City doesn’t need housing for the rich

Re: “Let’s make it a wonderful day in the neighbourhood,” comment, July 15. My wife and I live in the Rockland/Fairfield area. We actively protested two development projects in our immediate neighbourhood.

Our protests were not to keep multi-family buildings from being built, but to ensure that these types of buildings are appropriate in size and are providing affordable accommodation. In fact, we welcome young people and their children in our neighbourhood. Children are an important part of a healthy society, as are those who are employed, the retired and the elderly.

Unfortunately, what most developers want to build are large condominium buildings that have luxury suites that can be sold in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars. These suites are designed for buyers who have high incomes or significant accumulated wealth, not young families who want to get established here.

Often, these buyers do not have children, will only live in the building for part of the year or will not live in it at all but will rent out their suite at market rates.

There are no advantages for our neighbourhood in having this type of housing.

Over and over again, we hear our mayor saying that we need to have affordable housing for the young people we want to live and work in Victoria. We applaud the concept, but criticize her for voting in favour of huge, ultra-expensive developments in single-family neighbourhoods. We aren’t against change, only bad change. Errol Miller Victoria