Gonzales activists should be thanked

Re: “Gonzales activists stop positive change,” letter, Oct. 6. The housing crisis in Victoria is one of affordability. To believe that developers will solve affordability with increased densification shows that the letter-writer, not the activists, has “put blinders over [his] eyes.”

The utopia of affordable housing promised in the last election by Mayor Lisa Helps and three prodevelopment councillors still running for re-election (Marianne Alto, Charlayne Thornton-Joe and Jeremy Loveday) is no closer to reality after more than four years of densification.

The reasons have nothing to do with activists. Locally, politicians have inflated the price of land by embedding large increases in zoning potential without cost to the owners of land or benefit to the community.

Their policies allow new rezoning, sometimes massive, without any appreciable affordable-housing component. And, to justify this increased density of luxury housing, these four politicians confirm their belief in the theory of trickle-down affordability.

Developers will not solve the affordability crisis with their promise of increased densification. Developers are in the business to make money. They build to luxury standards to sell in an inflated market dominated by wealth.

This appetite for profit combined with our local policies will ensure that there will be no affordable housing built in Victoria as long as these four politicians remain in office.

We should not tolerate mockery of engaged citizens. Nor should we tolerate politicians who say one thing and do another. We should thank activists for insisting that our policies (and their promulgators) be changed to create real affordable housing. Don Cal Victoria