City is building wrong kind of housing

Re: “Mayor joins Coldest Night walk for homeless,” Feb. 25.

On Saturday, Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps participated in the Coldest Night of the Year Walk to raise money for homelessness.

I find it self-serving that our mayor takes advantage of this photoop to promote herself. This photo contradicts her ongoing enthusiasm to aggressively promote the building of up-market condos that is linked to the social crisis of homelessness.

Homelessness is further exacerbated by her administration’s policy of leaving millions of dollars in developers’ pockets by not raising sufficient community-amenity contributions and density bonuses from its accelerated building program.

The Union of B.C. Municipalities report A Home for Everyone states that: “Too little rental housing is being built. Current housing price levels [are] simply out of reach for many households. Building additional purpose-built rental housing presents a viable short- to mid-term approach to improving affordability. Housing prices have been driven up by investor demand and speculation. This creates pressure on the rental stock and other forms of housing, increasing competition for an eversmaller number of units for moderate to low-income individuals and families.

“All too often, these options run out, and too many people face the reality of homelessness.”

It is time for Helps to start saying “no” to any and all development proposals that demand re-zoning and do not include strong, sizable and real commitments to affordability. We are building too much of the wrong type of housing and have pretended to address housing affordability far too long.

Don Cal Victoria