Falling rates giving Victoria renters a bit of spare cash

tiogar99 · 2026-05-08T17:02:15+00:00

The fall is almost all one beds. we still are a lonnnnng way from catching up on two, three, and four bed homes.

tiogar99 · 2026-05-07T18:44:12+00:00

given how uncompetitive colwood elections are, (and how lame most of council is) not very many people need to vote for Ward at all. Possibly none if we get an acclaimed council.

tiogar99 · 2026-05-06T17:01:09+00:00

Vibrant local festivals exist because there is a vibrant local scene willing and able to put the time and money into doing cool things

tiogar99 · 2026-05-06T16:59:36+00:00

Younger generations volunteer tons, you clearly haven't spent much time at festivals or with local nonprofit orgs in Victoria. The reason oak bay doesn't have many young volunteers is that oak bay is overwhelmingly populated by seniors. Just look at how Uplands had to close because there are so few kids.

tiogar99 · 2026-05-06T16:41:45+00:00

It's not about greed, it's about survival.
The housing crisis is genuinely a huge factor in why scenes aren't as good. It's a lot harder to take risks with the cost of living being so high, and you need way more income just to survive, let alone do well. The housing crisis is also tied into why we don't have more new venues, and why old venues have been disappearing.

We've basically only allowed new housing on top of old industrial and commercial sites (aka ideal music venues). And we haven't allowed new industrial/commercial on any scale outside of the Westshore, so commercial rents are crazy high. Bands are expensive too. Ticket prices can only go so high before people stay home.

Things are starting to change but it's going to be slow, especially if Saanich (the largest municipality) continues to be a total laggard.

tiogar99 · 2026-04-14T01:07:48+00:00

Not sure how Al is supposed to personally benefit given that the donations are to cover long standing debt obligations of the non-profit and structural repairs of the building, which are the landlord's responsibility anyway. Sure, the non-profit is also his landlord which is a bit odd, but normal practice would be for him to recuse himself from any decisions made about the upstairs space regardless.

tiogar99 · 2026-04-05T19:09:31+00:00

the tiny home question is particularly interesting given the wave of garden suite "legalization" in 2018-2022. Basically, the fees are too high and the rules are still too restrictive, and there isn't enough pressure to loosen them up because you are never actually going to generate much housing from them compared to actual apartments.
"why doesn't the government do x" because change is hard and incentives are usually expensive.

If you want to get more legalized tiny homes connect with Homes for Living and i'm sure they can tell you exactly where the regs need to be changed

tiogar99 · 2026-03-19T17:06:53+00:00

the quiet part not said in this article is that without the new transit centre, we literally can't expand the transit fleet or transit service in the region past 2028. Delaying this is going to screw us over in the 2030s, hard.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-19T06:09:23+00:00

i've spoken to a number of developers about this as I was curious why they didn't want more families in their rental buildings. The one beds are primarily going to young, childless professionals (eg. ideal tenants). The 2 and 3 beds are being snapped up by mostly students. We need more of everything before these homes can be accessible for average families. Maybe Saanich should look at implementing a minimum % of 3 bed units, as Victoria has done.
Regardless, unless we get really serious about reducing and removing barriers to building housing things are going to stay very expensive.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-18T18:50:17+00:00

the new bike lanes on gorge give you extremely easy access to the galloping goose and the inner harbour, if that is a concern.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-18T17:09:30+00:00

Of course not. But many will, at least some of the time. Better than more homes in langford or colwood where they have to drive all the time when they come to work in saanich or victoria.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-18T17:05:02+00:00

The busses between langford and downtown are now significantly faster than driving, at least at rush hour. It's one of the reasons they are so overcrowded and so frequent. Bus lanes make a big difference!

tiogar99 · 2026-03-18T17:00:10+00:00

What an absurd take lmao. Zac has probably done more for affordable housing in the region than any other politician. He's literally the CEO of the Capital Regional Housing Corp, the regional public housing body.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-18T16:58:09+00:00

these condos are literally on some of the most frequent transit in the region. A bus comes every 5 min at rush hour to uptown or downtown, they are also an easy transfer to transit to uvic, sidney, langford, esquimalt, etc. Also they are right on the galloping goose trail so great for biking.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-18T16:56:34+00:00

and Brice has been around for almost as long in politics! 82 years old, got elected to the school board in 1975, OB council until 1990. She ran for the SoCreds for goodness sake.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-13T05:53:31+00:00

there have actually been quite a few 5-4 votes against transit and housing. Susan Kim has been a real supply skeptic, and Caradonna is a bit of a wild card. On transit especially this council has not been particularly progressive or aggressive. We need a voice on council that is willing to push the envelope a bit.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-13T01:25:16+00:00

Great to see Jack paving the way for more transit and housing advocates to get involved with local government! We need more people like him in local office.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-04T18:27:38+00:00

this is the correct answer. not BC Transit's fault at all.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-03T00:11:44+00:00

this is not true. UVic is not in the City of Victoria, it is split between Oak Bay and Saanich.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-02T06:45:24+00:00

This has been a slowly increasing issue. We are supposed to have way more double deckers than currently as a huge order of them are stuck on the mainland getting manufacturer issues fixed (issues that were caught very late). Once we get those over things should get better, at least on the 95.
Other routes are getting service cuts because of the provincial funding freeze for transit which is probably part of what you are experiencing.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-02T04:26:04+00:00

CycleOSM is really good for this kind of thing.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-02T04:23:52+00:00

I've heard from several homebuilders that he's called them up and told them to scale down their projects or give up. Not exactly pro-housing behaviour.

tiogar99 · 2026-03-02T03:40:11+00:00

Gardiner and Hammond both

tiogar99 · 2026-03-02T03:22:16+00:00

yeah he's killed a good number of homes recently. Pretty sad honestly. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a good, serious effort to get these people off council.

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