Affordable or not affordable? Accessible or not accessible? Densification or no further densification?
The housing discussion is needlessly obfuscated by these and other questions.
What we know is that we need to build new missing middle housing such as laneway homes and townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, single-level patio homes and convert some existing housing in order to create more housing units such as safe secondary suites and more strata units in large older homes. Period, full stop.
Having served as a citizen advisor to our current official community plan (OCP), I naively expected after its passage in 2013, that there would be robust community education about its various policies while we updated our outdated zoning bylaws to ease the gentle densification measures it contemplated.
Instead, successive mayors and councils have served our community as guardians of the status quo with an eye to the past instead of looking to the future and managing change with grace. They say that land use decisions should belong to local governments and its citizens and other levels of government should not interfere.
Had they done the job they were elected to do with an eye to the future instead of safeguarding the past, other levels of government would not have had to step up. I for one applaud our provincial government for taking action to increase the diversity of our housing supply and number of housing units.
Jan Mears
Oak Bay
