By ELISSA POOLE
Context is everything in a well-designed, unbiased engagement process.
We’re being asked to comment on a new official community plan (OCP) and land use bylaw (LUB), in which changes to critical parts of these documents are likely to open the island to far more development. The changes are supposed to make more long-term, affordable housing available for island residents. And yet neither the online survey nor the consultants corralling shoppers in Ganges asked these questions: Can we get more affordable housing without those changes? Will the changes actually accomplish what they’re designed to do to? And given the impacts these changes would have on water resources, ferry line-ups, health care facilities, quiet neighbourhoods, parking, roads, our forests and ecosystems, are you comfortable with the trade-offs?
Our current OCP/LUB already provide all the legal mechanisms to support affordable housing. That’s context everybody who lives on this provincially protected island needs to know up front. Yet our elected Local Trust Committee disdained requests from community organizations for a public meeting where the audience would be given this background information clearly.
Islanders could also be reminded in such a meeting that current zoning already allows for an estimated 5,000 additional residents. Picture that number, peak of summer. Then double it. That’s why there are population limits in our OCP.
Our current OCP says clearly that rezoning is for affordable housing only. Property owners can be granted an increase in the number of housing units if they enter into a binding agreement with a government agency to keep rents or resale prices below market levels. Households with incomes up to $114,000 a year would be eligible! No changes to the OCP necessary.
Lack of this type of background encourages counterproductive recommendations. Merely “rezoning Ganges,” for instance, could give property owners the right to build pricey condos with no provision for affordable housing. Whee! Up go the property values! As if it weren’t difficult enough for non-profits (the groups building affordable housing) to purchase land for housing projects.
“Clustered housing” is another popular idea, one that our OCP already encourages. It’s basically a type of development that concentrates dwellings on one part of a subdividable lot without increasing total densities. It’s a good tool, since it can protect green space from development.
What is being proposed, however — and sometimes also called “clustered housing” — would increase densities, yet add little to the affordable housing stock unless there are housing agreements. The floor area ratio concept (FAR) would allow multiple smaller dwellings on properties currently zoned for only one residence (with some limitations), as long as the total footprint does not exceed a maximum square footage. Thus a five-acre property might include three or more residences with a combined maximum footprint of 5,000 square feet. Like an expanded version of failed Bylaw 530, it could significantly change rural neighbourhoods and tax limited resources if applied island-wide.
We need only one survey question: a) Should we keep our existing OCP limits, which require increases in development to be restricted to affordable housing, or b) do we allow additional free market development with no control on prices, hoping against precedent, both here and elsewhere, that this will provide affordable housing?
Share your concerns by emailing our trustees at ssiinfo@islandstrust.bc.ca with “OCP-LUB review” in the subject line.