‘A Roof for All’ Workshop helps shape GVAT’s housing campaign
By Stephen Tyler, GVAT Treasurer and active member of GVAT’s member organization Broad View United Church
Participants at A Roof For All workshop on April 23
Housing affordability has reached a crisis point in Greater Victoria. Every day, tenants are being turfed out of older, affordable rental units that are slated for sale, renovation or demolition and redevelopment. If they have been living in these units for more than a few years, their rents are far below skyrocketing market rates because rent increases for existing tenants are limited to inflation. But now landlords have a greater incentive than ever to find ways to evict them. And current tenant protection safeguards are inadequate. Low-income households, or those on fixed incomes, are either forced to move away from friends, family or jobs – or they become unhoused, sleeping in cars or vans and hoping for something to turn up. Employers cannot find staff to fill vacant positions because rents in the region are unaffordable. This causes intense personal suffering and economic damage to our community.
These views were shared by participants at a recent GVAT-sponsored workshop “A Roof for All – the Housing Crisis in Saanich”, held April 23 at Broad View United Church. On behalf of Saanich, Councillor Zac de Vries explained that the municipality recognizes the need for more rental housing and affordable non-market housing in Saanich and is preparing strategies to accommodate this need. About half the households in Saanich have low to moderate incomes, yet less than 10% of available market housing is affordable for this group. Workshop participants readily admitted that they probably could not afford to buy or rent today in their own neighbourhoods.
While Saanich has had affordable housing policies for almost 15 years and participates in regional housing programs, the municipality still faces a severe deficit of affordable rental housing. The recent Saanich Housing Strategy considers current and future needs and identifies a dozen high-priority actions to diversify and expand the affordable housing stock, including potential leverage of municipal lands, expediting purpose-built rental development, protecting existing rental units, developing a tenant assistance policy, reviewing on-site parking requirements for potential cost reduction, encouraging new moderate density developments, and streamlining the development review process.
Participants at the workshop encouraged these measures but emphasized that increasing density, while important, did not by itself guarantee affordability. They recommended that Saanich explore mechanisms to fast-track non-profit and non-market affordable housing projects including new housing co-ops and expressed the view that single-family housing which currently dominates the housing stock is no longer a viable model for most of the population.
In addition, they urged the municipality to work with the province to institute some type of “vacancy control” whereby rent increase limits would apply to the unit, not the tenant. It was also suggested that AirBnB operations be restricted and that new development be transit-oriented to reduce the need for private cars. GVAT will take these recommendations into account as it implements its housing campaign in coming months.