Better housing options needed, says Saanich Peninsula chamber boss – Vancouver Island Free Daily
The Govt Director of the Peninsula’s Chamber of Commerce urges native governments to do extra to extend the supply of inexpensive housing for younger professionals.
“The Chamber would urge all communities to sort out density as shortly as doable, reduce the pink tape that’s hindering these items, and concentrate on a peninsula-wide technique for growing extra residing area for the working employees to proceed to steer the life-style that all of us get pleasure from on the peninsula, ”Al Smith informed Black Press Media in an interview.
Smith addressed associated housing, transportation and demographics points at a breakfast assembly with native enterprise homeowners final month.
Until the peninsula can shortly present inexpensive housing within the face of an growing older workforce, few, if any, younger professionals will be capable to afford residing within the space, he stated. This will likely be a problem, he added, as the employees must come from elsewhere, driving up their prices, which may finally leak to residents as customers.
Density of constructing would assist create inexpensive housing for folks, Smith stated, noting that that is “the large drawback out right here as a result of residents usually don’t desire it. They care extra about growing their property values than about supporting the youthful demographic they should work of their cafes, eating places and grocery shops. “
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Opponents of the upper density required for lower-income housing will assist drive up housing prices over the subsequent 20 years, he stated, however “perhaps they will agree as a result of there’s some huge cash on the peninsula.”
Smith stated the world’s councils and mayors are working exhausting to resolve the complicated problems with affordability of housing and transportation that aren’t new. Nevertheless, given the area’s growing older inhabitants, the options should not coming shortly sufficient. “That is the problem,” he stated.
Enhancements in these two areas would go a good distance in attracting youthful folks to residing on the peninsula, he stated. “Youthful sections of the inhabitants need to reside in a spot the place they will profit from their cash as doable.”
As housing prices rise, employees will need to work nearer to dwelling, Smith stated. “That may in fact push their jobs … into areas the place housing and transportation are extra inexpensive.”
Smith would not see present companies leaving the peninsula in quest of locations with higher housing choices, nevertheless. “I see there may be a number of discuss, ‘Hey, it is going to be costly to be right here,'” he stated. “And that might result in corporations – new corporations – settling the place the employees are and the place they need to be.”
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