By ERIC MARCH
On Nov. 24 I attended the third public engagement session of our Complete Community Assessment, the precursor to our targeted Salt Spring Island Official Community Plan (OCP) and Land Use Bylaw (LUB) review.
Trustee Laura Patrick and several Islands Trust staff were in attendance, and the care and hard work being put into this project was obvious.
Unfortunately, there was an enormous housing-crisis-sized hole in the data and, especially given the recent hysteria from some members of our community that the OCP/LUB review will lead to massive overdevelopment, I think this missing data is extremely important.
Most of the statistics used come from the census conducted in 2021, and therefore show an artificially rosy view of Salt Spring Island’s demographics. Statistics Canada does its best to assess all dwellings, regardless of their legality. Unfortunately, Salt Spring Island is an island with extensive secret housing, from trailers to tiny homes to repurposed accessory buildings, all hidden away from casual view, on “farms,” in resorts and on other properties. Folks in hidden housing units, folks in hidden trailers and RVs parked in the woods, folks in liveaboards, those registered at short-term accommodations but staying long term don’t get counted in the census. And if our “complete” community assessment is excluding the legions of working-class Salt Springers struggling with housing, then it absolutely fails at its goal. We have enough prejudice against the underhoused on Salt Spring without erasing those experiences with flawed data.
Salt Spring Island has an incredibly powerful anti-housing lobby. They are writing to the Driftwood suggesting that the limited lifting of the North Salt Spring Waterworks District water hook-up moratorium will increase our population by up to 10 per cent or that our OCP/LUB review is a fait accompli for unrestricted development. They are protesting outside our Islands Trust Council meeting suggesting that preserving livelihoods and affordable housing will ruin the island.
They are our elected officials celebrating 131 units of housing built in five years as if that pitiful number is anything to be proud of. Worst of all, Salt Spring’s anti-housing lobby has folks saying, “I’m not anti-housing, I just want the right type of housing,” while shooting down every housing proposal and not providing any suggestions of their own.
Far too many Salt Springers are eager to live in a community with schools, a hospital, two grocery stores, numerous small businesses from restaurants to alcohol production, and a regular ferry schedule, but refuse to think about how we’re supposed to house all those workers. Expecting these services to be available without being willing to build safe, affordable housing for the workers to live in is the absolute height of entitlement.
There are definitely hundreds and possibly thousands of underhoused, unsafely housed, unstably housed workers on this island. The status quo is unsustainable, irresponsible, and immoral. The state of working-class housing on Salt Spring Island is abysmal. Having to choose between living in a suite, trailer or RV that is leaky, mouldy, rat-infested,or a combination of the three and leaving Salt Spring is an incredibly common occurrence. Furthermore, shoddy wiring, leaky plumbing or septic systems, poorly hooked-up propane lines, bad weatherproofing and lack of winterization run rampant.
What kind of community are we expecting to build on Salt Spring when our population is divided between folks living in legal and illegal housing, especially when that divide is so strongly down class lines of legal landowners and illegal tenants? How are we expecting to maintain Salt Spring’s culture of volunteerism when some landlords use the precariousness of illegal housing to extort labour far beyond a reasonable work trade or raise rents so high a renter has to work multiple jobs? How do we expect folks to want to work in our community when they have to live in “temporary” housing indefinitely? Why do we expect folks to live in homes so toxic or unsafe that it risks damage to their health?
What part of “rural character” is preserved by refusing to house rural workers? What part of “rural character” is preserved by having landlords who would be just as comfortable running an SRO on the Downtown Eastside as they are renting out shoddy units on Salt Spring?
Nobody is arguing for massive development. There is no conspiracy to sell Salt Spring out to developers, no plan to double our population, no proposal to pave paradise. Working folks simply want to live in safe, secure housing without going broke. And to suggest otherwise is nothing more than hysteria fuelled by willful ignorance.
It’s time to end the divide between legal and illegal Salt Springers. It’s time to end the divide between securely and insecurely housed Salt Springers. It’s time to engage with our housing crisis in good faith and build a Salt Spring Island for everyone.
The writer is a worker and renter residing on Salt Spring Island.