Editor:
There are a lot of active developments in Delta, the region, the province, and the country and this has been the subject of a lot of discussion especially in the face of recent government mandates regarding solutions to our housing crisis.
I read a lot of opinions in the Optimist for and against the mandates and the projects big and small being developed and proposed in Delta. I would like to make one thing clear in this conversation: housing is about needs, not wants.
NIMBY opinions about the scale of the projects we’re seeing, or about the mandates to build more housing seem to view all this development as a way to invite more people into our communities. As much as I would like to argue we should be so welcoming, that is not what this is about.
The hard truth is that more people are coming, and we need to build more housing for them. The really hard truth is that more people are already here, and we need to build more housing for them.
What we have is a market so unaffordable that families who should be able to buy have to rent, and those who could only rent struggle to do so. There is a large portion of our community who can only find shelter from substandard, often illegal housing offered on craigslist or marketplace. Even there, many of us just bounce from teardown to teardown, never getting to feel stable enough in our housing to really settle in.
The fact is that we are woefully far behind on desperately needed housing and the nostalgic feelings of a privileged few who want to live in a dystopic reality where our community remains a suburban sprawl affordable and accessible to only a fortunate few for the sake of a picturesque little village just outside the big city should not and can not morally get in the way of the critical needs of so many for the essential right of housing.
Jason Roberts
