By TRANSITION SALT SPRING ADVOCACY CIRCLE
Lately, some folks have been asking us why Transition Salt Spring (TSS) cares about housing. The answer to that important question is the focus of this article, which coincides with Salt Spring’s Official Community Plan (OCP) review being led by our Local Trust Committee.
The answer sits in our tagline “Responding to Climate Change. Restoring ecosystems. Reimagining community. Together.” Each part of that statement has direct implications for how, why, and where we build housing.
“Responding to climate change” is our core mission, reflected in our Climate Action Plan and biannual Climate Action Report Card. It’s in everything we do, from our pretty skookum Repair Cafés to our political advocacy, including op-eds like this and our recent submission on the Island Trust’s draft Policy Statement.
“Restoring ecosystems” is the next pillar of that mission. The more we fragment Salt Spring’s forests with scattered housing, the greater the risks we face — wildfire, water scarcity and ecological decline. As soils dry out, trees die, and risks compound. Kelowna is the sobering reminder of where this leads. That’s why we’ve invested in ecological restoration work in the Hwmet’utsun (Mount Maxwell) Creek watershed and have piloted roadside woody debris collection with the Capital Regional District.
It’s also why ecosystem protection will be central to the recommendations we will share publicly and submit to the Local Trust Committee for their OCP review. Without meaningful change, the default outcome is more big lots with big homes, long driveways and further fragmenting forests.
“Reimagining community. Together” is where climate action and community building intersect. In a climate-disrupted future, resilience depends on having a diverse mix of people who can actually afford to live here. By that measure, Salt Spring is becoming less resilient every day.
We can’t respond effectively to wildfires, droughts, storms, food disruptions or infrastructure failures without nurses, farmers, tradespeople, ferry workers and emergency responders living on the island.
Simply saying “no” to additional right-sized housing preserves a status quo that’s hollowing out the very workforce we will need here as climate impacts intensify. A climate-smart response instead is “No — but, what about this instead?”
That alternative is compact, affordable housing in serviced areas. It strengthens our capacity to withstand climate stress while keeping forests intact. Large, dispersed homes carved into drying, fragmented forests do exactly the opposite.
So, why does TSS care about housing?
First, housing has a big impact on ecosystems — wildfire risk, erosion and forest fragmentation — what we misleadingly call “the natural environment” as though humans weren’t a part of it. Indigenous worldviews understand humans as a part of the natural world. Today, our land-use patterns work against it. But there’s another way, long understood by Indigenous and traditional cultures, and increasingly acknowledged by western ecological science.
Second, housing is currently a big source of emissions. Large homes carved out of clearcuts also make the Trust’s “preserve and protect” mandate — especially on Salt Spring, where more than three-quarters of the land is privately owned — almost impossible to achieve. Smaller, compact forms of housing, close to services, have far fewer emissions and a way smaller footprint.
Third, our resilience depends on people. We need all kinds of humans acting together to meet tomorrow’s challenges — not just doctors, but farmers, tradespeople, ferry workers and emergency responders. We will also need strong skilled people to actively steward our stressed forests. First Nations have always understood this. Western land management practices are only now catching up. Community resilience means changing course so we can care for both people and ecosystems in the decades ahead.
Who gets to live here is, in part, influenced by the choices we make in our OCP. As it stands, who’s more likely to land here when housing costs what it does —a barber with a kid, or two retirees with significant wealth?
If we want a resilient community, we need to tilt the board further back towards people other than the most fortunate. Everyone deserves a decent place to live. Diversity is strength — in communities as in ecosystems — and both are shaped by good planning decisions.
A community shaped mainly by wealth — where working families leave, schools close and working people are priced out — is fragile on many levels.
Of course, there are limits to how many people Salt Spring can accommodate. Under our current OCP and land-use bylaws, Salt Spring has lost roughly six per cent forest cover in just 20 years, according to Global Forest Watch. We can change direction — by getting clear about where and what we build.
Put housing in Ganges and we cut way fewer trees. Build up instead of out and housing becomes more affordable while using less land. Better still, we can truly “preserve and protect” by further limiting housing in high-fire-risk forested areas and low-lying shorelines — while enabling farmers to house workers on their land.
Our decades-old OCP is missing some of the tools we need to build affordable housing, not to mention its silence on First Nations and the lack of a plan on how to address accelerating climate change. And that is understandable, because the world has changed, and with those changes we need to update our plans to better prepare for new risks and realities.
While no OCP can actually build a range of affordable housing on its own (housing economics are very challenging now), one clear example of what we could change is building height in Ganges, for example. On Salt Spring, a maximum of three storeys is available only for seniors’ supportive housing or “affordable housing” that is pretty tightly defined by our local policies. Allowing more than three storeys would help make more affordable forms of housing economic to build, and with additional rules to disincentivize speculation. The only four-storey here is the new Drake Road supportive housing built by the province — which can pre-empt local bylaws. In this case they did so with the support of CRD director Gary Holman and trustee Laura Patrick.
Housing economics have become incredibly difficult, and especially so with B.C.’s current dire financial situation. We need to have a community conversation about how our community steps into the breach financially to make some of these projects happen, without senior government support.
As we close, here’s our request — whether you agree with us or not. Talk to younger people who’ve grown up here. Ask GISS students what they think of their chances of staying after graduation. Talk to people who work on this island about what kind of housing they think our island needs. Read differing views in print or online. Reflect. Get engaged. And share your views with the Islands Trust as part of their public engagement on our revised OCP.
Together, let’s keep unpacking what a diverse community with healthy forests and watersheds would look like — in conversations with friends and neighbours and each other, as we rethink what our community plan can and should do.
Transition Salt Spring’s (TSS) Advocacy Circle includes Mary Ackenhusen, Pam Tarr, Bryan Young, Jon Cooksey and Kacia Tolsma. TSS works to provide fact-based positions rooted in protecting the island for future generations through a compassionate balance between environmental and human needs in a changing climate.
