A city for developers, or for the rest of us
Re: “Victoria exceeds first-year housing target,” Nov. 15.
The story points out that the city is ahead of its target for building new homes but falling short on affordable and family-size units.
This happens whenever housing construction is left to the private sector, because developers make more money from luxury building than from affordable homes. City councils and planners should be ensuring the right provision.
We can see this playing out this week. On Thursday, council will discuss a proposal to change the zoning of a lot in James Bay to enable construction of a 14-storey tower that would dominate the area and provide mainly high-cost investment apartments, plus a few expensive townhouses.
The development has been proposed by Geric Construction.
There have been many letters setting out objections to the Geric proposal. It is opposed by the city’s planners, the James Bay Neighbourhood Association and the great majority of residents.
An unusually high number of residents have written to council stating their opposition because they want the site used for affordable family accommodation that fits in with the other buildings around the area.
We will find out on Thursday whether our elected councillors favour the interests of property developers who want to make money by turning James Bay into something like Vancouver’s Yaletown, or respect the wishes of the people who elected them and who want more affordable homes in a livable neighbourhood.
Roland Clift
James Bay
Make affordable a priority in Victoria
Victoria city council applauds itself for being well ahead of its provincially set housing target to build 4,902 homes by 2028. Mayor Marianne Alto and Coun. Matt Dell proudly claim Victoria is going “above and beyond” with “lots of big developments” in the pipeline.
How they did this is nothing to be proud of. Most approved projects are indeed big developments that provide lots of micro-units at market-price, more aptly described by Coun. Stephen Hammond as “tiny and expensive.”
They often demolish existing, more affordable housing, concentrate land ownership and drive land values up even further. They are also the more profitable option for developers.
This does nothing to improve affordability. According to the city’s own report, only 168 below-market rental units have been completed against a target of 1,798. Only 72 occupancy permits have been issued for three-bedroom units against a target of 736.
City council has also reduced requirements for developers to provide affordable units and vastly reduced their contributions to the city’s Housing Reserve Fund, at times overriding them altogether.
Where it matters most, the city has failed abysmally. Yet Alto and Dell want the province to reward the city for keeping Victoria unaffordable for most.
Council’s latest announcement, offsetting development cost charges to build more below-market housing, is too little too late. It will not work if council continues to put the emphasis on approving more lucrative big developments at market-price.
The province must withhold rewards until council switches its priorities from market-priced to affordable housing and demonstrates results where they are most needed.
Mariann Burka
Victoria
Centennial Square would hurt the budget
The huge increase in property taxes which will result if Victoria’s proposed budget receives approval is very unfair to the citizens.
May I request a focus on maintaining the current design of Centennial Square instead of the wholesale and costly changes proposed.
Sheila C. Hodgson
Victoria
Americans are looking for better lives
I wish that for once Trevor Hancock would tell us what he really thinks. And it’s actually 76 million average Americans voting for a better life for their families.
Regarding Scientific American, in recent years it has become more of a journal of political activism instead of a publisher of objective science.
To the point that the editor-in-chief, Laura Helmuth, announced her resignation after publicly making disgusting, offensive remarks targeted at half of Americans.
Regarding climate and “global overheating,” it is important to note that the U.S. Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate just published its Global Catastrophic Risk Assessment report, which looked at major potential risks to the planet. It concluded that global catastrophic risk due to climate change is less than 1%.
Fred Kardel
Nanaimo
Tired of the preaching, and being called stupid
Geoff Johnson and Trevor Hancock perfectly embody the reason the woke left lost the U.S. election (and only hung on by a thread in the most progressive jurisdiction in North America, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½): the pomposity, the self-righteousness, and the tried-and-true comparison to, yes, Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.
Talk about critical thinking. They’ve spent their entire lives in the woke echo-chambers of the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ public school system and universities, where critical thinking is not only no longer encouraged, but outlawed.
Here in the real world, we’re tired of the preaching, we know we’re not destroying democracy and the planet, and, believe it or not, we don’t like being called stupid.
J.C. Chan-Fairweather
Nanaimo
They’re not stupid just because they disagree
After reading the Sunday column by Geoff Johnson suggesting the need for students to learn better critical thinking skills, I was amused on how he assumed everyone in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ were looking on in horror at the election results in the United States.
It is always fascinating to me how when some people do not agree with the views of others they assume that they are obviously uneducated and need to be better informed on how they process what they see and hear.
First of all, I am not sure what form of thinking he thinks is critical but it seems like he is suggesting that because he does not agree with certain outcomes, political or otherwise, that younger people should be brainwashed into how they perceive information.
I suggest that this would set a dangerous precedent.
Nelson Carvalho
Victoria
Yokels and salesman did a great job
Two opinion writers in Islander, Trevor Hancock and Geoff Johnson, pilloried Donald Trump’s election with such venom that one can only assume they know the man personally.
I am reminded of the expert opinions of university professors and newspaper writers in the first decade of our own W.A.C. Bennett Social Credit government of 1952-1972. Bennett ran a hardware store and his cabinet was labelled used car salesmen, ignorant, uneducated and inexperienced and absurdly out of touch for proper governance.
I believe our best provincial government was managed at that time by so-called yokels and salesmen.
Maybe it’s time for us to hope the common sense of the U.S. voter will not turn out so badly. Let us wish them well that they and we may prosper.
Judge not lest ye be judged.
Patrick Skillings
Victoria
Critical thinking worries governments
Soon-to-be U.S. president Donald Trump has promised to make life very painful for many people, everywhere. So it’s understandable that many Canadians share the concerns voiced by Trevor Hancock and Geoff Johnson in their Nov. 17 columns.
However, it has been suggested that some Canadian politicians are using Trump’s playbook — tell big lies, focus attention on immigrants, minorities, criminals and troublesome special interest groups — to attract votes. And the truly scary part, it seems to be working.
That Canadian politics is shifting farther right, provincially and federally, is hard to deny.
So, although castigating our American neighbours for choosing Trump is easy, isn’t it time to take a critical look at what’s happening in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½? Keep in mind that the last thing any government wants is informed, critical thinkers.
Ken Dwernychuk
Esquimalt
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