Saanich is in a housing crisis. In 2014, the average house in Saanich cost $600 000. Now, it’s $1.4 million. Saanich’s rental vacancy rate is 1.5 percent, well below the 3-5 percent needed for a healthier rental market. 

Young people are leaving the Capital Region in droves. The Victoria Census Metropolitan Area has the lowest fertility rate in the country at 0.95, well below the Canadian average of 1.4.

As baby boomers retire and more people shift to remote work, the demand for living in our region will continue to grow. 

If we do nothing, these trends will get worse. Only the very rich and longtime homeowners will be able to live comfortably, while everyone else spends over half of their income on outrageously high rents and mortgages. Our region will continue to get older as young people seek opportunity and affordable housing elsewhere.

While our region has added more housing, most of it has been in the Western communities, where vast greenfields and forests with diverse ecosystems and wildlife habitat have been felled for single family homes (looking at you, Bear Mountain.) 

Growth in the Western Communities continues to threaten nature, with green spaces like Broom Hill in Sooke under threat of construction for more single family homes.

The solution to preserving greenspace in outer communities and providing more homes is simple: Build more housing in urban/suburban areas such as Saanich.

But the process for building homes is extremely cumbersome. It costs a lot of time and money, so only large development companies can purchase land, hold onto it through the rezoning process, and pay for construction.

This is where the Quadra Mckenzie Plan comes in. By upzoning land around arterial roads that are close to services businesses and major employers, we will make it faster to build the housing we desperately need while minimizing impacts (ex: tree loss, congestion).

We the undersigned are calling on Saanich Council to:

• Adopt the Quadra Mckenzie Plan
• Adopt similar land use plans for all communities within Saanich’s Urban Containment Boundary