Even though Premier Eby hasn’t addressed the sitting vacant single-family home suites as yet, he has nonetheless created a huge legal and moral dilemma for places like Saanich’s Broadmead, North Saanich’s Dean Park and West Vancouver’s British Properties, just to mention a few. All three of these neighborhoods among others contain condo and single-family-home rental restrictions, on title.
Broadmead has 1,200 single-family homes and a number of condo developments, as do the other restricted areas. Presumably, the condos in these single-family home developments are strata titled. As such, condo owners in Broadmead and the other aforementioned areas now have more rights than individual homeowners when it comes to how they can best utilize their properties.
So the irony at this point is, thousands of suites purposely built still sit empty with no change in legislation announced at this point, many more units than the 3,000 suites provincewide that they hope to get from removing condo restrictions from titles. One could argue that it’s an unfair discrimination against homeowners or an unfair burden placed upon condo owners in these areas. It’s like that line in Planet of the Apes, all apes are equal but some apes are more equal than others.
Doug Coulson
Saanich
