Category: Housing

Irony

Yesterday evening I managed to make it to the community roundtable on the legalization of secondary suites. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people who actually supported the legalization of secondary suites in the crowd. There were at least a few at every table save one. I have no idea as to the make up of other tables, but ours was pretty evenly split between those that supported it and those that didn’t.

I did find a few things telling. There was a gentleman who called for a referendum on the issue. This would mean delaying any decision until 2011 at the earliest, as running a referendum during a non-election year is simply too expensive. Given how long the issue has been left untouched, this is not really a major issue. What galled me was that he called for a referendum of “home-owners”. Not taxpayers, not voters, but home owners. Renters like myself pay taxes, albeit indirectly through our landlords, and we have the right to vote. We have as much say in the running of Oak Bay as those who are fortunate to be able to afford a home. I find it sad that there are those that forget that.

The event was also well attended by the municipal council and candidates from the last municipal election. Nils Jensen, Pam Copley and John Herbert are all members of the committee but were joined by Tara Ney and Allan Cassidy with Mayor Causton sending his regrets. With Michelle Kirby and myself both there, the only candidates from the last municipal election missing were sitting councillor Hazel Braithwaite and candidate Chris Smith.

Which brings me to the irony. One of the major issues people raised was the more renters would somehow change Oak Bay for a worse, introducing a more transient population that doesn’t take care of the properties they rent and throws loud parties. Parties like the one my roommates and I were having earlier this evening, hanging out on our front steps, drinking beer and chatting about life.

All is not lost on the secondary suites fight. It is important that the committee hear from as many people who support legalization as possible. Those that oppose legalization are out in force and they are well organized. The next time you can tell the committee of your views is April 23rd, 5:30-7:30pm at the Municipal Hall.

TC’s special on Rebuilding Canada

The Times Colonist (and presumably the whole Canwest newspaper chain) has a special entitled “Rebuilding Canada”. That they are running such a piece now isn’t really a surprise, given the massive number of stories talking about an “infrastructure stimulus“. What really gets me is the focus on rebuilding and adding new roads. One of the choicer quotes comes from a story titled “The scramble to make our highways safe“:

Elsewhere, Edmonton has a $260-million interchange project to unclog a bottleneck on a ring road.

Twinned Port Mann bridge
Twinned Port Mann bridge. Notice the lie of the mostly empty lanes

You can’t build your way out of congestion. This is the hard lesson Boston is discovering, after their giant “Big Dig” project. Aside from all the well documented problems with quality of the construction, what they have found is that the faster traffic flow in the core has simply pushed bottlenecks outwards. The traditional answer to this would be to “fix” the new bottlenecks with more roads, which would just be perpetuating the cycle of endless construction, which is how we ended up here in the first place. We need to build less roads and reduce the number we already have, not be adding more.

But where is the talk about using transit to solve some of these bottlenecks? The problem is that planners and governments fail to look at mobility holistically. Essentially, we need to be planning how to move people more efficiently, not cars. Some organizations get it, such as Washington States Department of Transportation and their page on bottlenecks and chokepoints. Others, well, just don’t.

Seattle Street Edge Alternative
Seattle's Street Edge Alternative program. Photo credit CRD

Of course, roads are not the only piece of infrastructure that is crumbling. Recreational facilities and housing, garbage disposal, sewers and public transit are all covered as well. Sewers are an interesting one. Apparently the City of Victoria has some of the oldest sewer pipes in Canada, at almost 100 years old. All well and good, but where is the discussion of using bioswales (CRD on bioswales) and green roofs (Ecogeeks has a good photo-filled FAQ on green roofs) to reduce runoff into our sewers? As the CRD plans to charge municipalities based on flow, reducing runoff means less tax dollars wasted.

Overall, I am deeply disappointed with this whole series. It is typical tired journalism. Given the recent cuts in the Canwest newsrooms, I am not surprised they are failing to produce good, innovative stories. I guess that leaves it up to the poor bloggers to tell the story.

Innovative laneways from Vancouver

Like Oak Bay, the City of Vancouver is blessed with a great deal of laneways. Vancouver has already made the great leap to allow laneway housing, as I talked about early this month, but now they are looking at the laneway itself, specifically how to make it more environmentally friendly.

Called the “Country Lane” Treatment or Environmental Residential Lane, Vancouver has specifically been experimenting with three different types of surfaces.

The first lane uses a mix of concrete paving stones, which allow water to flow between them, plastic mats and concrete driving strips. For those not in Vancouver, the laneway can be seen in the following satellite photo:


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The second lane uses plastics mats as well, but uses gravel to fill them instead of concrete. Like the previous lane, it has been helpfully been photographed and is on Google:


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The third lane does away with concrete entirely, using plastic mats filled with either plants or gravel. You can take a peak at it from the air via Google:


View Larger Map

As the website points out, these lanes, which are designed to reduce dust, keep water out of the sewers and storm sewers, and do a host of other nice things, have won awards. Which brings us down to the sticky part, the paying for these lanes. There are few details on the Vancouver website, but it looks like cost sharing between the city and the local residents via a tax improvement district. This is not unique to Vancouver. Lots of cities do it, including Saanich with their Local Area Services plan.

Most of the laneways in Oak Bay are paved with asphalt and those that aren’t are just straight gravel or dirt. The asphalt in many of these lanes is starting to fall apart and will likely need replacing. Given the major costs that Oak Bay faces with sewers and storm sewers over the next few years, ideas such as these that keep water out of those pipes are much needed.

Solving the housing crisis by cutting off water to illegal suites

The Central Saanich Council has come across a unique solution to solving the housing crisis: cutting off water to “persistent offenders.” Quite frankly, I’m horrified. Access to fresh water is a fundamental human right, not something to be used by a government in a dispute with a land owner. In the Times Colonist article, Denis Pilon, a UVic Political Science prof, points out that the person most likely to be hurt is the renter, not the landlord. This isn’t surprising, as any time council and a landlord get involved in a dispute, the renter gets caught in the crossfire.

All of this talk of punishing landlords who rent out substandard housing ignores the reality that landlords can rent out this type of housing because of the massive housing crisis in our city, a crisis that can partly be laid at the feet of our municipal councils, who have failed to provide real leadership.

Tonight at 7pm is the All Candidates meeting in the Garry Oak room of the Monterey Centre. Please come out and learn about each candidate stands for and ask us all questions. Hope to see you there.

Premier freezes property taxes

As you have probably read already in the Times Colonist or on CBC.ca, the Premier froze property taxes at 2007 levels until 2009 and has allowed anybody, not just seniors, to defer property taxes for up to two years. While the short and long terms effects may be minor, it does shine on a light on the problem that municipal governments budgets are basically controlled via Victoria.

Lets look at the numbers. Oak Bay had a budget of about $27 million in 2007. About $15 million of that is property taxes. Property taxes are decided by a provincial authority, BC Assessment. Now imagine yourself a financial officer for a muncipality, trying to plan your budget, knowing that the vast majority of your budget is under the political control of another level of government.

Whatever the outcome, one thing is clear. Isn’t it time the provincial government stopped playing politics with municipal budgets?

Laneway housing in Oak Bay?

Sometimes an obvious solution to part of the housing crisis hits us in the face. Such is the case today, with the Vancouver City Council unanimously approving laneway housing. You can read more about it at cbc.ca and straight.com. But what is laneway housing?

Essentially, it is housing built in people’s backyards, facing the rear lane. It often displaces existing garages and other such structures. Of course, you need laneways to do it and Oak Bay is uniquely blessed in having many of these lanes, a legacy of smart planning decisions when Oak Bay was just developing. Given Oak Bay is completely built out and losing heritage structures is problematic, laneway housing allows the addition of density without ripping down existing structures.

How big would these new houses be? With a 40 ft wide lot, 400 to 800 square feet is likely — essentially, a small house. The best part about all this new housing is that they are built without subdividing the land, meaning any and all new housing that is created is rental stock, helping bring to an end the failure to add rental stock in the past 40 years.

Being rental, many of these will be rented by people who might be having trouble currently making ends meet. Reducing the cost of transportation is a key problem. Luckily for them, many of these laneways are within a block or two of a bus route and the laneways themselves make excellent bike routes.

Like secondary suites, laneway housing is a logical step towards helping solve the housing crisis without the huge disruption of entirely new construction. It is time Oak Bay council starting taking a leadership role.