction. It’s the island where you have to pay to leave, and Gallant, for one, would be glad to.


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#1814 Wally

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 11:18 AM

I just returned from a visit to Charlottetown. I have no doubt that the comments in the NP are correct but you need to take things into perspective. The population of Charlottetown is less than 40K. The entire region is less than 80K. It is a very small city. A 15 minute drive and you are in the middle of farmland. Outside of Charlottetown the population hasn't changed much in 100 years and there are lots of places available inexpensively.


Edited by Wally, 03 July 2019 - 11:18 AM.


#1815 aastra

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 12:20 PM

 

He blames the province, as it did not sufficiently invest in bus routes to enable students to live outside Charlottetown or rural health care to prevent seniors from needing to urbanize.

 

You know, because nobody would actually choose to live in the city of their own volition. Nobody would ever prefer that. Obviously not. Especially when the city in question is an intense urban hellhole like Charlottetown.

 

Come on, you need more bus routes so people can live outside Charlottetown? Why? Charlottetown city is physically large and it has an extremely low population density. What you need are more apartments in Charlottetown! We see this same disconnect everywhere: people need places to live, but the authorities are doing everything they can to restrict new construction, to delay new construction, and to make new construction more expensive.

 

For purposes of comparison:

 

Charlottetown city:

population: 36,000
land area: 44.3 square km
density per square km: 814

 

Esquimalt:
population: 17,655
land area: 7 square km
density per square km: 2,495

Sidney:
population: 11,672
land area: 5 square km
density per square km: 2,291

 

You could add a thousand new apartments to Charlottetown and its small city flavour would be exactly the same as before, but the housing shortage would be eased by a fair bit. No need to worry about quaint Charlottetown turning into another dense urban disaster zone like Esquimalt or Sidney, in other words.


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#1816 Mike K.

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 12:24 PM

It's amazing, the parallels, right?

 

The blame game. The causes. The "solutions."


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#1817 Nparker

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 12:31 PM

At some point it seems as though "housing is a basic human right" became "housing of one's preferred choice in one's preferred location is a basic human right".


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#1818 Wally

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 01:21 PM

You could add a thousand new apartments to Charlottetown and its small city flavour would be exactly the same as before, but the housing shortage would be eased by a fair bit. No need to worry about quaint Charlottetown turning into another dense urban disaster zone like Esquimalt or Sidney, in other words.

 

Your stats don't really reflect the full picture. The downtown core of Charlottetown is as dense as Sidney or Esquimalt, it is just that the planners built a lot of greenspace into their city design and the landscape turns rural very quickly outside of the core. 



#1819 Mike K.

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 01:42 PM

So why would students want to live in a rural setting, as per the mayor’s comment? That goes against the typical desire of a typical student.
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#1820 DustMagnet

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 02:24 PM

At some point it seems as though "housing is a basic human right" became "housing of one's preferred choice in one's preferred location is a basic human right".

 

At one's preferred price point.


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