Housing & Affordability

In Greater Victoria’s rush to embrace “missing middle” housing, multiplexes have been marketed as the Goldilocks solution: not too big, not too small, and just affordable enough, if at all, for the elusive middle‑income household. But when you examine the actual strata fees, operating budgets, and developer practices behind these new buildings, a very different picture emerges. What looks like affordability on paper is often a carefully engineered illusion, one that shifts lo

Bill 44 must be repealed because it represents a sweeping, top‑down restructuring of land‑use authority pushed through without public consultation and municipal partnership. It is, put simply, a governance bypass: a bill that strips away public hearings, sidelines elected councils, and replaces community‑driven planning with a one‑size‑fits‑all mandate drafted behind closed doors. Back in 2023, when the most invasive Housing Bills were pushed through, several opposition MLAs

British Columbia’s sweeping housing reforms and land‑use overhaul were introduced and passed months before the Province publicly declared a “middle‑income housing crisis” in February 2024 with the launch of BC Builds. This is when the provincial government formally asserted that “middle‑income housing crisis” required direct state intervention. This means the most aggressive zoning, density, and municipal‑power‑limiting legislation in B.C.’s history was justified after the fa

Bill 44 delivers guaranteed density and instant land‑value inflation to developers and speculators, while handing residents the bill. It accelerates upzoning without requiring affordability, infrastructure investment, or accountability, fueling speculation instead of housing. Municipalities are left scrambling to fund the roads, sewers, parks, and emergency services this density demands, and Saanich’s tax spikes are the proof: public budgets absorb the costs while private act