Housing
The most pressing issue in Victoria today is the lack of housing diversity and solutions for homelessness. Development needs to be more than high end condos for wealth investors. The lack of rental housing and affordable options is pushing the people who keep our city working out of Victoria. We must use the tools at our disposal to ensure new development provides for affordable housing, for different options like co-op housing, and to provide more solutions for the hard to house.
A moratorium on demolishing or converting multi-unit residential rentals is a good start, but developers will need assistance or consideration to help maintain or upgrade buildings to ensure accommodation is up to standard. Making sure that affordable housing and our supply of rental and co-op housing meets sustainability goals as well is also important. The city should explore ways to help reduce the carbon footrpint and energy costs for our residents. We’ll all benefit from this approach.
Providing for those more difficult to house has been brought to the fore by the recent court decision that allows the homeless to provide for their shelter needs in the public realm. It demands that we provide better solutions. We must press senior governments to invest in more and better housing and shelter options so we can preserve our parks and greenspace for all to enjoy.
The city’s task force on homelessness identifies many of the solutions. Now we need action to move them forward.
Key to some of these initiatives will be:
A “Housing First” policy that helps provide shelter for the hard to house so they can start re-integrating into the broader community. There
Building solutions with our neighbours: We need to get to work with neighbouring municipalities to take our housing trust fund and use it to implement solutions.
Rental housing is in short supply in Victoria. We need to better accommodate rental options by supporting more secondary suites, limiting the conversion or demolition of existing rental housing and ensuring that new development provides more diverse housing options, including rental stock
Working to embrace creative housing solutions like co-op housing, co-housing and other options
Making more use of “car free” zoning or development requirements to reduce the cost and footrpint of housing alternatives.
Ensuring green development standards are applied across the board to ensure that new housing is sustainable and moves Victoria towards a carbon neutral city
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