Our housing has evolved over the past 70 years to a crisis point where we need a dramatic attitude change or risk living in a threatening world of those who have shelter and those who don’t. It’s no secret that revolution results when the Have-nots vastly outnumber the Haves.
Up until the late 1960s, housing was pretty stable for both owners and renters. Many hand-built their own homes, and renting was the norm and affordable for most working-class families. The early 1970s is when housing became about more than just meeting basic shelter needs.
The ‘Boomers were coming of age and needed homes. This demand fuelled an increase in property values that morphed housing into a commodity, an investment to be bought and sold for profit. Rules also changed making it less profitable for developers to build rental apartments. Land speculators were making big bucks, which created more demand and produced more single-family homes, resulting in the birth of urban sprawl. Suburbia emerged through clear-cutting large tracts of land for thousands of detached homes in and around our urban centers. Mary Hill in Port Coquitlam is a classic example of this early trend.
In retrospect, I believe promoting this exodus away from the urban core was a huge mistake. We lost our sense of community and connection to each other. It created the need for freeways, millions more cars, pollution and self-isolation behind locked doors and fenced yards. Commuters today are frustrated spending around four hours daily in traffic gridlock.
Urban areas like Commercial Drive and Main Street in Vancouver have retained that village character, which we in Delta are lucky to have, especially in Ladner and Tsawwassen.
So here we are in a major housing crisis that is stuck in its own gridlock. Politicians elected to be our leaders are, with some exceptions, really just followers of the voting public. NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard advocates) have been very vocal, with governments dutifully obeying by creating more covenants and zoning restrictions to prevent progressive change — because most of us with secure housing like things the way they are.
This is the part you won’t like: we have to change.
Those of us who already own our homes are now the Haves. We’ve felt entitled to NIMBY-ism to the point where we are now trying to prevent change to entire neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, most renters, low- to middle-income earners, seniors and young families are losing the battle to find, let alone qualify, for basic shelter.
This begs the question: who are we to deny this to our fellow citizens whose only misfortune was to be born later than us? The need for more affordable rental and owned housing is desperate. This is why condos and townhomes are in such high demand. Older single-family homes are financially out of reach for most, not to mention a waste of valuable land. I’m not suggesting 30-storey towers, but four to 12 storeys on suitable sites need to be more readily accepted by us, the voting public.
Monster houses are loathed, but at least (within some cultures) they house multiple generations and are now being inhabited by people who choose to live co-operatively. Sharing models are trending, but that topic deserves its own column, which will follow soon.
ML Burke retired from the health sector to work on issues such as affordable housing. She sits on the Delta Seniors Planning Team and the BC Seniors Advocate’s Council of Advisors.