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Affordable Housing
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Starting a new thread to invite some dialogue on this vital issue in Island communities. I’m working on an idea for affordable housing as a result of reading the library articles on Affordable Housing and Legislated Poverty . I’ve long been dismayed that developers have not been required to include an affordable component of 10% in new projects of 10 or more units. I’ve watched new developments on Salt Spring Island spring up with no discussion of an affordable component, because they’d been approved years ago.
The concept of affordable infill in existing neighbourhoods could address this lack of foresight, and de-homogenize those neighbourhoods as well. The conventional thinking is to concentrate affordable housing around the “core” of Ganges, which has turned out to be extremely difficult, for a number of reasons, for the non-profits who’ve been valiantly trying. Unfortunately, the argument to keep more people within walking distance of services is a valid one.
However, our concept of “convenient services” could easily expand, and our notion of where affordable housing can be could expand too with the addition of public transportation along the access roads to the ferry terminals.
I’m not talking about “strips of apartments up and down Fulford-Ganges Rd.” as one compatriot suggested at our first Official Community Plan (OCP) review meeting. Remember I said we are stuck in the “big, ugly, and dense” model of affordable housing? Let’s use some imagination.
Here’s an example: I live on Saltspring Way across from Slegg Lumber. Two doors away is a vacant lot that did not sell last summer and was taken off the market. I suggest we rezone that lot to accommodate ten units. Yikes, my poor neighbours! But wait a minute. Let’s draw from the low impact, earth friendly concept below.  The land slopes away toward Ganges Harbour. Five adjoining units on top, with the appearance of a “rancher” from the road, five units below daylighted toward the harbour and the coastal mountains behind Vancouver. Curve the structure to fit the contour of the land to further assist blending into the surroundings. Private outdoor space for the upper five units would be toward the road, the lower five units toward the ocean. The natural courtyard created below could be a community garden or whatever the owners/tenants cooperatively decide.
I propose this as an experiment to the community. If not In My Back Yard, where?
So, in existing neighbourhoods with vacant lots within walking distance of these main arteries we could “infill” all the housing necessary to accommodate the burgeoning need, in a variety of architectural sizes and shapes, single family houses to multiple unit coops, condos, apartments; the full range dwellings short of huge estates on large properties.
I love what the II is doing! Dick
Posted at 12:58PM, 7 December 2006 PDT
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Gabriola has many small (half- to two-acre) lots which were in place before the Islands Trust and OCP , in what seemed like a good idea at the time, legislated the 5-acre minimum subdivision. On these small lots live many of the most islandish people of all – singles (especially women), couples and small families who require just enough space for themselves and a personal garden, writers, artists, people who want to live away from the city and have much of themselves to give to the island. They tend to advocate for the parklands and beaches which we share. Most of them are not “poor” in the strictest sense, but they can’t afford, nor do they want, 5 acres and a large house.
There is a need for rental accommodation for people who come here to work for a limited time or to study at the Shipbuilding School or the Island School of Building Arts. A few old-fashioned boarding houses would be helpful, but I doubt they would be “legal”.
Of course, our islands are not the only communities subject to the single-family-dwelling syndrome; compare the regulations in our cities prohibiting basement suites in residential areas.
A depressing attack of deja-vu hit me as I recalled my excitement in the early 90s over the discussion of cluster communities and planning for sustainability, in such projects as the British Columbia Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, especially the report of the Georgia Basin Initiative. I think a faint echo survives as the Puget Sound Georgia Basin Research Conference.
So much visionary thinking has been allowed to fade away. How to revive our dreams and build upon them?
Phyllis
Posted 67 months ago.
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And we could learn from the structure of Aboriginal communities before the government decided they should take on the form of European towns or farms. There are some interesting chapters touching on this in Andrea Laforet and Annie York's book, Spuzzum: Fraser Canyon Histories, 1808-1939 (UBC Press, 1998)
Posted 67 months ago.
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Hi - Phyllis, tell us more about this!
At first I felt a bit frightened about Dick's idea for "INBY" development, imagining speculators using any variance to press for increased densities all over the island. But on reflection, it seems that what he is really proposing is a whole different approach - that instead of regulatory mechanisms limiting development by enforcing single-family dwellings on large lots, we move to a paradigm of welcoming all development based on a zero ecological footprint. Is it better to have one couple in a 5000 square-foot house with standard septic system, energy consumption, and a well, or 10 - 200 square-foot houses that are green buildings with water catchment systems, solar energy, compositing toilets and no cars?
I measured my ecological footprint (at www.myfootprint.org/) and found it would take about 2.8 earths to sustain my lifestyle for the world's human population.
As for visionary thinking being lost and the seeming futility of dreams, just for today my answer came from Adrienne Rich: that in place of progress and visible achievement "What in fact I keep choosing/are these words, these whispers, conversations/from which time after time the truth breaks moist and green."
Posted 67 months ago.
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How interesting to get perspectives from different islands. Phyllis sent an article from the the Gabriola Sounder this week in which the local trustee wonders whether there is an actual need for affordable housing on Gabriola and confidently expresses the islands ability to deal with it:
“We need to figure out a way to keep the diversity of the community without sacrificing environmental values. People are pretty imaginative and intelligent here, I’m sure we can come up with a solution that works for everyone. The diversity of our community is a large part of what makes this such a great place to live,” said Malcolmson.
www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EEyVlZkFpFZDaKTcZd.shtml
On Salt Spring, in contrast, the front page article in the Gulf Islands Driftwood describes the plight on the island's homeless population in the cold weather, noting that a rough count conducted by Salt Spring Island Community Services volunteers in February found the island’s homeless population at 28, with many others living in skid shacks, trailers and substandard or overcrowded housing. Numerous community initiatives are wringing their hands. www.gulfislands.net/news.asp?ID=1688
What is the difference here? How are the other islands experiencing the issue?
Posted 66 months ago.
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A favourite book of mine (a BBC mini series as well) is titled Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Neverwhere is about London Below or all that normal folk of London Above do not see when going about their day to day lives. Significantly, homeless people and poverty are things not seen (or that which is to be removed so not encountered! shades of Vancouver looking towards the 2010 Olympics!).
I also just finished 2 sobering books by Doris Lessing (Mara and Dann and the sequel) and these are futuristic books taking up the effects of global warming. Again, poverty and homelessness are significant issues taken up by Lessing. As well, the idea of again and again, why do we have to reinvent solutions to the same old problems - again and again.
Walking the streets of Vancouver or Victoria are sharp reminders of the lack of affordable housing in those cities. I do not want to romanticize poverty and homelessness BUT in point of fact these represent people with small ecological footprints. Too small a footprint and under harsh social censure and yet, instead of all the moralizing against them, the homeless represent a simpler way of life that we could learn much from..
Living on Gabriola Island is becoming something that is increasingly unavailable to those with less resources even as these are the people whose ecological footprint would preserve and sustain fragile island eco-systems.
On Gabriola we have a local organization called People for a Healthy Community which provides a food bank and other services once a month. Is this enough? I do no know. I am not sure of the numbers of homeless people on the island or the numbers of those living in abject poverty.
Poverty and homelessness are linked to larger issues of work and how this defines who we are and our importance in the larger social and cultural fabric. Yet, we live in a world where there are not enough jobs to employ everyone (See Bauman In search of politics). And not everyone is able to work anyway. The elderly, the young, those who are ill.
Why does our standard of living have to be tied to our work? Why not tie our living to how sustainable are our day to day practices?
Someone from one of the more progressive Canadian think tanks calculated how much the top CEOs in Canada made on the first day of this New Year - on average over $72,000.00 for one day! This is outrageous. This is scandalous. I feel shocked. This is conspicuous consumption on multiple levels and represents the consumption of that which should be available for the simple living of others. This embodies the consumption of others by virtue of that which should be shared...the wealth and goodness of the earth. But it also embodies the consumption of the planet. What do those wealthy CEOs do with their millions of dollars?
But it is not as simple as the ultra-wealthy.
We have just come through another season of greed and conspicuous consumption. Does anyone remember Saturday Night Live and the Coneheads and the idea of conspicuous consumption?
As citizens, we have the intelligence to imagine and create ways of living that are sustainable, smart, and value all life forms.
I believe we need to rethink the very social basis of culture and society that values those who work over those who do not and those who make more money over all the rest including other life forms and the planet earth, and those who consume massively over those who do not.
Resisting and deconstructing those hierarchies that privilege some people and things over others is a necessary part of solving homelessness, poverty and the lack of affordable housing.
gloria
Posted 66 months ago.
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