Re: Accommodate rising demand, PNR, Jan. 30.
Dr. Brown calls for progressive solutions, including new affordable single family housing to accommodate rising demand.
One can truly sympathize with those who cannot afford the home of their choice. But without being wealthy (which I’m not), we have to make compromises.
My wife and I are also elderly but I had to leave Victoria in 1958 for job opportunities. Before coming to B.C. in 2001, after working around the world, we checked the area by internet to ensure we could cope financially.
It was difficult — I had to work until I was 73 — and if we hadn’t thought we could make it we would not have come to “scour the landscape.” We had no right to think North Saanich would accommodate us because we fancied it.
Sadly, the cold hard fact is, no one will build a single storey modestly-sized home for less than about $600,000. Our 1,800 square-foot, single storey, modest house is on land now assessed at $407,000! Ludicrous but true. Three houses sold in North Saanich in January — average price: $598,000.
Many more are for sale in Sidney/North Saanich — some for months. But short of a 1930s style depression or catastrophe, nothing will force land costs down.
We do indeed need progressive solutions, but we need to genuinely define the problem we are trying to solve, and determine how much rising demand this area can cope with without placing future generations at risk.
There are limits to growth — which the human race is finding out the hard way in the face of climate change, food and energy shortages and overpopulation.
Ad-hoc tinkering by the dysfunctional North Saanich council will solve nothing and is just turning neighbours into enemies. Look around the world and see what that leads to.
David Olsen
North Saanich
