Of that million people,the feds allow a maximum of 3,000 immigrants to enter the country as skilled labourer's. They must have a good command of English and a job in place before being allowed to enter. They have never met that maximum since 2009. Taken from stats Canada
Housing Crisis in Vancouver Island
- Thread starter johnywalker87
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It takes a special kind of simpleton to be making the specious arguments that you continue to make.
Ask the millions of people in Europe who have done that successfully for generations.
It takes a special kind of simpleton to be making the specious arguments that you continue to make.
Admitedly though, the apratments they're building over here aren't really designed for family living in the European way. Even early New York aprtments were much more aimiable to this. We've followed the Hong Kong model of shoeboxes.
There isn’t enough room in BC for every family to have a large single family home on a nice big lot with a two car garage.
You have already used up the Fraser Valley and the Okanagan.
Next you’ll be complaining about having to import food.
You have already used up the Fraser Valley and the Okanagan.
Next you’ll be complaining about having to import food.
Have you ever noticed that people leave Europe for North America and not the other way around?
I wonder why?
With all those great apartments, you'd think they would want to stay there.
There is a great example of faulty logic. Lots of people want to and do move to Europe every year. And hundreds of millions more stay in Europe as well.
And our immigration from Europe has been steadily declining every year. And the main reason is employment and a lack of housing, plus the cost of living here.
Ironically, many Europeans that do want out cite immigration problems happening in their own country as a major issue. It has caused housing issues, increased taxes and a lack of services (sound familiar?). There has also been a notable increase in crime with increased immigration, part of it stemming from policies that prevent family reunification, and a tendency to marginalize and ghettoize immigrant workers. There are parts of France, for example, where even the police refuse to go.
The apartments that were built in the last decade were aimed at the AirBnB investors more than for families. But there has been no incentive for builders to offer more living space when they get more money per unit .
No matter what we argue, the simple fact is the federal government dropped the ball decades ago in failing to address housing and is directly responsible for this crisis. Adding ridiculous immigration numbers is equally insane (and I'm a first generation Canadian so barely entrenched in Canada myself!).
Demographically, the government also dropped the ball in not having a plan on how to deal with our declining birthrate. Immigration should have lifted everyone's boat except it was so mangled and corrupted that now it's basically sinking the entire country.
And nowhere has any government directly addressed the matter of money-laundering (even BC has treaded softly in this area). We cannot allow billions of dollars to flood into Canada, get washed through businesses, banks, investment firms, lawyers and casinos and dumped into the housing market and then expect a couple houses being built to solve the problem.
The area north and west of sooke is not farmland anyway.
Regarding farmland in Vancouver island: According to the Capital Region Food and Agricultural Initiatives Roundtable, Vancouver Island produced as much as 85 per cent of the Island’s food supply in the 1950s. That number has plummeted to about six per cent today
https://www.goldstreamgazette.com/l...ies-about-the-legacy-of-farming-in-bc-7347987
This has nothing to do with housing. There is a protected farmland in Saanich but people nowadays buy farms on the island just to live there not to do farming.
The difference with Europe is that Canada has a lot of vacant land where we can build. I don't remember seeing a sign in Europe "Check your fuel, next service is 70 kms" like the one at the west end of Sooke.
Exactly. Building chicken-boxes which are tiny and have shoddy construction that will give out on just 30 or 50 years, this is designed for real estate speculation, not living families.
People say this stat all the time, but most of Canada's land is not suitable for habitation - muskeg swamp, tundra, rocky shorelines, isolated mountain areas. Population goes where it can live the easiest, namely temperate climates with water access and arable land. We do not have so much of that, even if what we have is still more than any European nation besides Russia. I would not count on us having the population capacity of the US, China, etc.
The irony is that our population is expanding into the same arable bioregions which strategically we also need for food supply, so basically if we pave it all, we might as well cut our own throats. (Not just in Canada; this issue is global). That's the best argument for building up rather than out. Just need to make sure to build smarter, for real families, and actual residents.
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I think that land north and west of Sooke is part of the watershed area for the city of Victoria water supply. So no development there.
Also for the logging sites, the need for replanting started in the 1980s. The way Canada does tree cutting is clear cutting (as its the most economical for the company cutting). Selective cutting is the way ahead, provided there is a way for tree removal .Also it take something like 80 years for a tree to grow to a good size in order to make lumber. The amount of waste when cutting trees is bad too. Tree limbs, needles, leaves are usually burnt on site.
Fresh vegetables in the grocery stores come from California in the winter months.
But the Canadian farmer will become extinct, due to the rising cost of machinery and fertilizers and gas. The price of wheat/corn/etc in the store products is because of the middle man and not that the farmer makes anything more than his parents did. Back in the 80s the average farmer was saying you have to be a millionaire to start farming then. Check out the ALR.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Land_Reserve
Greenhouses could grow food in the winter time, but the building would have to be very well designed to cope with a Canadian winter where temperature do fall for most of the winter below freezing. The next problem is how do you heat it. Vegetables take 4-5 months to grow depending on weather and temperature and available water.
An ideal spot is the Frazer Valley for Greenhouses.
The main rivers on the prairies most are polluted (I wouldn't drink from them)from industrial plants along the Rivers side, usually near major cities.
I would venture to say most wells on the prairies too, are hard water and need water softeners to be able to drink the water.
But how come that in the 50's, 80% of our food was grown locally on the island ? Also our winter is milder compared to other parts of Canada. South Vancouver Island belongs to agriculture hardiness zone 8, compared to zone 4 in the prairies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone
Because most of the interior and the okanagan didn’t have power to pump water till the late sixties
What is affordable housing, no one has a definition but everyone throws the term around. Land, materials, and workers are not cheap.
I started working full time 50+ years ago making $311 gross per month, in my mid 20’s I bought my first home, 1,000 sq ft, for $46,000. I went through years of high interest rates of 20% and when we were happy to have a mortgage at 12%. Now governments want to tell us how we should spend our money or how we can make a buck and now want to tax the hell out of us. Sounds like socialism/communism.
Urban sprawl is very costly. Even moving further out from a city there needs to be the infrastructure: roads, electricity, water, sewer, police, fire protection, health care and ambulances. Then there is the question who will live that far out and do they commute to work. 14 acres at $4 million if you are lucky, then clear it, put in roads and electricity, water and sewer will amount to another $8 million, then you have room for 60 single family lots. That works out to $200,000. Per lot. Then there is the cost of building a residence.
That is compounded by a declining number of tradesmen which is predicted to only get worse.
Maybe things will get better after all the baby boomers pass on and their homes are available. But by then property taxes will be so high that people will still not have the cash flow to own a home. Subsidized or affordable homes are subsidized by the population through the governments that continue to rack up deficits that will only mean less affordability in the long term.
I started working full time 50+ years ago making $311 gross per month, in my mid 20’s I bought my first home, 1,000 sq ft, for $46,000. I went through years of high interest rates of 20% and when we were happy to have a mortgage at 12%. Now governments want to tell us how we should spend our money or how we can make a buck and now want to tax the hell out of us. Sounds like socialism/communism.
Urban sprawl is very costly. Even moving further out from a city there needs to be the infrastructure: roads, electricity, water, sewer, police, fire protection, health care and ambulances. Then there is the question who will live that far out and do they commute to work. 14 acres at $4 million if you are lucky, then clear it, put in roads and electricity, water and sewer will amount to another $8 million, then you have room for 60 single family lots. That works out to $200,000. Per lot. Then there is the cost of building a residence.
That is compounded by a declining number of tradesmen which is predicted to only get worse.
Maybe things will get better after all the baby boomers pass on and their homes are available. But by then property taxes will be so high that people will still not have the cash flow to own a home. Subsidized or affordable homes are subsidized by the population through the governments that continue to rack up deficits that will only mean less affordability in the long term.
We are no longer in the 70's. Since the pandemic now half of office jobs can be done from home. BC governement which is the largest employer in Victoria now allow the jobs to be remote anywhere in BC. So BC government office buildings in downtown Victoria will become useless.
Also you can create jobs in Sooke so they won't have to commute to Victoria.
Nuclear power greenhouses for thw win! *And* cherenkov radiation emitting water lamps!
That means that with the inflation the dollar was 10 times worth then. So the house you purchased for $46k would be worth $460k worth today. The problem is that you cannot buy a house under a million dollars nowadays so the house prices are double compared to 50 years ago if you take in consideration the inflation. And it looks that you were able to buy a house with a minimum wage income which is impossible today. So life was more affordale 50 years ago
