Balance on the Ballot

I'll be blunt, the current approach to improving housing affordability in Victoria, the Missing Middle Initiative, hasn't won me over. Rather than a reasonable approach that is likely to get us a little closer to where we need to be (a place where those who work in our city can afford a reasonable level of accommodation within a reasonable commute), the current approach is likely to move us further away from that goal and towards a place where Victoria is little more than a façade of a place - similar to Disneyland or Las Vegas, a place where people visit but do not make their lives, a playground for the excessively well to do and controlled by a relatively limited number of people who make outsized returns on their "investments". The current approach is likely to increase speculation and inflate land values within the City of Victoria making affordable housing even further out of reach for the median wage earner who works in this city. That is not to say that more su...

There are people who really wish I would not run in this municipal election and who, if I do run, are very determined to ensure that I do not succeed. Most of them I have never met in person - however, they are comfortable screenshotting my tweets and doxxing me in hopes of having ammunition to use against me should I run. They are comfortable discounting my qualifications, as an example putting "economist" in brackets. Economist isn't a title I have just applied to myself, it's one that I've earned - via graduate studies in economics (I hold a Masters of Arts in Economics from the University of Victoria) and professional experience including more than a nearly two decades of experience being an economic consultant, teaching economics and working as an economist for the provincial government).  Recently, some have really liked to disparage that I have commented that the current development environment in Victoria today has some parallels to colonialism. Others poi...

 A back of the envelope calculation says that I should have about $3 million (or more) reasons to support the missing middle housing initiative (MMI) – it would after all be a boon cancel our existing project to rebuild our family home that wasn’t meeting our needs (built in 1939, it had asbestos, lacked a layout that could accommodate our 4 children or aging parents, and would at some point pose accessibility challenges - yet we made it made due for more than a decade) with a new single family home with a 2 bedroom suite that totals about 4500 square feet. Who wouldn’t just pull the plug on that given the looming Missing Middle Initiative and become an out and out cheerleader for the proposed policy? After all the proposed policy would allow us to propose a 7427 square foot building with 6 units. That is what will be allowed – an FSR of 1 in exchange for the payment of $37,138.50 to the city’s affordable housing fund. And the market price of those 6 units? Well – our lot is wate...