Below is a letter from A. Smith, a Fairfield tenant, to City of Victoria Mayor and Council regarding a new mixed-use residential and commercial development proposed for Cook Street Village (at the corner of Pendergast and Cook Streets). She and her family are part of a growing trend toward the large-scale displacement of tenants from older rental properties in this city, in favor of luxury accommodation, much of it for investment purposes.
I am a tenant in a house in Cook Street Village. The house I live in will be demolished in the coming year or two: http://www.aragon.ca/in-development/cook-street-village .
I am grateful that the developer, Aragon Properties, will allow us to stay until they break ground. At the same time, I am saddened and frustrated that such a beautiful home (three homes, in fact) and the surrounding greenery will disappear. The large development-proposal sign posted yesterday has attracted attention of passersby who have written negative comments on it.
I want to reach out to people involved in decision-making at City Hall, as Aragon has submitted their rezoning application. I want you all to know what a tragedy it is to remove this house and the two adjacent houses. Each house is home to a young family with kids; one additional unit is home to a young woman who has lived here for 13 years. We have yards for our kids to play in and driveways for our vehicles. Unfortunately, as times change, families no longer have the right to rent a home with a yard. We are forced into too-small apartments as we make way for high-density, multi-million dollar projects.
Aragon Properties, known for high-end units, is quickly swallowing many parts of Victoria and surrounding areas. Where will all the renters go? We can’t even rent in the new development because the current proposal offers no rentals.
My partner and I have a three and a half year-old son, and we have lived in this house for two and a half years. We want him to go to school in this neighbourhood. I work in Cook Street Village, and my partner, a well-known local clothing designer, works two jobs in downtown Victoria. We worry about the day we’ll have to leave this home, because there is literally nowhere left to go in Victoria. And that day is coming soon.
I am not asking this development be halted; I realize that is not realistic. But I am begging you to create some kind of stipulation on the project which will require that rental units be offered, or that the current renters be assisted with finding new accommodation.
At one of the early community meetings hosted by Aragon, I asked the owner of the company whether there would be affordable units offered, as I was concerned that we’d be forced out of Victoria. His reply, void of empathy, was that his company was a for-profit company, that he’d worked hard his whole life to build it, and that it was my problem, if we couldn’t afford to live in Victoria.
Well, you know what? It’s not just my problem, but a social problem. And it will be his problem when Victoria becomes the next Vancouver—when there’s no one left to work in the downtown restaurants he wants to go to, or at the stores where he shops—because the moderate to middle-income population has been forced to move away. It’s that simple. This developer does not care about Cook Street Village, no matter how architects try to spin their sales pitch.
To Mayor Lisa Helps and interested Councillors, I extend an invitation to our home. At a time which suits you, I’d like you to come see this beautiful house, its original wood details, its stunning magnolia tree and large cedars outside.
Hopefully, then, you’ll understand the sadness we feel having to leave. All you need to do is spend ten minutes watching the reactions of people reading the proposal sign on the lawn, to see the disappointment that now washes over our entire neighbourhood.
Thank you for your time. I hope to meet with you in the near future.
Late Breaking News…The Mayor of Victoria has accepted the invitation of this letter writer to pay a visit to her home and discuss this matter further.
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Further Reading:
Fairfield Gonzales CALUC report re: Aragon Properties Development
Victoria’s “Market Rental Revitalization Study” and the Prospect of Large-Scale Tenant Displacement
Will massive displacement of tenants solve Victoria’s housing crisis?
Why does the solution to Victoria’s housing crunch require displacement of more than 10,000 tenants?
What’s Victoria doing for renters?
DeRosa, Katie. Times Colonist, Tenants battling renovictions – and some are winning, 24 August 2018.
Mike Kozakowski, citified.ca, Victoria’s garden suite housing strategy yields 22 approvals among 7,000 eligible properties, 17 September 2018. The City plans on introducing a “gentle density” strategy into residential neighbourhoods, yet their simplified, fast-tracked garden suite policy has failed to generate the intended results. Mayor Helps pledges to expand what she calls an ‘effective’ strategy, to permit “family-sized” units applicable to 5,600 properties. Yet the 2016 Census revealed that only 5,240 families (or 11.4% of all economic families) had children and resided in private households in the capital city. Why all this effort to address this population cohort when the City and developers have focused almost exclusively on building housing for primarily urban professional and affluent retiree couples? And, judging from the garden suites for rent in Victoria (currently listed on Kijiji,) you’ll be paying a premium price for a postage stamp-size lodging in someone’s backyard, anywhere from $1,110 to $2,275 a month (not including utilities or parking).
Andrew Duffy, Times Colonist, Data show homeownership in Victoria remains elusive, 21 September 2018. Victoria maintains a consistent record of being a city of renters, 61% of households in 2016 versus 62% in 2001. A Victoria Real Estate Board representative indicated that Victoria’s small, dense area, particularly downtown and nearby neighbourhoods attract university students and service industry employees seeking convenient affordable housing. He suggests that if homeownership is to increase, densification is the answer, particularly to supply the “missing middle” segment of the housing market (townhouses, duplexes and triplexes, “to allow more people to get into homeownership and out of rentals.”
Mile Zero Mirror 