22 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

Comment: Oak Bay could build more houses than the provincial target if the political will existed

 

Under the prevailing system in Canada, an angry neighbourhood can easily block new housing developments.

https://www.timescol...existed-7637638

[Victoria Watcher]

 

 

 

 

So let's work this out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 04 October 2023 - 05:15 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

I propose we take this area, buy up as much property as possible, make high density housing, create a sea-walk (including expropriating a tiny bit of property from waterfront houses that do not opt to sell).

 

 

 

 

[Victoria Watcher]

Right now OB has 1,717 people per sq. km.

 

They have been asked to add 664 housing units, or about 1,200 more people.

 

So we would add 1,200 more people, to the existing 18,094.  That's about an addition of 6.6%.

 

Population density would go up to about 1,830 per sq. km.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 04 October 2023 - 05:24 AM.

[todd]

“..When council voted unanimously in September 2022 to recognize them as independent units, Oak Bay already had 700 unregulated secondary suites…”: https://www.capitald...econdary suites.

There you go. Done!

[dasmo]

Declare them savages. Introduce legislation to gradually civilize them and put the residents into reeducation camps until they believe in MMHI. Expropriate the area and give 1/4 of their property back for them to live in but they aren’t allowed to have tea or speak in faux British accents anymore. Level the rest with those West Bank Killdozers and fill it up with View Towers. Anyone who speaks against this will go to prison for hate crimes.

[Blair M.]

For Oak Bay, the obvious answer is Oak Bay Avenue, and all the low-rise or single story businesses with parking lots along said avenue. Lots of room for 10-15 story towers to be built along Oak Bay Avenue.

The "poors" will never get to live on Oak Bay waterfront land.

[Victoria Watcher]

12 towers right here:

 

 

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 04 October 2023 - 07:07 AM.

[Barrrister]

Put up three twenty story towers near the university with 15 micro units per floor and it solves the student problem nicely.

[todd]

It’s been pointed out before, but being the second largest country in the world with the population of only about 40 million it should be plenty of room for Oak Bay to annex something.



https://www150.statc...ction04-eng.htm

Edited by todd, 04 October 2023 - 08:07 AM.

[dasmo]

[Mike K.]

See, your Tesla stock holdings are already making a difference in the community.

[dasmo]

Ah yes, it is an electric killdozer of course. 

[Mike K.]

Oh, my bad. Is that not a cYberTrucK?

[todd]

I know! Permitting float homes in the marinas/float home marina??

They look cool/funky

[aastra]

 

The reality is that Oak Bay, like much of the English-speaking world, builds very little housing because of common-law legal institutions that make it highly susceptible to local political opposition to development.

 

This is the same English-speaking world that we used to vilify for building titanic amounts of new housing in vast suburban subdivisions from 1945-1980 or thereabouts.

To summarize:
-the first offense was building way too much new housing, so we sounded the alarm about that;
-the second offense was not building nearly enough new housing, so we're sounding the alarm about that.

 

 

The weight of recent academic evidence shows that building more housing, critically including market-rate housing, is a powerful tool to improve affordability for everyone.

 

How can the reader not laugh out loud at this stuff? Where were these brilliant academic commentators when everyone and their dogs could clearly see where government and political agendas were heading with their development-stifling and cost-raising programs back in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s? Is he even aware of the history of this "housing crisis" and how prolonged it's actually been?

 

 

Significant liberalization of this kind would allow much more housing to be built per square kilometre of land and also reduce development costs by minimizing the uncertainty and untimeliness of the approvals process.

 

Loosen up the rules and you could build more housing per square mile. Why did nobody think of that before?

 

 

If the answer remains “yes” it is unlikely that Canada will ever build enough housing to make it broadly affordable.

 

Please ignore the baby boom decades following 1945, when every Canadian city was building vast new municipalities that were broadly affordable.

[dasmo]

Ya, because places with more density are much cheaper. Like Vancouver. So much cheaper than here especially after Expo when they went gung-ho on adding density.

[aastra]

Anyway, unless you're a blind fool you should be able to recognize the pattern by now re: shifting focus away from the elephants toward the ants. The city of Victoria is a mere 19 square kilometres, but (politicians and academics say) if we make the right changes then we could solve Canada's homelessness crisis and take a big bite out of the world's environmental issues, too. Oak Bay is a mere 10 square kilometers but (politicians and academics say) if we make the right changes we could take a big bite out of Canada's housing crisis.

 

Unbridled Langford-style suburban development managed to increase the population in Langford (which is four times the physical size of Oak Bay) by only 17,000 between 2011 and 2021.

So even if Oak Bay were to adopt unbridled Langford-style suburban development (which it obviously would not, because it obviously cannot, because it's obviously already a mature and built-out urban residential neighbourhood), then we could expect maybe an increase of 4,000 over 10 years?

If we could come back to reality for a moment, methinks an intense program that takes advantage of every available site in Oak Bay and that builds Victoria-style density rather than Oak Bay-style density would nevertheless be mightily challenged to achieve an increase of 1,000 over ten years.

In which case, why are we even bothering to spotlight tiny Oak Bay when there are gigantic areas of Greater Victoria and the CRD which could easily accommodate thousands of new homes, and quickly?

[aastra]

 

Ya, because places with more density are much cheaper.

 

That's the other thing that politicians and academic commentators pretend not to understand. If you build high density in Oak Bay then no sane person has any justifiable expectation that it should be half-decently affordable and minimally appealing density (if half-decently affordable density can even exist nowadays). Appealing and attractive density would obviously be expected in Oak Bay, and appealing and attractive density can command very high prices, because a lot of people like it.

 

The message seems to be this: people shouldn't expect to have pleasant communities anymore that have any kind of unique local character. The same political forces that long battled against appealing medium-to-high densities in suitably appropriate areas of Victoria and Saanich are now advocating for unappealing medium-to-high densities in areas where there's no precedent. But you know, they're advocating for this in order to help people. Hey, isn't Oak Bay stuck in a corner with water on two sides? If you increase the population significantly, then what about other issues like traffic, green space, etc.? I guess we forget all about those other crises whenever it's convenient to do so? Or maybe later on we'll advocate for a freeway or an LRT into Oak Bay? You know, in order to help people?

[Mike K.]

Oak Bay has the Oak Bay Lodge lands, so theoretically, they can build a pretty big below-market housing project there.