819 replies to this topic

[aastra]

The 2021 edition of the decades-long housing crisis/rental crisis. What's the expression? Same ****, different decade?

 

 

CHEK News
March 30, 2021
Feds to provide $100 million loan to create over 200 ‘affordable’ rental homes in downtown Victoria

The $100-million loan is coming from the federal government’s Rental Construction Financing Initiative, which provides low-cost loans to encourage the construction of low-cost housing nationwide. The loan must be repaid within 10 years.

 

Minister Hussen said the federal government recognizes that housing is becoming increasingly less affordable in major urban centres nationwide, including Victoria.

 

“People like teachers, nurses, shopkeepers, firefighters, paramedics, construction workers. Those people are finding it harder and harder to afford rent in Canada’s urban centres,” he said.

Experts say Tuesday’s announcement by the feds is another step in the right direction, as it shows the Trudeau government is looking at rental housing as a real solution.

 

“The fundamental problem in Victoria is there are too many people and not enough places, so more homes will help,” said Thomas Davidoff of the UBC Sauder School of Business.

 

***

 

 

Times-Colonist (Comment)
August 20, 2017

Victoria is a city of renters (making up 59 per cent of households), and new rental housing is key to future affordability.

 

***

 

 

Once-shunned tower projects back on table for rezoning
Times Colonist
January 13, 2005

A controversial proposal to build 16-storey and 12-storey apartment towers in James Bay has been revived despite overwhelming opposition from neighbouring residents.

Quadra Pacific Properties and Associated Building Credits have applied for rezoning applications to be considered by Victoria council this morning.

Associated wants to build 105 rental apartments in a 16-storey block and 16 townhouses at 350-360 Douglas St. Quadra Pacific is proposing a 113-unit tower at 415-435 Michigan St.

Both projects were rejected by all but three of 120 people attending a community meeting last May.

Ross Sinclair, who lives nearby at 624 Avalon St., is outraged that the proposals have resurfaced, especially because rezoning notices appeared during the Christmas holidays when they might have been overlooked.

"The community has already nixed this once," Sinclair said, adding that the projects do not conform to the James Bay neighbourhood plan.

Planning staff has recommended both proposals be rejected. However, consultant Mark Johnston, a former Esquimalt and Victoria city hall administrator, has argued rental apartments are badly needed.

 

Rental units have not been built in James Bay area since the 1970s.

 

***

 

 

Times-Colonist
March 23, 1995

Victoria renters having trouble paying

With about 44 per cent of all renters experiencing "housing affordability problems" in 1991, Victoria ranked highest of 25 centres surveyed, Statistics Canada said.

That's no surprise for Victoria renters. "Victoria is the hardest place anywhere in Canada for tenants to find a place to live and they have the least chance of escaping tenancy," said Mike Walker of the Tenants Rights Coalition. "There is nowhere else in the country where things are so bad."

"For what we have in B.C., crisis isn't the right word any more."

 

***

 

 

Vancouver Sun
29 May 1993

Trouble in the Garden: Behind Victoria's grand facade lies a crisis in affordable housing

...Victoria is the most difficult city in Canada for people to get out of renting and buy their own place.

Only 7.5 per cent of renters in Victoria can afford to buy a house or condominium of their own compared with 20.5 per cent in Vancouver, 27 per cent in Toronto and 35 per cent in Montreal.

She (Kaye Melliship, a planner with the Capital Region Housing Corp.) sees a number of barriers to affordable housing:

* Lack of municipal policies, plans and strategies.
* A dramatic cut in capital funds from senior government for non-market housing.
* High cost of land and absence of land servicing.
* No-growth policies in communities due to constraints in the capacity of infrastructure and community values.
* Lengthy development approval processes.

 

***

 

 

Vancouver Sun
August 10, 1991

Victoria renters last on list to buy 1st home

Quick. Which Canadian city has the lowest percentage of renters who can afford a starter home?

The correct answer is Victoria, home of the newly-wed and the restfully retired.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. statistics show just nine per cent of Victoria renters can afford to buy a starter house. Toronto has the next lowest figure, at 17.7 per cent, while just 17.9 per cent of Vancouver renters can afford to buy.

 

***

 

Daily Colonist
February 15, 1980

Realtors feel condo pinch

Condominiums priced from $25,000 to $125,000 are selling fast in Greater Victoria.

...the condo market shows signs of shrugging off a slump it has been in the grips of since late 1975.

The shortage of stock is acute, particularly in single family dwellings, but condominiums are also feeling the pinch.

There is also a strong demand from outside Victoria for condominiums... some realtors reported more external inquiries than they had ever handled before.

One agent said many buyers were two to three years off retirement and were keen to rent out the condo until they came to Victoria to live.

The market shortage comes at a time when rental vacancies in Victoria are the lowest in Canada.

The concern in Victoria over the lack of rental accommodation is acute.

In 1976, when things were humming along merrily, Victoria approved permits for 909 condominiums and 863 rental units.

In 1979 only 166 condominiums were approved and a surprisingly low 23 rental units.

The problem remains. The shortage of rental accommodation is so acute in the city that apartments can be occupied at a far greater rate than they are being built.

Jorgensen blamed the drying up of various federal and provincial schemes which gave incentives for rental accommodation construction.

(aastra wonders: Did Jorgensen live to see this Trudeau Jr. scheme for funding affordable rental homes in the year 2021?

 

 

***

 

 

Daily Colonist
October 15, 1967

...the prospects of the average working man owning his own home today are so remote as to be practically out of sight.

 

***

 

 

Daily Colonist
April 13, 1956

 

$60,000,000 Worth of New Homes Answer to Grim Post-War Shortage

To the grim housing problem of the immediate post-war years, new houses worth $60,000,000, in Greater Victoria alone have provided an answer in the past decade. This figure does not take into account more millions spent on construction of new apartment blocks -- a much larger proportion of the population is living in apartments than before the war -- nor the money spent on building new homes in View Royal, Colwood, Langford, Central Saanich, and Sidney.

9,511 NEW HOMES
...were built between the beginning of 1946 and the end of 1955.

Edited by aastra, 03 April 2021 - 12:02 PM.

[Sparky]

^ Over a half a century of demand exceeding supply.

I wish that politicians would stop campaigning on changing that. Politicians simply don’t have the skills or the solution.

Ain’t gonna happen.

[Banksy]

Crisis definition is a time of intense difficulty trouble or danger.

We are not in a housing crisis but we were in the 1950s then we figured out people want to live here because it’s so nice. Newspapers still need to be sold and politicians need to feel needed and now they have an army of advocacy groups manipulating people to believe things that are not true but it gives politicians custom facts to source.

[Victoria Watcher]

allow me to give you a quick lesson on supply and demand.  for example where you can build new housing in reasonable density and where you are not allowed to.

 

 

 

the end.

 

[aastra]

University of Toronto prof in the 1970s questions the preceding three decades of "housing crisis" narrative and predicts a more severe housing crisis in the future. I don't agree with everything he was saying but he seemed to have a decent grasp of the agendas that were aggravating circumstances, and several of his predictions turned out to be accurate.

(Although... there is literally no aspect of the housing issue that hadn't already been exhausted multiple times over by the mid-1970s. It's been the same story playing on endless loop right through to 2021. And like all things political, the crisis wouldn't be sustainable if not for short memories and the willingness of gullible people today to ignore the painful lessons of yesterday.)
 

 

Daily Colonist
February 6, 1977

Myths and Realities in the Housing Crisis

The following text is taken from the address given by Professor Lawrence B. Smith, Associate Chairman Department of Political Economy, University of Toronto, on the occasion of the 1976 Canadian Real Estate Convention in Quebec City.

The Myth of a Housing Crisis

The largest myth associated with housing in Canada is the notion that there is an acute housing crisis. Since the view is widespread, even among politicians and the press, that a crisis is indicated by a high cost of housing, by a low vacancy rate for rental accommodation, by a backlog for subsidized housing and by a decline in housing starts during the last two years, it is worth considering whether Canada has a general housing crisis. The evidence clearly is that except for a few special groups, such as the elderly, there is not a housing crisis.

The Realities of Government Intervention

So much for the myths. Turning to the realities, the real problem with housing in Canada is not a current insufficiency of supply, nor high prices, nor high mortgage costs. Rather, the problem with housing in Canada is the likely future deterioration in housing quality and standards as a result of massive government intervention in the market.

...in the 1970s government policy shifted dramatically. This shift coincided with the adoption of the belief that housing is not a good whose consumption should be subject to the usual income constraint like any other good, but is a basic right; and that decisions concerning its production and distribution should not be left to the market but must be politically determined.

The increasing acceptance of this belief prompted governments at all levels to intervene more actively and directly in the market, and caused Canadian housing policy to undergo a complete transformation during the first half of the 1970s. Rather than continue to assist and improve the market system that, despite its shortcomings, had provided an extremely impressive standard of housing for most Canadians, government policy increasingly took the form of direct intervention and regulation. Federal and provincial intervention took the form of specific housing policies such as the actual construction or the subsidization of construction of new dwellings for low income families, the provision of rental assistance and cash grants to home buyers, the introduction of rent control, and revisions to Landlord and Tenant Acts. It also took the form of non-specific housing policies such as tax reform in 1971, the introduction of new tax legislation such as the Ontario land speculation transfer taxes, controls on foreign investment through the Foreign Investment Review Act, and specific regulations as part of the anti-inflation controls program. Municipal intervention took the form of down-zoning, height limitations, imposts, servicing delays, building freezes and prohibition on adult-only building.

These policies have had a cumulative effect on the market and created major disruptions and distortions in the housing sector. The effects of these policies have been:

1) to virtually destroy the private rental market or at least the construction for private ownership of non-low income rental housing,
2) to replace private rental housing with public or non-profit rental housing or low income households,
3) to encourage the demand for home ownership,
4) to impede the production of future housing, and
5) to use the housing sector to redistribute income toward lower income households.

Many of these effects not only discourage investment in new housing but, possibly even more important, they also encourage disinvestment or deterioration in the existing housing stock. Deterioration in the existing stock takes time and cannot be measured easily until it has gone on for a lengthy period...

The nature of the Canadian housing market has thus changed dramatically in the last few years in response to government policies. Most of these policy changes are the result of a substantial philosophical shift with respect to housing and not the result of market failure. Consequently, they are likely to be quite harmful to our standard of housing. Unless government soon recognizes the implications of their policies and moves to reverse the destruction of the private sector, the story of housing during the next decade will be quite different than the previous few decades, and 10 years from now the housing crisis will be a reality and not a myth.

 

[aastra]

Back in the day I pondered why there weren't small & fast passenger ferries going back and forth between Greater Vancouver and Greater Victoria from convenient non-downtown terminals that would significantly shorten the distance of the crossing. I suppose I have my answer:

 

 

Daily Colonist
November 7, 1968

Cordova Bay Site Revived as Hovercraft Possibility

Still smarting from Oak Bay's rejection, commercial hovercraft official B.W. Heeney declared Wednesday night: "We'll get into the Victoria area yet, even if I have to carry the hovercraft over from Vancouver on my back."

The Colonist reported during the summer that Cordova Bay was presumably being studied as a possible landing site for the hovercraft.

Plans to establish a landing site at Oak Bay Marina was scuttled by the municipal council Monday night when it decided not to allow even trial period for the hovercraft.

[Rob Randall]

The noise and cost of an aircraft with the slowness and inconvenience of a ship--what's not to like about hovercraft?

[Mike K.]

Great finds, aastra.

[max.bravo]

The noise and cost of an aircraft with the slowness and inconvenience of a ship--what's not to like about hovercraft?

Ever seen a hovercraft in action? coast guard has a couple and they can cruise at 40+ knots easily (more than 2x faster than BC ferries). Doubt maintenance is as bad as a plane, but I’m no expert. And yeah, loud as hell.

[G-Man]

Just a regular passenger ferry leaving from Oak Bay Marina to River Rock Casino would be a money maker and fast enough. Oak Bay just doesn't want plebs travelling through. 

[Jackerbie]

Just a regular passenger ferry leaving from Oak Bay Marina to River Rock Casino would be a money maker and fast enough. Oak Bay just doesn't want plebs travelling through.

It would be a long trip! Middle arm of the Fraser has low bridges, so unless they use a low clearance boat it would have to go via the upper arm. That's a detour all the way up to Point Grey.

The more likely option in Richmond would be beside the sea plane terminal, before hitting the bridges.

[todd]

Ever seen a hovercraft in action? coast guard has a couple and they can cruise at 40+ knots easily (more than 2x faster than BC ferries). Doubt maintenance is as bad as a plane, but I’m no expert. And yeah, loud as hell.

I think they’re stationed in the Bronx: https://youtu.be/jdyR0J1Jbew

Edited by todd, 18 May 2021 - 08:50 AM.

[Danma]

I think they’re stationed in the Bronx: https://youtu.be/jdyR0J1Jbew

 

This is the film that always comes to mind when someone mentions hovercrafts.

What about hydrofoils? Can we have a hydrofoil?

[todd]

THUNDERBALL: https://youtu.be/sgDVHWtiUL0

[Rob Randall]

What about hydrofoils? Can we have a hydrofoil?

 

The stock answer for years has always been too many floating logs (deadheads) in local waters. But it's been decades since the local mills closed and radar technology is surely better. So technically it might work now.

 

But it's the same old cost/benefit story. Who cares if it can go twice as fast as a ferry? It's something to ponder as you fly overhead in a Dash-8 at 400 mph.

[Victoria Watcher]

But it's the same old cost/benefit story. Who cares if it can go twice as fast as a ferry? It's something to ponder as you fly overhead in a Dash-8 at 400 mph.

 

every time i send a request up to the cockpit to maybe go 40 or 50mh on the trip for better sightseeing i'm turned down.

[Rob Randall]

You have to bring something to the table; try tipping a case of beer or rye whisky. Source: son of pilot.

[Rob Randall]

I'm just bitter from those Popular Mechanics covers from the 80s; every week there'd be another wild airship or amphibious car or hovercraft on the cover and they always promised they were just around the corner.

[Danma]

I remember those; Get your own personal airplane to fly to the office!

[todd]

What do you call a boat trailer?