3627 replies to this topic

[Nparker]

How did we ever let this terrible woman become mayor?

[dasmo]

“ This exclusionary form of zoning remained uncontested for a hundred years until, in 2019, Minneapolis became the first city in North America to dismantle single family zoning. This doesn’t mean that single family homes can’t be built, or that existing single family homes must be demolished. It means that it’s now just as easy to build more inclusive and accessible forms of housing, like houseplexes on previously single family lots….
In Minneapolis, “Advocates of affordable housing, civil rights, and the environment joined forces with labor unions, tenant activists, the young, and the old, to bring down the invisible but durable wall of government-mandated, single-family zoning.” My great hope is that in Victoria, we can build a similar broad-based coalition to undo the exclusionary legacy our city was built on, and to build a more inclusive city for the future.“

And how’s that going?

“ Why home prices in the Twin Cities keep going up
The rise in housing prices is nothing new, though prices weren’t rising quite this steeply until the pandemic hit.”

https://www.minnpost...-keep-going-up/

[lanforod]

I guess the next step there is to ban any new sfh construction.

[Mike K.]

First acreages were exclusionary. Now SFDs are exclusionary. Eventually townhomes will be, too.

[Mike K.]

Headline: A proposed apartment building perfect for Minneapolis’ 2040 plan. So why did the Planning Commission deny the project?
- https://www.minnpost...ny-the-project/

Yeah, why did this project get denied? Whatever could the reason be.














Oh. Now imagine writing that piece, and being genuinely perplexed why this wasn’t positively received.

[Nparker]

If even the smallest effort had been made to have the apartment building harmonize with the character of the neighbourhood, it might have been better received.

 

Or more likely the neighbours are all just racists.

[Mike K.]

That’s the product of modern ultra-efficient building codes and design efficiency. It’s a thing of beauty, stripped of all of the blunders of past generations. This is similar to what BC Housing is currently building in Victoria neighbourhoods.

[sebberry]

Missing Middle is little more than bizarre ideology wrapped up in fancy marketing.  It even has a website!

 

https://missingmiddlehousing.com/

[Mike K.]

Also, don’t forget the designs won’t even be up for public debate. Staff will oversee approvals. So long as the product is by-the-book it will be rubber stamped. The new BC Housing buildings are by-the-book.

[spanky123]

Also, don’t forget the designs won’t even be up for public debate. Staff will oversee approvals. So long as the product is by-the-book it will be rubber stamped. The new BC Housing buildings are by-the-book.

 

As long as a staffer can be convinced that the product is "by the book"!

[aastra]

It's especially funny that Victorians would fall for this particular narrative, because Victoria has emphasized the supposedly missing "middle" forms of housing like few cities in the country. Multi-unit lowrise apartments and townhouses account for a huge chunk of the CoV's housing. SFD housing has been steadily thinning out in the city proper since 1950. Meanwhile, highrise buildings actually are less represented than you would expect, because of longstanding policies against them.

 

The data below is from 2016 and it's for CMA rather than the CoV, but when you consider how few apartments there are in Saanich it should really send home the message that the "middle" forms are most definitely not missing in the CoV.

 

[Nparker]

aastra: May you never stop challenging the narrative with the facts. 

[aastra]

Something else that comes to mind: I think it was Jackerbie who noted how the CoV had recently been in the habit of stalling some small apartment projects (examples: "the Hive" and that one in North Park) on the grounds that the CoV preferred lot consolidation to facilitate larger projects over very small ones. Apparently it's possible for a project to be too much in the middle?

 

If this seeming contradiction in the housing crisis narrative should cause anyone's jaw to strike the floor and/or anyone's eyes to pop out of their skull (owing to the sheer shock and dismay), I apologize in advance.

[Mike K.]

So after all of that, it turns out we’re already leading the nation for a city our size, in terms of density?

Well I’ll be. Who are the engineers of the construct that we’re under-supplied with density? We have even less SFD representation than Toronto, and lead the country on non-SFD housing after Vancouver and Montreal.

Wow.

[Victoria Watcher]

It’s not like we didn’t know that. We have a very high proportion of renters too.




Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. Victoria is the 7th most densely populated city in Canada with 4,405.8 inhabitants per square kilometre (11,411/sq mi).


https://en.m.wikiped...ritish_Columbia


It’s the 66th largest city by population but #7 for density.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 June 2022 - 10:55 AM.

[Nparker]

Lisa Helps needs to be able to add this to her CV before she leaves the mayor's office in October. I am fairly convinced that's what is driving the urgency on this matter and nothing more.

[Mike K.]

It’s not like we didn’t know that. We have a very high proportion of renters too.




Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. Victoria is the 7th most densely populated city in Canada with 4,405.8 inhabitants per square kilometre (11,411/sq mi).


https://en.m.wikiped...ritish_Columbia


It’s the 66th largest city by population but #7 for density.

Goofy numbers strike again.

At 19.47 sq km the inhabitants in the CoV number 4,718 per sq km within the City of Victoria. But the region is a mere fraction of that, per sq km, not 4,5xx. The CMA is closer to 600 people per sq km.

We’re looking at housing types across the CMA in aastra’s figures and then talking about density within the context of the City of Victoria (but still getting that wrong).

Apparently Wikipedia doesn’t understand CMA/city-proper and just throws numbers around.

So no, as a “city” we are not high density. As a municipality, Victoria is.

[Mike K.]

Still, though, for the region to have such a low SFD ratio I’m blown away that this has been veiled from the debate.

[dasmo]

Debate?

[aastra]

I think he's talking about this thread on VV.