What Victoria are we trying to preserve?

Residents of Victoria’s Fairfield/Gonzales neighbourhood, Dave and Anita Paul, respond to a recent newspaper commentary by a developer, Let’s make it a wonderful day in the neighbourhood.

In 1975, my wife and I bought our first house, a 1911 fixer-upper in the Jubilee area to raise our two kids. We spent nine years busting our butts, and out of pocket, renovating that house. We then moved on to Saanich, near Richmond school, and bought a 1956 bungalow fixer-upper, which we renovated for six years, again out of pocket.

In 1991, we were finally able to buy our current 1931 home in Fairfield, near Ross Bay Cemetery and May Street. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, many old character houses in the Fairfield/Gonzales neighbourhood were in need of repair, but were updated, keeping the unique character that it is known for. We, like many other folks, who bought in, did those repairs, and have been doing so, right up until present day. As a result Fairfield/Gonzales has retained many updated modernized character family houses, making, “wonderful days in the neighbourhood”, for at least the next 100 years.

Now, developers, most likely not brought up here, who have no concept of our neighbourhoods, want to replace these character homes by squeezing in box-like modernistic, simplistic, minimalistic, three-plex, four-plex, six-plex type dwellings on single-family zoned lots wherever they can.

In answering Luke Mari’s question: “What Victoria are we trying to preserve?  Victoria in 1910, 1930, 1950, 1976, 2000 or the day after the last person arrived?” 

 It’s all of the above, for the next people to arrive.

Further Reading:

The VictoriaRecord.com, The voting record – the best measurement of City Council’s performance

David Broadland, Focus on Victoria, Sept./Oct. 2018, Landslide Lisa’s record as Mayor of Victoria

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.”