There are all sorts of false impressions that arise from developments such as the massive one in the works for Osborne Bay Road in Crofton.
The first misconception is that the building of 230 units is such a tremendous thing because it will go a long way toward easing our housing crisis. The bottom line is it won’t.
You can bet your bottom dollar a large number of the available houses will be snapped up by new retirees who want to move into the area from the Prairies and by people from the Lower Mainland and Victoria who want to cash in and adjust their lifestyles with extra money in their pockets.
That will leave a small percentage for “locals” to take up residence there.
The other problem is putting any kind of an “affordable” tag on anything in this complex is a misnomer. Affordable to whom? The aforementioned Vancouver and Victoria people who might want to commute, set up a home business or just retire, yes, but not for any young people starting out unless they receive a major inheritance or serious help from the folks.
Just because a home might be priced under $300,000, in some cases, won’t make it affordable. That’s because it comes with another cost: space.
With some units possibly being as small as 588 square feet, it’s only really fit for a single person and they’d have to compromise a lot in their life to squish into such a tiny place. With that in mind, they shouldn’t even be paying $100,000. That would be reasonable and affordable.
But we all know that’s not going to happen. Tiny houses have become fashionable as an alternative, but some people are still paying way more than they should for what they receive. In reality, the housing market should have crashed years ago, but now we’re in a real mess where people spend the bulk of their income on housing or it’s driven more and more into homelessness.
Developers also receive too much credit for creating green spaces and playgrounds and contributing money to water reservoirs or other so-called “affordable” housing. That’s a huge fallacy because it just reinforces there’s so much money to be made developers won’t even miss such a huge chunk and come out looking like good guys. If the profit margin wasn’t so high, they wouldn’t be doing it.